Audience theory

There are lots of theory's about the audiences of the media and how the react to certain things being shown i have researched into a few of them and this is what i discovered. 

The first is the hypodermic syringe theory.

the theory goes that the media is like a syringe, which injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audience, who as a powerless mass, have little choice but to be influenced. 

The culmination theory is when one media text does not effect a person to much but years and years of exposure to violence for example will make you less sensitive to violence. so for example if you watch domestic violence in soaps for years the theory is that people will be less bothered when real experiences happen in real life. 

Joy Ride Analysis

The short we looked at today in class was called joy ride, this short film explores the concept of causality. this is when one sequence of events cause another sequence of events to happen and so on through out the film. the film is about a electrician who is sent out to fix a fault in a pylon but thinks its not worth bothering with so he decides to go home. then he finds a man in the road, gets kidnapped and and goes through a series of events through out he ordeal.  

I have made a flow chart of the causality concept and how it works in this video. 

The man doesn't fix the pylon >      

which causes him to drive home early >      

that causes him to come across a man in the road >     

that then in turn causes him to get kidnapped >    

when he is in the boot the cuts the brake light wire >       

which made the police to pull the kidnappers over on the side of the road >      

then that causes him to scream for help >      

which causes the kidnappers to kill the police >     

that then causes them to drive off again faster >      

he tries to escape again but gets petrol over him in the boot >      

which makes him disable the electrics for the lights >      

which then makes the kidnappers crash >     

the boot opens >     

kidnapper holds a knife to the mans throat >    

the man head buts the kidnapper >      

the man walks up to the road which happens to be next to the same pylon that he didn't fix >       its still sparking >     

sparks hit him  >     

which ignites the petrol which kills him.

This theory of causality is used in big block buster films, in most films this is what most story lines are made up of, but it is more subtle than the use of causality in this short film as they use it just as a frame for the story line, not the main point like they used it for in this short film as there is an element of irony because if he fixed the problem in the first place he wouldn't have died. 

Genre theory.

Genre depends on the acceptance of generic conventions. The definition of a genre or genres is A set of types/groups which any medium may be classified.

•Western  Science-Fiction  Comedy

•Sitcom  Quiz Show  Soap

•Reggae  Drum n Base  Jazz

In each case the acknowledgement of genre depends on the acceptance of generic conventions   

 John Fiske - ‘Any one programme will bear the main characteristics of its genre, but is likely to include some from others: ascribing it to one genre or another involves deciding which set of characteristics are most important

Richard Maltby and Ian Craven- 'The success of Hollywood is reliant on the combination of predictable elements with variation'

Auteurs - A group of film makers that were considered to be particularly influential and artistic.

Edward Buscombe felt that iconography was the best way to achieve generic definitions.

Rick Altman-Genre theory presumes that viewers pre-read texts.

                        -Viewers become passive voyeurs

                        -Genres are therefore restrictive

                  -Does not acknowledge or allow for the hybrid - the blending of genres.

short films

We looked at some short films in class, the one that stood out to me and i decided to write about is called 'shelf life'

Shelf life shows a man undergoing a series of safety procedures before beginning to drill into his wall, a certificate that we see shows he is a health and safety officer and has been rewarded for his accomplishments.
Once the man begins to drill into the wall, we see another shot of an elderly man, his face drops and he falls as we notice his head has been penetrated by the safety mans drill. The credits roll and we see the man continuing to drill a series of holes. The film then ends.

The reason i chose to analyse this film is because of the unseen twist that happens towards the end, where the elderly man is killed. The twist really draws your attention into the film more, as it is very unexpected. What makes this so intriguing is the way the main character is set out to be very safety conscious, this leads us to believe he has taken every precaution and that the foreseeable events will run very smoothly, this is then completely changed as wee see the character accidentally kill a man, and not even know he has done it.
This adds a very comical yet cynical feel to the film and makes it very enjoyable to watch.

This short film is about mundane everyday things, and a lot of emphasis is shown on these simple everyday tasks, this links the short film to the one we were planning on making, as in the one we are planning on making would also emphasis everyday tasks that everyday people would undertake. Although in our short film it is going to give the viewer a view of the life of a standard person, with no twist, the short film we watched is still relevant for the fact of it being about everyday things.

Research into similar concepts

In this blog entry i will be looking into different texts which have similar themes to what we are thinking of using in our text. The first film we watched was city of god which is a Brazilian independent film and has a couple of transition that we are interested in as we want to create a number of similar shots and transition in our short film.

The first transition is of a teenager stood in a run down street, the grade of shot is very dull and blue which is showing that times are not very good. The camera then starts spinning anticlockwise around him as a Steadicam, there are sounds of a clock ticking in the background the shot speeds up and slows down then it fades into a shot of the character when he was younger. the grade has changed to warm oranges and yellows to represent that times are happier at that time in the past.

The next transition that's happens is still in the past will the warm yellows and oranges, the two main characters are walking along the street then a car drives along the road going the opposite way on the road in front of the camera then as the car exits the shot it has faded back to the future in the exact place as they were standing but they are in the future. the music this time is 70's music to emphasise the time period they are in. The grade is also back to the dull blues and greys.

The last transition we looked at was a different type of transition to the others we have looked at. Through out the whole scene the camera is still with an establishing shot of a room. For the rest of the scene it tells a story of what happened in the room. So different people come in the room different people fade in and out as the story goes along in different time periods, the scenery in the room changes constantly as well as the grade of the shot to dark colours to light and back to dark, and at the end it goes back to the original shot that happened at the start of the scene and carried on the story as usual.

All of the transitions that we have researched has helped us to gather ideas on what transitions we could use and by analysing them has helped us to work out how we can create them. We will now apply this in our planning and creation of our short film.

Representations of stereotypes and genres

–In our short film we have representations of a typical male character but from different ages of there life. So it will include a typical representation of a: Young boy, Teenage boy, Adult male and an elderly male.–The common stereotypes of these sorts of people are as follows:–Young boy – late for school, rushing around, careless–Teenage boy – Finishing exams, excited, going to socialise–Adult male – Working, driving, going drinking–Elderly male – Walking stick, not doing much, content–These are all traditional representations of each of the age groups showing typical actions and emotions these sorts of groups would show.–The representation of these groups has stayed the same during the years, i think teenagers now are shown as being more violent nowadays than they used to but apart from that the representations are the same.