Looking
at film audiences
You can
analyse any text by seeing which gratifications it offers, and
this
can help you understand why the text was
a) a
mainstream or niche success
b) why it appealed to one
specific audience and not another.
|
Uses
and Gratifications
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RoboCop
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Selfish
Giant
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Who is the audience for your film?
Primary and
secondary audience
Niche or mass
audience
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Mass audience, mainly primary and very mainstream.
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Niche success, wasn’t in cinemas for a long time. Mainly DVD sales
therefore secondary audience.
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Personal Identity
·
Finding reinforcement for personal values
·
Finding models of behaviour
·
Identifying with valued other (in the media)
·
Gaining insight into one's self
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·
What it means to be human.
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Helping people in need.
·
What it means to be police, how a human is
different from a machine and general human nature.
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·
People in a lower/working class background can
identify, have been through the same issues.
·
People can relate to the friendship and
loyalty present in the film, and a role model out of it.
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Information
(also known as surveillance)
·
Finding out about relevant events and
conditions in
immediate surroundings, society and the world
·
Seeking advice on practical matters or opinion
and
decision choices Satisfying curiosity and general interest
·
Learning; self-education
Gaining a sense of security through knowledge
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·
Realise how crime is in the inner city, albeit
in a light hearted way.
·
Setting represents somewhat the place in real
life.
·
Action movie, not meant to inform due to make
it appeal to mass audience.
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·
Insight into an environment not covered a lot
in the conventional media.
·
Knowledge of the challenges people less
fortunate than them face.
·
Education about others in general.
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Entertainment
·
Escaping, or being diverted, from problems
·
Relaxing
·
Getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic
enjoyment
·
Filling time
·
Emotional release
·
Sexual arousal
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·
Main objective of the film is to entertain and
fill time, nothing more complicated than that.
·
Escapism, draw people away from real life
issues via science fiction.
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·
Not really escapism, identifies more problems
not removing them.
·
Emotional attachment to characters.
·
Cultural insight.
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Social Interaction and
Integration
·
gaining insight into circumstances of others;
social empathy
·
identifying with others and gaining a sense of
belonging
·
finding a basis for conversation and social
interaction
·
having a substitute for real-life companionship
·
helping to carry out social roles
·
enabling one to connect with family, friends
and society
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·
As it appeals to mass audience, people want to
interact with each other about it as they’ve all seen it.
·
Can talk about what it meant to them, and how
they enjoyed it.
·
Not sophisticated though.
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·
Empathy towards the two main characters, felt
by all the audience.
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The role of family, connection with eachother.
·
Talk about it with fellow views due to heavy
empathy.
·
More sophisticated discussions than a
blockbuster, reflective of target audience and success.
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