Task 5 - Mass Audience theory

It's obvious that different types if people like different types of media, but of course some are made to be more engaging than others.
Detective and crime dramas were created to try and engage an audience, whereas a soap does not require near as much effort to watch.
But I think some people enjoy watching non engaging TV, as that is one of the points of TV, to be able to escape reality for a bit and get consumed by something entertaining, that does not have a massive effect on your life.
This reason can be related to the intellegence of an audience. Just because someone is very smart, doesn't mean thet have to watch crime dramas and quiz shows, as they themselves may have had a hard day at work, and wish to escape reality and not use as much brain power as they have throughout the day, this could work the other way round, a normal working class person could watch crime dramas and quiz shows to try and prove they are smart.

How the Media can influence an audience - The Hypodermic Syringe theory

The hypodermic syringe effect is the theory that Media in any from has an effect on the audience, eg if an audience watch a piece of violence, they may want to do something violent.

Personally I think, to some extent it does indeed work, But it only works with the non extremities, for example, if a character commits a grusome murder, most people will have the common sense to view that it is wrong and not copy it, whereas if they see a relatively cool character drinking a can of coke, they may want to do the same, either in order to be like the character or they just believe coke is a thirst quenching drink. My point being media has an effect on the audience, but always to some extent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-TSVwPkCok
 This is a link to a youtube video of a performance from John Mayers "Where the Light is" Dvd.
Being a musician, and owning this DVD myself, I can say it is a piece of media that inspires me to pick up a guitar and keep practicing and playing to hopefully be that good, also on the consumer mside of things, it makes me a fan of John Mayer, making me buy his various CD and merchandise.

Audience Task 2 - Blumer's Idea

1. Blumers idea is that all different types of audience come from all different "Walks of Life" and all do not know each other. In some sense I think this is true, as Everyone likes different types of media, for different reasons, at the same time, people could like all different type of media, for one reason, for example, Some people can like photography, as it is seen as an art and contains just still pictures, a group of people may like this more than television, just for the reason all the pictures are still. Another example is Soaps, whilst alot of people like them, as they portray everyday life and problems, they could also only appeal to working class people, as that is the type of people the program shows.

2.I think when I am on my own, I tend to only use the forms of Media I want/need to use, and therefore only benefit from what I am interested in, whereas when I am with other people, I may use a form of Media I am not familiar with, but they might be.

3. Most of the time, if there is some Media I wish my friends to see, I just tell them about it, and they'll decided whether to watch/look at it or not, although sometimes, if it is on the internet, I send a link to them, and they'll use that to view it.

Back in the swing of things

After a short break for Christmas, our group is now getting back to our project.

We're trying to organise some kind of video call/conversation using Skype between our group and cast to try and discuss some filming dates, there are also plans for me, Matt and Lee to meet up, to do some Video blogging and discuss various Ideas.

I also mean to do some more Audience research and I shall put that up as and when I do it.

I also got round to creating a Facebook group, that includes all the members of our project, a dn this should be a good tool to use, and everyone involved uses Facebook regularly, I'll put a screenshot of it up soon.

Re: This is the Facebook Group ;

Market Research

In order to carry out some primary market research, we've decided to create a questionaire, and have people fill it out, to see if we can get more of an idea of our target audience, and what they would like to see in our OTS.

These are some possible questions;

1. How old are you?  15-18   18-21   21+
2. What is your favourite genre of film?   Crime    Romance   Action
3. What time period of film most interests you?   1950's   1970's   21st Century+
4. How regularly do you go to the cinema?    Once a week   Once a month    Few times a year
5. Do you have a Job?    Yes    No

More questions will be added as I think of them, I may also need some group input to help make the questionaire effective.

Animatic/Props

Ok, on Tuesday, me and my group perfomed various tasks in the making of our animatic, and the research of props.

Lee: Researched the type of suits/clothing we would our characters to wear ( see his blog for more info on that), and drew out a majority of the post-it notes.

Me: Took photos of all the post-it notes, in order for them to be used in the animatic + Drew up a list of the props we have already got, and the ones we might need.

Matt: Using windows movie maker, He created the Animatic, which is still to be uploaded, I'll edit this post when it is.

This is my Prop list:
4 black/pinstripe suits (of some kind) - I myself have 2 black suits,1 Waistcoat 1 white and 1 black shirt and 1 black and 1 white tie. Lee has said he has another suit and Waistcoat aswell, and I am informed that a couple of our cast members may possess their own suit aswell.

Fedora Hats - Lee has one, need 2 more. Edit: more hats have been found, so these are no longer a problem.

Wine/Whiskey Glass - I have glasses that are suitable

Femme Fatale Dress - We're hoping our Femme Fatale actress will be able to get hold of what we need, we shall make it a priority to ask her.

Pistols/Tommy Guns - These need to be aquired, there may possibly be some props in our schools drama department we could use, but if these look too fake, we shall go in search of better ones. Edit; The tommy guns were axed due to a combination of they are not necessarily needed and we could not get them, and we DID manage to find a pistol.

This post will be continually updated, in relation to the new information/props/idea's the group aquires.

Target Audience Research

On Thursday, our Media lesson cosisted of learning about Target Audiences, and discussing what it takes to derrive our specfic Target audience, and the research we must undertake in order to 1. find our exactoly who our target audience is and 2. what our OTS needs to do to satisfy them.

We got given a booklet, containing a lot of information, and various tasks to complete which would get us thinking about audience research. One of these was to create a mind map, showing how our group uses media in an average day; this is what we came up with.

We came to the conclusion that between us, we use almost all forms of media we could think of, and that they all link together, in some way.

We also had a discussion within our group about some new plans and ideas for actors/dates for filming our OTS, see Matt Armes' Blog for more info.

Plan/Organisation

So, recently our group has been having to rethink alot of things, and we realised our timing/organisation for the whole filming aspect of the project is a bit of a shambles, so we've decided to make a plan in order to organise our time and priorities.

I have thought up a skeleton to one, but I will need to discuss it with my group.

1st - Sort out new cast (possibly hold auditions)
2nd - Get together all the props we need, so they are at our disposal when we need them.
3rd - Try and envision exactly how we want our OTS to look (What shots to use, composition etc)
4th - Arrange a time that both the group and cast can film
5th - Contact our Setting (Paolo's or the Beehive) and see if we can arrange that date with them.

This is only a basic plan, and there are likely some points I have missed out, but I will pitch it to Matt and Lee, and see what they think.

Idea Pitch

Ok, so I should've done this earlier, but atleast it's here.

Last Thursday, me and my group, Matt Armes and Lee Cooper pitch our Film noir OTS idea to our class.
Our ideas seemed pretty well recieve, with most, if not all the feedback being quite positive, but presenting it made us think about some concepts we had and have forced us too rethink them.

One particular problem was our cast; it was pointed out that the people we chose to play our parts were of different racial backgrouds, whereas conventional film noir actors were usually all white.

Because of this, our group is considering changing the actors so that they are all consistent and conventional

This is the only problem I can think of at the minute, when I rewatch/upload the video, there may be some other points to address and reconsider.