Audience Essay

‘Analyse one of your media productions in relation to audience’ Julian McDougall’s audience perspective of how the online age is affect the audience base as it’s harder to conceive a media audience which is stable and identifiable due to this online age aspect. The concept I will be discussing in relation to the audience is my A2 music video on Monster by The Automatic and how it portrays a certain audience and how it relates to theories. The theorists I will be using are Hartley, Ien Ang, Clark, McQuail and lastly Stuart Hall.

 Firstly Ien Ang’s theory on ‘audience on exist as an imaginary entity’ and how it provides a vantage point of the institution of interest. An aspect of this theory is used in my work such as my label for my music video which is monster recordings inc this was made with the audience in mind and how it links to them individually and how the relate to it. To start my project I had an imagery of what audience I wanted to conceive to and this was Alternative male teens between the ages of 14 and 25 this shows I have used Ang’s theory in my work, due to this its only British teens I have conceived to as it wont appeal as humorous to any other nationality.

Hartley’s theories on ‘invisible fictions on audience’, which then help, produce the product with the audience in mind. This theory is basically the same as Ang’s theory but has one development as the institution has the audience set not just an imaginary one like Ang’s theory. During the planning of my music video I used audience research to help what we had to include in our music video as we had the invisible fictions in mind as well as Ang’s theory. We got the typical dress sense such as skinny jeans and also instruments from our audience research and also from real media texts such as TDCC and Weezer’s track of ‘Keep fishin’.

 In relation to Hartley’s theory there is Clark’s theory on ‘regular audience feedback’ this is done by researching in many ways to gain the feedback to get a valid/conceivable audience. Primary audience research was used in our planning stages for our music video as we needed to see what the alternative male group aged from 14-25 would appeal to and watch, we used this by interviewing the face by face and asking them on what they wanted to see in our video. Some of the answers included skinny jeans, humour, instruments, funny narrative and typical dress and posture sense. Audience profiling was also done as we constructed the primary audience research into a category of what our alternative male audience looked like and listened to so we could get an easier perspective of what we had to include. Lastly using Clark’s theory on regular audience feedback we used a focus group for a viewing of our music video and gained feedback from which allowed us to see if we succeeded in humour such as the cookie monster theme and also to see if it appealed to the alternative category so we used Clark’s theory of regular audience feedback effectively.

 McQuail’s theory on uses and gratifications include the 4 ways of interacting with audience; these include Diversion/escapism, Personal Relationships, personal identity and Surveillance information. We used McQuail’s theory of Diversion/Escapism in our music video to interact with the audience as we used a humours/fiction narrative which isn’t real showing a sense of escapism and also diversion from there everyday lives, these included the cookie monster chasing band member through forest, also a wanted poster for the monster and us catching him with a very very small net showing humour and fiction. We definitely used McQuail’s theory of diversion and escapism as we adapted it to our music video but we didn’t include the other three of personal relationships or identity and surveillance information at all in our music video.

Lastly Stuart Hall’s theory on the reception theory was used in the audience perspective of our video after we developed it. Stuart hall’s reception theory include 3 ways of reading these include, preferred which is an accepted meaning such as the audience viewed it and understood it as we intended It to be. Then there is negotiated reading which is an accepted meaning with some disagreement, lastly there is oppositional reading this is where the audience completed reject the meaning of my video. In my music video I have used the negotiated reading as we had humour in our video such as the use of the cookie monster and fictional storyline, but this can funny for some but not for others viewers showing some disagreement. Again we used the negotiated reading as when we used the feedback of the class shown using Clark’s theory we had some disagreement of the dress, humour and the fictional storyline between the class showing we follow Stuart Halls’ reception theory of negotiated reading.