Evaluation - Directors commentary

Evaluation - Does our trailer conform to the theroies of media usage?

- Does our trailer conform towards the theories of media usage within the contemporary media industry?

- Audience-

- The Hypodermic needle theory - suggests that media texts to inject its ideas, values and attitudes straight into the passive audience. This however is an outdated approach as it is much more widely understood now that audiences do bring their own interpretations and understandings to a media texts and it is no longer believed that media has the absolute power to influence mass audiences.
By having violence in our trailer, the model would suggest that the audience would take the message that violence is power, however in reality audience’s do understand that it is for entertainment purposes and so they don’t take the media ideology too seriously. It was important to display threat and violence in our trailer to conform to horror conventions and trigger the desired reactions from our audience. This questions the models relevance to contemporary media.
 
- The reception theory - suggests that media texts are not simple accepted by the audience but that the viewer interprets the meaning of the text based on their own cultural experiences. The meaning behind the text is created by the relationship it has to the viewer. The theory suggests three ways in which the media text can be viewed:

- Dominant reading: the reader fully shares the programmes code and fully accepts the programmes preferred reading.
- Negotiated reading: the reader partly shares the programmes code and broadly accepts the preferred reading but modifies it in a way which reflects their positions and interests.
- Oppositional reading: the reader does not share the programmes code and rejects the preferred reading, bringing an alternative frame of interpretation.

- This is the most modern and developed theory of audience participation in media, based on Stuart Hall’s encoding model, the model states that the producer encodes the media text and the audience decodes it. Their reading is affected by many contextual and personal factors, for example age, gender, social aims, current mood and personal experiences.

- We encoded our trailer by using attractive characters that are within the age of our target audience, so the audience are enticed by them. The isolated setting makes the audience believe that escape is not possible, therefore highlighting the fear and panic they experience. The music is designed to create suspense and put the audience on edge, followed by fast paced music with a heavy beat to highlight the action of the characters struggle for survival.
Our audience is most likely to fall into the negotiated reading and the uses and gratifications of watching horror films is very similar across the board and our target audience is at an age where they are quite susceptible to the persuasive intent of media products.

- Blumler and Katz declared that there are 5 mains reasons why audiences consume media texts in their uses and gratifications theory. These include: to be informed and educated, to identify with the characters and situations, to be entertained, to enable themselves to socially interact with others and to escape from their daily troubles and woes.
Blumler and Katz state that we consume media in order to satisfy desire. My trailer in particular supplies excitement allowing audiences to be entertained, further allowing them to immerse themselves in the panic of the characters and the struggle forgetting for the time being the predictability of their own lives. Furthermore my target audience are likely to identify with the main characters as they are within the same age group. Furthermore as horror films are often watched in large groups as a social occasion it would make sense for the target audience to want social stimulation from the trailer. Braving the scenes of horror in the trailer allows the audience to show their strength and discuss with their friends.

- The male gaze was suggested by Laura Mulvey who argued that in films we view from a heterosexual male point of view. Women maybe objectified for the pleasure of the male viewer and characters and narrative maybe designed to appeal to a male audience. Richard Dyer states that entertainment texts offer audiences a perfect ideal that they can access through media consumption; this is in contrast the imperfections and difficulties audiences face in their own lives.
Our trailer features a ratio of males to females in 1:3 which already complies to the theory of the males gaze, the female characters are attractive and seen as weaker than the male character (with the exception of the antagonist). The female characters dress and present themselves in a way that is preferable to male viewers, conforming With the theory and confirming its relevance.

- Genre-

- Genre is often used by audiences to make choices and discriminations in the issues of taste, preference, identity and pleasure that are associated with different types of film, hence making genre a concern for the producers who take these issues into account when trying to appeal to their target audience.
Through repetition and variation genres tell familiar stories with familiar character and situations, encouraging expectations and experiences.
Genre produces benefits for the institution: film producers can use the concept of genre in both production and marketing of the filming, in our trailer we were able to use the conventions of horror to give our trailer the identity that will attract our target audience, we chose dark colours contrasted with white and red for our marketing and gave our trailer a contemporary horror feel.
It can be used as an economic strategy, we identified the genre that was doing well within our age group to maximise our likelihood of producing a trailer idea that would be a success within the industry.
It can lastly give producers a set of expectations to diverge from which allowed us to choose elements that would be guaranteed to give pleasure to our audience.
Genre produces benefits for audiences: it is a product of the interaction between institutions, audience and text, which works to our advantage as our target audience is a very social group, so media stimulation is very common among them.
Audiences expect both repetition as well as a degree of novelty, which allows us to conform with conventions as well as deviating from the norms of horror film adding an element of surprise to our trailer and keeping audiences interested.
Genres create a clear idea for audiences about what is possible in the films narrative world, therefore by picking a film that is within a genre to their liking, audiences can be pretty sure that they will enjoy the film.
Genre produces benefits for critics: for critics genre is a taxonomy (the practise of classifying films into groups based on similarities of form and content) allowing us to predict the insight critics may have and make our trailer the best it can be, we chose a Christmas theme as this would be a unique selling point and would stop our films being branded as ‘just another horror film’.

- Narrative-

- Propp’s sphere of action suggested that most films have 7 main characters that fit into a criteria based on a fairy tale, these include:
Villain: Antagonist, seeks to stop the hero
Hero: protagonist, who has to fulfil his destiny
Donor: provides a special device to aid the hero
Helper: sidekick of the hero who helps him
Princess: is the reward for the hero
Father: person who rewards the hero for his achievements
Dispatcher: character who sees that something needs to be done
In our trailer we see evidence of all of these characters except the father (who often doesn’t feature in horror films anyway) and the dispatcher as we have also left the recognition of the problem out of our trailer.
- Our Villain is Bryony one of our female characters who is set apart from the others in her simplistic dress code and camera prevalence during the first section of the trailer. Her clothing is darker then that of the others and shows no sign of Christmas cheer. This character is the most familiar with the audience and the one they are most likely to remember which is important because the antagonist is often as main selling point of horror films.
- Our hero is one of the female characters, Emma, who has prevalence in the second half of the trailer, she becomes the second most familiar as is also presented to be the most vulnerable and innocent, making audience more likely to root for her survival, over that of the other two.
- Our Donor is the male character Jordan as he is physically the strongest out of our victims and theoretically the most likely to survive.
Our helper is the other female victim Shanie as she is the best friend of our hero and they are shot together a lot in the second part of the trailer, it is common in horror films that the helper dies and our trailer furthermore conforms to this as at the end we see what looks like Shanie’s character dead in a bath.
- Our princess is survival, which again is very common in horror films; we see the characters fight for their survival all through the second part of the trailer.
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Barthes Enigma code refers to any element of the story that is not fully explained so hence becomes a mystery to the reader. The full truth is often avoided in the following ways:
Snares: deliberately avoiding the truth
Equivocations: partial/incomplete answers
Jammings: Openly acknowledging that there is no truth/answer
In our trailer we use snares such as, whether the hero survives and the villain is defeated, why the villain attempts to kill her friends and the recognition of the disruption.
Our Equivocations include, the fate of the helper, and the relationships between all the characters
We didn’t include any jammings as we believe that for full audience satisfaction their must be an answer to all mysteries pledged in the trailer.
Avoiding the truth is very important in trailers as it is this that encourages the audience to find out more by watching the film. The mysteries created in trailers are what grips their attention and sparks their interest in the film.

- Todorov suggested that all films follow five stages of narrative that as a general rule, all films follow. These stages include:
The equilibrium: at the beginning of the film where the status quo is in check
The disruption: were something goes wrong and disrupts the equilibrium
The recognition: where one of the characters recognises that the disruption has occurred and something needs to be done.
The attempts to repair: where characters fight to restore the equilibrium
The reinstatement of the equilibrium: were a new equilibrium is instated
Most trailer tend to show the first four stages and leaving the fifth one out as a way of enticing audiences to watch the film, by showing evidence of the initial stages the audience can get accustomed to the plot and build relationships with the characters making it more memorable. If they were to include evidence of the last stage it would eliminate the point of watching the film.
- In our trailer we have only included three of the five stages in an attempt to create more mystery around our plot, we chose to do this to make audience more likely to enquire about the plot and outcome of our film, in this way, it is more likely to be successful.
- We have evidence of the Equilibrium at the beginning as the four friends sit together all looking happy and normal. Then we miss at the disruption so the audience are unaware of the cause of the mayhem
- We effectively created mystery around the plot, however by missing out the disruption we could have caused confusion for the audience.
- Levi-Strauss suggested that Binary oppositions should be used to make narrative more exciting. The constant creation of conflict/opposition propels the narrative as it can always end in resolution of conflict. Opposition can be visual or conceptual. The two main themes of our horror are binary oppositions, the idea of Christmas versus horror, all through the trailer the theme of oppositions is reinforced, the black and white of the titles, purity and darkness, the idea that the girl was young and innocent but also the antagonist. Binary oppositions keep the audience on their toes and keep the film interesting which shall make it successful within the contemporary UK.