Audience Study

Introduction
In this blog post I am going to study different theory's on audience. My aim is to discover more about who would be my target audience for my opening sequence, and more about what they commonly desire.

Professor Paul Wells' Research of Thriller Audiences

Professor Wells discovered that the relationship of being frighten changed with age. This ranges for what frights certain age groups, to what they commonly associate with being scared.

55 - 80 year olds like the configuration of night and dark. This is due the fact that it reminds then of walking home at night in their youth. The age group can relate for the feelings of dark night time walks, due to personal experience. Also, reliving these feelings through a film is pleasurable to them due to reminding them of youth memories. For the same reasons they found rats and bats appealing to the social housing conditions that they used to experience. The breakdown of law and order is something that scares then, and it is also a reminder of times when society was more fragile. World War 2 also is something they find particularly frighting, due to real life horror experiences. This age group really enjoy a focus on realistic events, they are a strong lack of interest in the make believe events. E.G. Aliens, Zombies, etc.

40 - 55 year olds enjoy an extremely vivid use of blood, and inventive special effects. They find that being shocked and frighted is more appealing that having a mentally challenging plot. For example Psycho. They do not enjoy heavy unjustified violence, such as in The Exorcist. 

25 - 40 year olds are shown be showing a growing disengagement with the genre as a whole. They dislike the predictability of plots, this is extremely present in thrillers produced in the 1980's. They have noticed a increase in less passive roles for women. This age group encourages films which future what is described as "the women's struggle against the monster".

16 - 25 year olds like dramatic spectacles, such as blood, gore and rotting flesh. The enjoy effects that not only are computer generated, but are hand made, such a make up styles. They have strong desire to know more about the production of a film, so enjoy "the making of" sections of DVD disks. This age group is know to have strong following for certain directors, and stays loyal to them. They fully engage with extra-textual features available to them, such a websites. 

The conclusions that I can draw from this research is that audiences which were exposed to films made between the 1970s and 90s are keen on special effects. Where as audiences exposed to 1920s and 30s films are strongly interested in to images that remind them of real life experiences.

There is evidence to suggest that audiences are becoming harder to scare. This is particularly focused on younger generations. This is due to an increasing knowledge of the artificial production of special effects. This desire to know how the effects are created, eventually leads to disbelief in the techniques used. But as the audiences understanding develops, so does the techniques used.


The Hypodermic theory

Hypodermic is a word that usually refers to drugs, needles and injections. In this context, is kind of does as well. This theory is the idea that idea and messages portrayed in the media, are put into the minds of the viewers unquestioningly. Taking this theory to a more extreme level, some theorists have suggested that the media is addictive, in a similar way to drugs.

This idea gives producers to idea that they have a large amount of power over there audiences. This could perhaps lead them to portray more extreme and personal viewers through there films, etc. However, now a days audiences have such a large choose of channels that they never feel that they have to watch a certain thing. Unlike years ago, when the choice of channels was a lot more limited. This means that the theory is becoming rather out dated.


Cultivation theory

The cultivation theory suggest that the more an audience watches a program, the more likely it is that they will develop the same views expressed in the show. the idea is that they will follow the show like a religion. This could be used effectively to educate audiences about other cultures, etc. However, if negative attitudes towards certain social groups or stereotypes, then it could create a large number of people expressing hate towards this group. For example, if Police are always negatively portrayed then it could create a large vibe of hate towards policemen and policewoman.


Desensitisation theory

This theory consists of the idea that the audience's attitudes to violence can be affect by having been exposed to too much violence on screen when they were younger. Therefor, as more and more violence is portrayed on your television screens, it is becoming harder to scary audiences. For this reason I will have to carefully considered how much violence will be featured in my opening sequence.