Audience Theory

MALE GAZE

Laura Mulvey     

In short:
Women are to be seen (by men) as sexual objects in media through shot types and movement.

In her essay "Visual Pleasure and the Narrative Cinema", Mulvey stated that women were objectified in film because heterosexual men were in control of the camera.

An interesting point that Mulvey makes is that women look at themselves through the eyes of men (in media). This means that the female gaze is the same as the male gaze. This can either be a manifestation of unequal power between gazer and gazed, or a conscious or subconscious attempt to develop that inequality between men and women.

Mulvey focuses on:

-How men look at women

-How women look at themselves

-How women look at each other

The Male Gaze theory is based around the way media portrays women.
It claims media institutions emphasise the curves of the female body when advertising. In the case of music videos, the camera lingers on the woman's legs, bum, breasts, etc.

RECEPTION THEORY

Stuart Hall    

In his theory, Hall suggests that media texts are encoded by the producer, meaning that the producer fills the product with values and messages. However, the public can perceive the product in different ways, depending on their cultural, religious and economic background, among other variables.

USES & GRATIFICATION THEORY

Blunter & Kats

The Uses and Gratifications theory looks at the motives of the people who use the media, posing the question why do we consume the media that we consume?

The theory makes the audience active, as they choose what they want to consume; they are not forced into consumption - we watch the films we want to, the media simply creates the product.

The theory aslo argues that audience's needs have social and psychological needs which generate certain expectations about the mass media.

THERE ARE 4 MAIN AREAS:

• 1- Diversion

Watching TV, reading the newspaper, etc. to forget about our own life/problems, and think about something else

• 2- Surveillance

We use media to be aware of what is going on around us, E.G. we watch the news and read the newspaper.

• 3- Personal Identity

Media allows us to confirm our own personal appearance .

• 4- Personal relationships

This is broken down into two sections:

• Relationships with the media:

Many people use the TV as a form of companionship, for example.

• Using the media within relationships

Most of us use the media as a springboard to form and build upon relationships with real people.

HYPODERMIC NEEDLE THEORY



The 'Hypodermic Needle' or 'Magic Bullet' theory implies mass media has a direct, immediate & powerful influence on audiences.

In the 1940s and 50's media was perceived as a powerful influence on behaviour change.The theory suggests that the magic bullet is fired from the 'media gun' straight into the passive audience's head, and the audience is immediately affected by the messages attached to the 'bullet'.

However, the theory was not based on research findings, but rather on assumptions about human nature at the time. Therefore, this theory is not accepted at present.

Now-a-days we understand that everyone consumes media in a different way, and although audiences are affected by media, it is not always in the way the producers intend.

The most famous incident often cited as an example for the hypodermic needle model was the 1938 broadcast of The War of the Worlds and the subsequent reaction of widespread panic among its American mass audience.

However, this incident actual sparked a research movement, led by Paul Lazarsfeld and Herta Herzog, that disproved the theory.

Audience's reactions to the broadcast were, in fact, diverse, and were largely determined by situational and attitudinal attributes of the listeners.

An Animated History of Animation - 17th and 18th Centuries

Flip Book

The flip book was the next 'great invention' for animation, and it consists of drawing each frame of our animation (in order) on a blank booklet, which we can then flip through and see the animation.

This can also be achieved by using photographs instead of drawings.

The video above shows an example of a hand-drawn flip book.

Hummingbird

Audience Research Questionaire

Please circle the appropriate answer

1. What age group do you belong to?

<18 years old   18-25 years old   25-40 years old   >40 years old

2. Are you female or male?

     F            M

3. How many animated music videos do you know?

None       About  5       About  10       >10

4. Do you like animation?

Yes                      No

5. Would you be less, or more likely to check out a video knowing it was animated?

More                 Less

6. What features do you expect to see in a music animation video? 

(e.g. hand-drawn images, stop motion, plasticine figures, dialogue, etc.)

Making a Hand Drawn Animation (video)

This video describes the *painstaking* process of creating a hand drawn animated film.

Because I have no means to buy a digital animation board, I will use a similar technique to the one featuring in the video.

'Thought of You' Analysis

Thought of you - Ryan Woodward

Analysis

'Thought of You' is a short film created by professional animator Ryan Woodward. It consists of two figures, one male, the other female, who dance with each other to the song "World Spins Madly On".

The hand-drawn animation has a consistent lack of editing and cinematographic techniques throughout the video.

The drawings in the animation express the atmosphere of the song through contemporary dance, hence there is no need for close ups, high/low angles, straight cuts. These techniques are commonly used by film-makers to make the spectator feel empathy, sadness, happiness, anxiety, towards a specific character or towards the narrative.
The choreography is smooth and balletic, creating a 'gentle nature', which guides the audience's emotional reactions, however, it doesn't reinforce them by the use of micro features or micro elements.



The mise en scene in the video is very basic - the background is a light sepia tone; there are no props in the back or foreground.

The female animation is white, while male is drawn in black.  This, together with the title of the video, 'Thought of You', connotes that the girl is part of the boy's imagination. This is further conveyed when. at the end of the video, their hands touch and the female becomes black, as if to say she has become real.



The video is not targeted at a mainstream audience, nor was it made for lucrative means; it was created to express the auteur's thoughts and feelings in a way that anyone can relate to them.
This is largely achieved by a lack of diegetic sound, such as dialogue. The abstract composition of the video lets the spectator's mind read the animation how they perceive it, based on personal experiences, socio-economic background, religion or sexual orientation.

Treatment (music video)

My music video consists of an interpretative contemporary dance choreography in which two people dance together for the length of the song, and end up destroying themselves and each other.
The dancers will dance while the song is playing. It's going to be hand-drawn and in stop-motion style.