Friday 7 November 2014

Audience Profiling: Short Film Questionnaire

To help with my own audience profiling for the creation of my film I have devised my own short film questionnaire. This contains questions that will influence not only my filming but also the other tasks I need to complete regarding the promotion of the film. I gave the questionnaire to a variety of people so the responses will be varied giving me a good idea of what to include in my short film.
This is my questionnaire:

Monday 3 November 2014

Uses and Gratification Theory: Blumler & Katz

Uses and gratification theory explains how we understand mass communication. This theory focuses more on the audience and how they consume it rather than the message supplied by what they are viewing. It asks "what do people do with the media?" rather than "what does the media do to you?". It rejects the idea that audiences are passive to what they consume in the media (as stated in Hypodermic Needle Theory) but instead they actively interpret and integrate media into their own lives. It also states that audience members choose to consume media to meet their own needs and suggests that the media is used to fulfil specific gratifications. The theory implies that the media competes against other information sources for viewer's gratification.
The theory states that user's have four basic needs when consuming films:
  • Identify- being able to recognise the product or person in front of you, role models that reflect similar values to yours, aspiration to be someone else
  • Educate - being able to acquire information, knowledge and understanding
  • Entertain – What you are consuming should give you enjoyment and also some form of ‘escapism’ enabling us to forget our worries temporarily
  • Social Interaction – the ability for media products to produce a topic of conversation between other people, sparks debates (etc who is left on the x-factor)