Q1b: Posts on Audience

THIS POST LAST UPDATED JUNE 8TH 2012
All of the 'Posts on...' series primarily gather together existing posts from this blog relevant to the particular 1a/1b topic, BUT may also feature below this list further 'wider reading' links following these posts, and possibly copied-in links lists from this blog. In some cases I've added further links from further DB blogs too. Ultimately, these are 30min questions so the important thing is you pick out some ideas/theories/examples you're comfortable with and know you can apply specific examples from AS and/or A2 to. Some of the posts are brief, others much longer; its well worth skimming through as many as possible though and looking for ideas that click with you.


There is a subtext here, partially linking back to Q1a, of how digisation/web 2.0 has fostered convergence, and fractured the once seemingly clear lines between audience and producer.

Characteristics of a Music Video; (bite-sized chunks of theory!)

Web 2.0 + Fan-made vids: Applying YOUR work; (any Q1a answer should cite web 2.0)

DIGITISATION: self-published short film; (further eg on how web 2.0 functions + how YOUR work isn't mere abstract academic exercise)

DIGITISATION: book industry; (has web 2.0 made publishers obsolete?)

POMO/CREATIVITY: Warhol's impact and vision; (not JUST about his visual style: his groundbreaking use of looooong takes; prediction of today's we-media [everyone will have their 15 mins of fame] is where this becomes potentially useful on audience; pertinent to working within a group, his concept of factory production by a team but bearing one artist's [auteur...] name)

Creativity + MANGeR: Everything is a Remix?; 

Does slow pace = boring?; (pace was an issue for you all at AS and A2, linked to aud feedback + genre conventions: are you virtually forced to surrender to market/audience/genre demands for fast pace?)

Her Body, Himself: Gender in the Slasher Film; feminist Carole 'final girl' Clover's 1987 journal article

Final Girl: Carole Clover and critiques; if the scream queen (and attendant nudity) is a key element for male aud, then this is key for the female aud which the film biz goes all out to attract to this supposedly male-skewed genre - the book Blood Money is very good on this point

Creativity sans la femme + Bechdel Test; feminist Bechdel flags up the tawdry way women are used in film, but also consider the wider lack of women in prominent positions: were you influenced by any female directors, for example, of film/video? Feminism is a theory you should address for this topic.

Applying U+G theory; there's really no excuse for not applying this key active audience theory, which gives you plenty to write about!

Cultural Imperialism; this was tied to a previous exam topic but can still be used to explore how Britishness is subsumed by dominant American tropes - or even how S.Eng rep'ns overwhelmingly dominate UK media output; are your text/s normative or perhaps counter-hegemonic (challenging these normative representations, challenging whats seen as common sense and above questioning?)

Micro-budget films +DCRUP;  digitisation expanding access to wider aud for micro-budget productions?

Creativity: Gauntlett + Csikszentmihalyi; snippet: 'Some writers on creativity, such as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, even suggest that creativity is a phenomenon which only occurs in a social context and cannot be understood, or even recognised, in isolation'

The 'Britishness' of your work; rom-com eg but can be applied across the board. Did you try to emphasize or disguise 'Britishness' for audience factors? (see cultural imperialism post) 
Horror Games: 13 most atmospheric; any intertextual influence from these (which also show wider appeal of genre to multiple audiences)?
The false scare; common slasher narrative device, links into concepts of audience pleasure + genre theories
Zombies for charity...; how horror memes have entered wider society  

Being Human: Auds, Repns, Dig.Tech;

Scream 4 + genre/METZ; the classic pomo slasher franchise + Metz's theory of genre cycles

Peeping Tom 50yrs on; one of two British proto-slashers from 1960 that set out key aspects that Halloween would later reintroduce to a global audience, this one largely disappeared while Psycho was hailed as a huge influence, but today is rightly seen as a masterpiece, and has a sharp commentary on audience pleasures with the killing weapon actually mounted onto the camera itself, giving us an early example of the audience sharing the killer's POV 

Box Office(Mojo) by Genre; this eg is for slasher but you can click through for others too. Persistently successful: tease out the factors behind this.

Times Top 20 Villains; a poorly thought out list but nonetheless highlights the central narrative + marketing role of an identifiable killer, and the curious audience response (delighting in the killing and enjoying killers' quips [eg NoESt's Freddie Krueger]); did you attempt any intertextuality with existing killers?

Audience Expectations in the ‘Slasher’ Formula; did you venture outside the typical expectations in any way? 

http://www.slideshare.net/classof09/choosing-audience: eg of prior aud research

BellaOnlone on Popularity of Horror Films; analysis by a woman's website