Monday, 11 January 2016

Applying audience theories to my music video


Apply the concept of audience to one of your coursework pieces:

My music video captures our male dominated audience through gratification theory, our audience can project themselves onto us as we play the various instruments, and this is pleasurable to viewers who cannot play musical instruments. Dennis McQuail states that we all consume media for different reasons that are unique and personal to ourselves, this can be applied to our audience as seeing us playing together as a band may resonate with them. McQuail also theorises about why modern users watch texts and use social networking. I believe our video is viewed for relaxation motives to help the viewer unwind and relax; this is because our video contains a slow beat and colourful happy visuals.

My survey concluded that most people in our target audience choose to view music videos on the website YouTube. By choosing to upload our music video to YouTube it enables us to reach the largest audience possible. This popular viewing platform for music videos is particularly popular for children and young adults aged 12-25; by allowing our video to be viewed on this website we have ensured that none of our target audience is isolated.


One way that our target audience has been addressed is through the narrative, our story is not encoded is a strict way. The music video allows the individual to decode it in whatever way they choose, this is particularly important for our target audience of young males who like to feel that our music video is applicable to their life. Stuart Hall describes this two-step flow theory and suggests that there is no right or wrong way to decode something but instead the actual meaning of the text is decided by society’s decoding as a whole. This idea can also relate to Roland Barthes theory who states that the encoding of a text is not significant and that an individual’s decoding of a text is more important. This is why the creator of a media piece cannot dictate what people choose to take from it.

No comments:

Post a Comment