Uses and Gratifications Theory

Peaky Blinders;

Escapism - Peaky blinders, allows audience to escape, or be diverted from their own problems, this is done by the dominant use of a soundtrack, easy signifiers that allow the audience to decode the text passively. For example, when Aunt Polly and Aida are talking about having an abortion, the director Steven Knights, slowly adds a soundtrack to the background, a passive audience would be submissive to this,  the soundtrack is used to highlight and enhance the emotions of a scene, and a passive audience will go along with these emotions and feelings, create sympathy and feel the same emotions as the character, escaping from their own life and feelings.

Personal identify - Women from the same era as the text, 1919, may be able to personally identify with some of the common themes shown throughout Peaky Blinders. An example for that is, the inequality of male and female, and if a women to become pregnant without being in wedlock she would be treated apt differently to the male.

How Does Peaky Blinders Target it's Intended Audience?

Peaky Blinders is set in 1919 in Birmingham. Steven Knights Peaky Blinders is a crime drama which follows former world war one soldiers who have returned home and formed a criminal gang. This texts was aired on BBC Two, at 9:00pm on a thursday night.

One way in which Steven Knights attracted its audience was the use of film stars. Tommy Shelby is played by Cillian Murphy, who starred in Bat Man and Inception. C.I. chester Campbell is played by Sam Neil who appeared in Jurassic Park and Aunt polly, is played by Helen McCoy who is known for playing in Harry Potter. This helps build a sense of trust, as the audience relate the actors to other quality programmes/films. Also fans of the actors will be attracted to watch the programme.

The text helps the audience to gain uses of gratifications, the use of historical and cultural contact, the audience is able to learn and self-educate. This is shown in scene of the Burning of he Kings photos, where Tommy explains his reasons for this action, not wanting the King to see what is happening to his town as is would bring upon shame. This is known as Retrophilia, involving, relating to or reminiscent to things of the past. This will help attract an active audience, as need to be more aware of the context thats being given and take it on board, and be able to decode the information.

Explore different ways in which audiences and/or users respond to your chosen texts...

• Discussion on the representation of gender

- "Mad Men is a hamfisted portrayal of a some of the more obvious biases and blindnesses of the early 60s. As if every day dawned in 1960 in order to provide white men with opportunities to manifest their sexual and racial biases and -- along with all the women and negros -- to smoke all the day through."

- "expertly captured the cultural mores and human interactions of that period of history. This is a show for those who remember those times. Some people may wax woefully about the good old days of the early 60's, but for most of us THIS was the reality. The actors behave as if they stepped out of 1960 complete with their cynicism, twisted morality, sexism, and racism. Thankfully most of us have matured beyond the behavior portrayed in 'Mad Men"

- "It is good for young people today to see what it was like in the days before feminism, when attitudes about race, religion, and sexual harrassment in the workplace stagnated opportunities for women, minorities, and gays. Things aren't perfect now, but at least there isn't a smoky haze creating a smug fictional perfection over American life"

• Lethargic pace of story lines
• Critical acclaim

http://www.metacritic.com/tv/mad-men

- "Mad Men is poorly written, it spews continually lackluster dialogue, and it struggles with one boring plot line after another."  

- "show proved slow, akward, boring, and seemingly uncomfortable with itself"

- "Puzzling, with so much hype and potential, but . . . mostly unlikable characters, from Don Draper (either an adulterous war hero or a tender, loving father), to manipulative underlings and a strangely misscast Elizabeth Moss, who is either frumpy and frigid or accessible and promiscuous but can hardly be both at once. The writing is curate's-eggish--good in parts, but uneven. The agency scenes don't ring true--too pat, too shallow. On the bright side, production values are excellent , the settings and costumes authentic and the videography above reproach. "

• Provides inspiration for other shows
• Actively research further into issues of the narrative

Lost - Audience Response

Viewing Figures; --> wiki
- Ranked by critics on their lists of top ten series of all time.
- First season garnered an average of 15.69 million viewers per episode on ABC.
- During its sixth and final season, the show averaged over 11 million U.S. viewers per episode. (this could be due to amount of enigma codes and the long amount of time taken for the answer to be revealed. May have caused more passive audiences to become disinterested as they do not want to decode the text themselves and rely on answers being given to them i.e. the radio scene where Charly asks questions the audience asks and Sayid answers them. However more active audiences will appreciate the enigma codes, and will decode the text and figure out the answers themselves, encouraging them to continuing watching the series.)

Awards; --> wiki
- Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama Series
- Best American Import at the British Academy Television Awards
- the Golden Globe Award for Best Drama
- Screen Actors Guild Award for Outstanding Ensemble in a Drama Series.
- the Writers Guild of America ranked Lost No. 27 in its list of the 101 Best Written TV Series of All Time.
- 61 wins and 265 nominations 

Criticisms of the Text;  --> http://lostpedia.wikia.com/wiki/Criticism_of_Lost
- Michael's frequent screaming and obsession for his son was noteworthy and frequent enough for it to grate on the audience. 
- After the first season, many viewers of the show began to grow tired of the flashbacks. They were perceived by some to be repetitive and recycling information we were already aware of; flashbacks have gotten less important than they were in the first season, taking away from the on-island story lines.
-Many complain that Lost moved too slowly and there is a lack of answers in the show. This has turned many people off, even Lost fans over time. 

Lost, Series 1, Episode 2, "The Pilot Part 2'

ABC's Lost is an american Tv series which was first aired in 2004, and ended in 2010. The film is set around a group of plane crash survivors that end up surrounded on a tropical island. Lost's has a wide, mainstream audience, and has been encoded to be inclusive. Botha  passive and active audience are able to be gratified by it.

  The intended audience for ABC's Lost is a wide mainstream audience. The first technical convention present that makes me believe this is the use of a non-diegtic score, in order to make the audience feel the same emotions as the characters. For example, when the young boy Walt was wondering through the jungle alone to find his dog, Michael Giacchino builds up the score and it gets louder, building the intensity and creating suspense, mystery and paranoia. Passive audiences will be able to put themselves in the position of the characters, and allow themselves to feel the same emotions in which the character has. This is a common technical convention in many mainstream texts nowadays.

Another technical convention used, to suggest that the intended target audience is mainstream, is non-linear narrative. Within the first 5 minutes of the opening scene, its starts on the Island, however then jumps to flashback of the character Charly on the plane. This helps the audience learn a bit more about the characters background i.e. before they where on the island and gain a better understanding. Non-linear texts, never used to be a common technical convention, however more and more mainstream texts are beginning to use them in order to fill out time space of the programme.

Repeated use of enigma codes, thats suggests Lost's intended audience is mainstream. For example, the director uses a close up shop of pair of handcuff's. this helps to encourage an active audience would question who the handcuffs belong too? how did they get there? why are they there? These codes help to create social interactions and word of mouth, therefore helps to promote. Enigma codes are used to help create curiosity which helps to sustain such a wide audiences attention in order to find out the answer which can only be revealed by continuing to watch the series.

Fish Tank - analysis

NOTES:
smoking
mum dancing around
un-educated language
"lifes a bitch then you die"
diegetic sound - know the music is playing
typical clothing - trackies, chain, hoops
non-nuclear family
typical location
background noise - kids screaming
"bye ya skank"
turns head when looking out the back of the car, camera then cuts to her inter - see what she is seeing
natural lighting, light from windows lighting up the living room - untidy, messy
slow pace - the dancing scene last longer then it should last
when mia is leaving, saying goodbye to both her mum and inter, don't show emotion, harsh face typical masculine trait

How typical is your chosen text to its genre?

My chosen text Fish Tank is very typical to its genre, which is Social realism. Throughout the film, the director has used technical conventions, narrative themes, character roles, iconography and mise en scene, to help make it typical to its genre. Typical Social realism conventions are, the represent ion of real life difficulties and negative representation of the underclass. I watched a 4 minute clip, of which Mia is leaving home and she is saying bye, within this short clip i was able to identify many conventions typical to its genre of social realism.

A technical convention which is often used in social realist film, and is used throughout this clip is natural lighting. Within the living room, we can see that the only source of lighting is from the open window. This creates a more natural feel to the film, as we can see the source of lighting and know that it is real, therefore the environment and atmosphere feels more realistic. As an audience this allows us to empathise with Mia more, as we ale to relate more and sympathise.                                   Another technical convention is the simple camera cuts that the director choses to use. We see an example of this when Mia gets into the care to leave, we see the protagonists head turn to look out the back window, then the camera cuts and shows the audience what Mia is looking at, which is a shot of her little sister running waving goodbye. This enables us an audience to be put in the same perspective as Mia, and see life from her eyes. The director ables the audience to be placed in the shoes as the protagonists, and this helps create empathy and sympathise for Mia.

A common character role in Social realist films, is a non nuclear, often dysfunctional broken family. This is exactly what Mia, her mum and sister are. For example, when Mia is leaving and going to say bye to her mum, her mum turns around and says: "what you waiting for, fuck off then". This shows that there is no emotion, or trying to hide her true feelings towards her daughter leaving by being cold hearted and unloving. As an audience, we feel uncomfortable watching this, as it is showing how unloved and how hard life must be for Mia, and how her mother is so cold and laid back. Which is also a narrative convention of the representation of real life difficulties.

Noir Conventions in 'Drive'

In the film "drive" it also conveys typical Noir conventions, within the Characters, Narrative, Mise en scene and Technical codes.

In the first scene of of the 20 minute clip, we experience non-liner narrative. This is because they are all sitting around the dinner table, and suddenly it cuts to a flashback of the protagonist (Goslings character). This is a very typical convention, as Noir films are non-liner, and are not in chronological order of events.

The narrative theme of mistrust and paranoia is also a typical noir convention, which Drive also adheres to. For example, just after the robbery scene, and when they are in the hotel room mistrust and paranoia occurs. This is because, the protagonist Gosling, begins to question the red headed female on the events that had just happened. We begin to see backstabbing and corruption take place, and Goslings begins to believe that the women had set them up. This is then backed up, when two men enter the hotel room in order to kill Ryan Gosling, however because of the previous mistrust he was prepared. As well as narrative conventions, they also use many technical codes.

A typical technical code to noir films is the use of high contrast and low key lighting. The scene within the hotel room, before the two men intrude, high contrast lighting is used upon the protagonist face, however as soon as the men intrude and he kills the two men, low key lighting is used. It helps represent his bad side of his character.

The score is another noir technical code convention. The use of the dramatic, loud, low toned sounds, in the scene of the robbery builds tension and drama. It helps the audience guess the consequences before it happens, we get the feeling that something bad and dramatic is about to happen, because the music gives off a bad vibe.