Within the three main texts they present to us a variety of
conventions and representations which appeal to their targeted audiences in a
number of different ways. The two main types of audiences are the mainstream market
that aims to please a larger audience and the niche, targeting a minute scale
that will only appeal to a selected amount.
The first text I’ll be looking at is a series called Mad Men.
This series was made to target a selective type of audience; they do this by not
conforming to things that the audience expect to view such as non-diegetic sound
in a tense scene. Mad Men shows accurate representations of an office life with
well thought about mise en scene, the audience have to be active and be able to
recognise Stuart hall’s decoding theory to appreciate the text, whether they do
this consciously/sub. In the scene where
the company try and win Jaguar they do use a 20 second clip of non-diegetic
music to create a sense of atmosphere and introduce this feel of slight hyper reality
to the narrative which allows the audience to be gratified by this familiarity of
a ‘mainstream’ influence. Some people would react passively to the fact that
they’d included the use of non-dietetics taking the negotiated/oppositional
reading.
In the second text set in Birmingham, Peaky Blinders. This text
was screened on BBC2 and set in the early 1900’s. Due to it’s popular channel
screening this series seems like it would be in the mainstream market but the
fact that it’s set in the 1900’s could only appeal to a certain type of
audience making it part niche. The scene I am going to look at is where Thomas
finds out his sister is pregnant with his ex-best friend’s child. A lot more
goes on in this episode to show that this series has a lot of information attached
to it that the audience sticking to the series would be following and
understanding. The character names are made clear in this episode, purposely
done by the production to encourage people to feel involved if they haven’t
seen the programme before. The use of well-known actors also allows the
audience to take the preferred reading by using favoured character roles; this
would encourage a wider audience to view the text from the use of familiarity.
Leading on from actors the use of film connotations and mise en scene is highly
encoded within the text, the use of slow motion, lighting techniques and
explored vantage points shows the high budget for the film therefore better
quality of production, this would appeal to the mainstream target audience due
to the film stylistics, or an audience may take a negotiated reading due to the
place in which the text is set, the mixed class of people and dull environments
could influence a turn off.
The final text I’m looking at is Lost, manufactured by a big
media company called ABC. Lost is set in the present day, which straight the
way an audience would take a preferred reading to, relating and gaining
familiarity with the ethnicity and origins currently populating our culture.
This text was set out to be a mainstream target, a number of producers, JJ abram
being one of them. Jj was influenced by Star Wars, a film that targeted a mass
audience due to its unique hyper reality quality and use of character mixed
character roles from Prop’s theory relating age/genders. Going back to Lost, Jj
wrote the main structure of the series with a group of others allowing there to
be more ideas of what people wanted in the text. A fan base called Lostipedia
was also set up by fans that told the scripters what they wanted to appear in
the forthcoming series. The fact that Lost was such a big production and was purely
a money making, mainstream targeted scheme wouldn’t appeal to some audiences
and they would take the oppositional reading due to the undeveloped ideas and
lack of unique qualities, “Everything’s a version of something else”. Looking
at the second episode of Pilot, the use of long close up shots are excessive.
One shot was 30 seconds long showing a close up of Charlie’s face, creating
tension alongside the also excessive use of non-diegetics. This could appeal to
the audience by creating a realistic sense of drama. The use of rigid handheld
camera work, fast tracking shots and vantage points would widely appeal to the
mainstream audience, using realistic connotations and exaggerated which could
capture a wider audience appeal. With the text a wide range of ethnicities/ages
and genders are used to gratify the specific audience types which allow more
people to relate to their aspired character role.
