Audience and Genre: International

Audience and Genre 

International

Which of the audience’s Uses and Gratifications does you trailer appeal to? How have you constructed this?

Bulmier and Katz suggests that media usage provides audience social and psychological satisfaction of the needs to be informed, identify with characters, entertained, socially interact with others. Our trailer is constructed to allow the audience to gain excitement through the fast editing which boosts their adrenaline so they can escape reality. The female audience can identify and immerse themselves as the main protagonist of our trailer, forgetting the predictability of their lives through the fight scenes and the car chases. Our trailer includes an enigma code to appeal to a wider audience, getting the audience interact and discuss about what feature suits their needs.

How have you appealed to the Male Gaze in your trailer?

Although our action trailer isn’t from a heterosexual perspective, our ideas conform to the Male Gaze theory since our protagonist is a female therefore attracting the male audience. Mulvey suggests that media text is created to appeal to majority of males hence our trailer links to this theory since our film involves a female protagonist with dominant characteristics, engaging the male audience. However it can be argued that due to the film being based on the female’s perception our trailer subverts the male gaze theory as the male audience may feel a lack of connection to the protagonist.

What genre is the trailer and how have you conveyed this to your audience?

Our trailer is an action genre; it involves elements that are common in action films so we directed the film to suit a certain type of audiences. This suggests that the audience make their own viewing choices and discrimination by having a genre preference. Our trailer genre also involves spy/thriller theme so it is a hybrid genre so it interests a wider range of audience. Barry Keith Grant implies that genre movies are commercial films that repeat familiar stories with variation to appeal to the target audience. In our trailer we follow the codes and convention of the action genre so they audience know what to expect whilst watching the film e.g. protagonist vs antagonist, guns, violence etc.

How does this mise en scene support the genre? What is the role of the specific elements of the mise en scene?
During the planning of out action trailer we decided to film in various well known locations e.g. London, New York and Washington so it looked like a high budget film. We have conformed to the genre since majority of the action films are based in areas the audience areas that seems similar thus they can experience escapism.
The costume conforms to the stereotypical spy agent as our protagonist is dressed in black that gives off a mysterious aura since we don’t want to reveal much about the main character to the audience.
We used conventional props e.g. cars, guns etc. to represent realistic scenes so the expectation of an action film is conformed in terms of familiar situations the characters are in.

Have generic conventions been adhered to or subverted? How/Why?
Normally action genre film are for the male protagonists point of view to allow the male target audience to relate themselves the characteristics. Our trailer subverts that convention since our main lead is a strong and dominant female who seeks revenge. Usually females are the damsel in distress that needs saving from a masculine male but we subvert this stereotype as out main protagonist takes the matters in her own hand without a dominant male figure.
Considering the main conventions we have adhered to it in our trailer by including various codes e.g. famous area to make our production seem higher.

What makes your production different from others of the same genre? Why is this important?
The unique selling point of our trailer is we have differentiated the storyline by involving both present and the past. Compared to other hybrid action genre, our trailer seems to make the audience immerse themselves therefore making it appealing to the audience. The main focus of our trailer is the characters involved, it makes the audience question the background of the protagonist and the motive to her mission which entices the viewers. The car chase scenes were particularly difficult to film however since it's a convention of an action genre we had it included due to the importance.