AUDIENCE PROFILING

Psychographics is the study of personality, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles. Because this area of research focuses on interests, activities, and opinions, psychographic factors are also called IAO variables.
Psychographic studies of individuals or communities can be valuable in the fields of marketing, demographics, opinion research, futuring, and social research in general. They can be contrasted with demographic variables (such as age and gender), behavioral variables (such as usage rate or loyalty), and organizational demographics variables (sometimes called firmographic variables), such as industry, number of employees, and functional area.

Psychographics should not be confused with demographics, for example, historical generations may be defined both by demographics, such as the years in which a particular generation is born or even the fertility rates of that generation's parents, but also by psychographic variables like attitudes, personality formation, and cultural touchstones.

For example, the traditional approaches to defining the Baby Boom Generation or Generation X or Millennials have relied on both demographic variables (classifying individuals based on birth years) and psychographic variables (such as beliefs, attitudes, values and behaviors). When a relatively complete profile of a person or group's psychographic make-up is constructed, this is called a "psychographic profile".

Psychographic profiles are used in market segmentation as well as in advertising. Some categories of psychographic factors used in market segmentation include: activity, interest, opinion (AIOs) attitudes values behavior Psychographics can also be seen as an equivalent of the concept of "culture" when it is used for segmentation at a national level.

Audience profiling recap:

 

Audience Profiling Powerpoint

NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTION_TODOROV

Todorov's Narrative Stages

There are five stages:

1. Equilibrium – the setting is established, key character(s) are introduced and

the storyline has begun to be set up.

2. This is then followed by a disruption whereby an oppositional character(s)

appear and the story takes a particular direction

3. Then there is recognition of disruption, in that the lives of characters and

events are interwoven. Tension builds throughout this section, which is often

the longest.

4. An attempt to repair the disruption is at the highest point of tension within

the film after which there is a change in the dynamic.

5. Finally, there is a re-instatement of equilibrium where matters are sorted

out, problems are solved and questions are answered. The equilibrium can be

described as new as the story has been resolved but the events have

possibly changed people.

Propp's Character Functions

Character Profiles.  Discuss the Proppian and 'Stock' characters you can identify.
Propp concluded that all characters could be resolved into 7 broad character functions in the 100 tales he analyzed:

1. The villain — struggles against the hero.
2. The dispatcher — character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
3. The (magical) helper — helps the hero in their quest.
4. The princess or prize and her father — the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. The hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, thereby beating the villain.
5. The donor — prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.
6. The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
7. False hero — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess.

Barthes

Barthes is basically saying is that a text is like a tangled ball of threads which needs unravelling so we can separate out the colours. Once we start to unravel a text, we encounter a lot more potential meanings.

We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, and create one meaning for that text. We can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle, by pulling a different thread if you like, and create an entirely different meaning.

And so on. An infinite number of times. If you wanted to.

All you need to say, very basically, is that texts may be ´open´ (ie unravelled in a lot of different ways) or ´closed´ (there is only one obvious thread to pull on).

Barthes also sets out the theory of …

Enigma codes; a theory that suggests a text (whether that be television, film, a poster etc) portrays a mystery to draw an audience in, pose questions and, as such, become intrigued in the piece. For instance, a murder mystery will often not reveal the identity of the murderer until the end of the story, which 

poses the question "Who is the murderer?"

Action codes: what will happen next?

She falls over - will he catch her?

She has been caught - what will he do with her?

Like in CSI Miami when the bloke puts on his shades.

Audiences Recap

6.1.14 Objectives:

To recap on audience theory by discussing the keywords and terminology required to produce reports.
To finish first the two stages of reports prior to production commencement.

EFFECTS THEORY:

Describe the effects theory which has proved to be over simplified

Class:
One of the most common ways of identifying a target audience is the social-economic model. Even though this model, used by the NRS (National Readership Survey Ltd), has been used for a long time, it is still useful way of identifying an audience and deconstructing a text.

What are the categories?
______________________________________________________________
Stuart Hall deals with ‘Reception Theory’ study which determines how different audiences view the same text.
He found that the way audiences interpreted a text generally fell under one of the following:
What are the categories?
______________________________________________________________
Uses and Gratification Theory

This theory is the opposite of effects theory because it relies on the premise that audiences have free will and choose to consume certain things for different reasons. The theory was developed in the 1960s and was in expanded in 1974 by Blumer and Katz who suggested a series of possible reasons why audience members might consume a media text

________________________________________________________________
THE FOUR C’S (cross-cultural consumer characteristics):

This is one of the earliest, but still most popular, ways of profiling audiences. It profiles the audience in terms of wants and needs, not simply demographic.

 
What are the categories?

_________________________________________________________________________

Task: Continue to finalise your reports wjich should be submitted by the end of the week.
Any issues with this deadline see me please.





 

Texts - Visual and Technical Codes

The first question of the exam will always ask you to analyse the given text in terms of visual codes, technical codes, and either genre or narrative.

This includes codes of camerawork, Lighting, editing and sound for audio-visual media

and graphic design elements for print-based and interactive media

VISUAL CODES including:

• Clothing and physical appearance
• Facial expressions
• Colour uses
• Body language and gesture 
• Graphics
• Settings

TECHNICAL CODES including:

• Shots – range of shots and why they’re used – wide shots? Close ups? High/low angle shots?
• Any camera movement
• Editing – the way scenes change from one to the next
• The pace of the text – fast? slow? why?
• Lighting
• Mise en Scene – what’s in the shot.

AUDIO CODES including:

• Sound 
• Language used
• Foley
•  Diagetic and non diegetic
• Any ambient noise
• Voicover
• Music

Texts - Mode of Address

The AUDIENCE question, the second one, may ask you what the target audience is, maybe to suggest another audience for the text, and most importantly...

WHAT THE MODE OF ADDRESS OF THE TEXT IS.

Mode of Address is a very important media term. 
It simply means how the text speaks to the audience, and how it tries to involve them. 

It also involves how a text INFLUENCES an audience to respond to a text in a certain way.
This depends on the audiences:

Social and cultural/ethnic/class background.

Gender

Age

Experience

The construction of the audience WITHIN the text.

The way the audience is POSITIONED - The argument is that media texts are structured in ways that position audiences to adopt a particular perspective or point of view.

Texts need audiences in order to realise their potential for meaning. So a text does not have a single meaning but rather a range of possibilities which are defined by both the text and by its audiences. The meaning is not in the text, but in the reading.

The goal of most media messages is to persuade the audience to believe or do something. Hollywood movies use expensive special effects to make us believe that what we’re seeing is real. News stories use several techniques – such as direct quotation of identified sources – to make us believe that the story is accurate.

The media messages most concerned with persuading us are found in advertising, public relations and advocacy. Commercial advertising tries to persuade us to buy a product or service. Public relations (PR) "sells" us a positive image of a corporation, government or organization. Politicians and advocacy groups (groups that support a particular belief, point of view, policy, or action) try to persuade us to vote for or support them, using ads, speeches, newsletters, websites, and other means.

These "persuaders" use a variety of techniques to grab our attention, to establish credibility and trust, to stimulate desire for the product or policy, and to motivate us to act (buy, vote, give money, etc.)

We call these techniques the "language of persuasion.” They’re not new; Aristotle wrote about persuasion techniques more than 2000 years ago, and they’ve been used by speakers, writers, and media makers for even longer than that.

Learning the language of persuasion is an important media literacy skill. Once you know how media messages try to persuade you to believe or do something, you’ll be better able to make your own decisions.

Advertising is the easiest starting point: most ads are relatively simple in structure, easily available, and in their original format. Media literacy beginners are encouraged to learn the language of persuasion by examining ads. Keep in mind that many media messages, such as television commercials, use several techniques simultaneously. Others selectively employ one or two.

Political rhetoric – whether used by politicians, government officials, lobbyists, or activists - is more difficult to analyze, not only because it involves more emotional issues, but also because it is more likely to be seen in bits and fragments, often filtered or edited by others. Identifying the persuasion techniques in public discourse is important because the consequences of that discourse are so significant – war and peace, justice and injustice, freedom and oppression, and the future of our planet. Learning the language of persuasion can help us sort out complex emotional arguments, define the key issues, and make up our own minds about the problems facing us.

Dialogue Do's and Don'ts

When the screenplay has been written and the dialogue then added...then we are ready to shoot! 
A. Hitchcock.

Dialogue is one of the major blind alleys that new script writers run headlong into.
Before you add dialogue you should be sure you already have a few things in place:
Beginning/middle/end of the story.
Clearly defined needs/wants/problems of main characters.
Synopsis which can help you, the writer, maintain focus.

Characters need to be placed into a plot structure, you need to know what they will be reacting to or setting up before you can decide what they will be saying to each other.
Writers need to know the goals, problems and character objectives first.

Film is about action and visuals, dialogue is for the stage.
Know your story events and build your plot outline first, add dialogue last.

Less is more!

Read successful scripts, you'll notice that there is very rarely huge blocks of dialogue.
Usually there will be a line, followed by a line, all the way down the page.
The first thing to ask yourself about the dialogue you have written is
'Can I cut a word without losing any impact?'
'Can I cut a line without losing anything?'
'Can I cut the whole piece and give the same information using visuals?'
FILM IS A VISUAL MEDIUM.
Have a look at Tom and Jerry; no dialogue yet still very entertaining:






 Directness is usually best. If a character, Lisa, hasn't seen her boyfriend, Matt, for a while and she sees him in the street, here's what she shouldn't say:

LISA

Er, Hi Matt. Ah look, I was 

just wondering why you know, you haven't called me 

for a while and well,

I really miss you, and...

To the reader, the character seems weak and uninteresting because of the dialogue. Think about her motivation for the scene.

LISA

So, Matthew, where do I stand?

This is better, simple and direct, she is now in control and a much more believable character. The onus is now on Matt to provide a good answer.

Maybe this is even better?

Matt advances toward her with a big grin on his face, as he reaches her with his arms open wide, she...

Neatly sidesteps him and strides past, without a backward glance.

There are many variations once you have decided what type of character Lisa is, she could slap him, grab him and kiss him passionately, grab and kiss a passer-by passionately?

Positive action and decision making will endear your characters to the audience.

In the feature film, Citizen Kane, the characters Kane and Emily's marriage breakdown is conveyed by cutting most of the dialogue and simply showing their breakfast becoming more and more estranged each time, sitting further away from each other, body language, reading different newspapers.

Give your characters individual voices rather than your own.

MARKERS CULTURAL, TEMPORAL and GEOGRAPHICAL

Cultural Markers

A cultural marker may be considered something very specific that distinguishes one culture from another. It is an identifying item and may include something physical, a practice or tradition, concept, a specific person, happening or landmark. Sometimes people are considered cultural markers as well as unique types of food.

Geographical Markers

Let the audience know specifically where the setting is. Eiffel Tower, London Eye, Brooklyn Bridge, London taxi, yellow cab, paddy fields.

Temporal Markers

Let the audience know when the text is set. Mini cars and mini skirts say sixties London.
Films like Austin Powers use these a lot to show traveling through time.

Task 1:

Watch this clip and identify the cultural, geographical and temporal markers.