Audience Essay

Audience Essay

The theory of uses and gratifications, as conceived by Katz and Blumler during the early ‘70s, can be applied to the theatrical trailer for our film Eraze. The theory, which states that audiences consume different media for one of five reason which are; To be informed, To identify with characters, To be entertained, for social interaction and to excape mundane day to day activities.

The reason that is the highest would be Escapism and Entertainment. The fiction side of the zombie world with radical events would be the key aspect to draw in audiences that wish to escape mundane lives. the entertainment aspect would be fulfilled with the action scees and comedic lines that cause the audience to feel for the characters and the situations they are in.

 

Due to the fact that  this is a fictional film the other aspects of the gratification theory would not apply for example there is nothing to education or inform the audience. the aspect for social interaction could apply though because its only a trailer that would not really apply finally to be able to identify with characters there needs to be character emotion shown and that is minimal in this trailer.

 

Another audience perception theory that could be applied to our film is that of the male gaze theory. The main love interest of our protagonist is good looking in order to cause the audience to see her in a male perspective. This theory if applied to a film will objectify women and in our case is was one that is weak and need a man to help survive through life. This is not a reflection on the mindset that me and Matthew have but more of a interesting objection for our film. The plot never explores her story in much detail, so she is left as a two-dimensional character. The film as a whole appeals to a male audience, as it is high in action and thrills, features that a stereotypicaly male audience would enjoy.

Evaulation Activity #1 - Narrative

The narrative shown within the trailer allows the audience to see the films narrative. The initial group of Matt's die then he is left alone until he runs into the next group. This is how we explore the human attitude towards the lost of loved ones and the isolation. The trailer i believe was a success to be able to show the narrative using flash backs and flash forwards. Although i wish their was the ability to work with a mixed variety of ages.

Evaulation Activity #1 - Characters

The 6 screenshots above show all of the characters within the trailer. The trailer successfully showed the character relationships whilst not showing to much of the narrative. The costumes shown are not the conventional clothes seen in post apocalyptic films but this is due to the fact that we wanted the film to look as much as the characters only have clothes as their worldly possessions. Matt's character has a change of clothes due to he is the only one that lasts in the survival. again showing the difference between Matt's skills at surviving whilst the others don't have the the same willingness to do what it takes. The dark clothes of the majority of the character not only indicate the dirt of the world but the darkside of human nature appearing within the movie.

Magazine

Eraze - trailer

The trailer that we have in this post is still needing some adr befor ewe can have it at a place that we believe it is finished.

Issues Causing Headaches

Issues with the editing of Eraze

We have had a couple of major issues with the editing of Eraze. a majority of these have been because of the editing program we used Final Cut Pro X. Although it is a good program used in the editing of the Transformers films we have found that it is riddled with bugs. The program has crashed continuosly losing all the edited work we have done. This meant we had to re edit all clips we used. The letterbox function has played havoc working in some parts of the trailer and not in the other. 

The main issue we have had with Final Cut is the ability to export. WHen using programs such as Adobe Premier Pro the ability to export the project is made extremely simple however with Final cut the program has a very complicated order in which even though it says you have the options to export straight from the program it does not work dude to the fact that all rendering of the project is removed causing jolts in the video file. After researching i found that the only way that we could export Eraze would be to buy a program called Compressor this is an expensive issue costing £50 to be able to expt the trailer form Final Cut. Finally after exporting the file through Compressor we then had to re encode the file to a readable format for youtube using a program called Handbrake. This time consuming issue has caused many headaches and not allowed us to be able to test the trailer with select audiences to see what we can improve.

Eraze poster