Audience Q1B

The project that I am focusing on is the trailer for the horror film, 'The Conjuring'. The film is rated a 15 thus it's target audience is mainly 15+ and young adults. This audience group only watch the film for some sort of adrenaline and thrill of getting scared. The trailer highlights Strauss's theory of binary opposites in this case, God vs. the Devil. 

Audiences are generally split up between active and passive viewers. Many theorists believe that audiences watch films for different purposes. For instance the effect/hypodermic model theory suggests that audiences are passive and hidden messages from films are injected into their minds which influences them mostly in a negative way.  This can be evident in the 'James Bulger' case where two little boys killed a child as they were 'influenced' by the horror film Child's Play. 

Another popular audience theory that links in with the effect/hypodermic model is the cultivation theory. George Gerbner who created it claims that, 'Persistent long term exposure to television content has minimal but measurable effects on the perpetual worlds of audience members'. To summarise this, he is trying to put forward that watching a film doesn't influence the audiences actions but their minds. 

In regards to 'The Conjuring' trailer, the desensitisation theory - which basically states that audiences are now immune to watching violent things - only applies to a minor extent as the trailer doesn't contain any violent footage. As an audience they are normally scared by the jump scares and boom non-diegetic sounds that randomly pop up rather than the quick cuts through victimising scenes. 

However 'The Conjuring' trailer does support the uses and gratification theory to a major extent as the trailer is played on YouTube which has a link that can be embedded into any social media sites. It also is a very popular box office film so personal integrative is used when people communicate to one another about how good the film is.