How does "The Longing" attract/ address our audience?

How does "The Longing" attract/ address our audience?

1. Within our narrative, Shannon is wearing quite fitted clothing which connotes how she may have to do this in order to gain male gratfication from the other male gang members and therefore, it could be argued that Shannon is in the male gaze, according to Mulvey's female representation theory. Thus, our primary audience in particular would want to understand/ question why Shannon has to recieve male gratification and subsequently our target audience feel inclined to watch our product.

2. Throughout the opening sequence, there are numerous shots of Laura with her head in her hands in the Police Station. As these shots track progressively in and invade Laura's space, this connotes the vulnerability of Laura and how much pressure she is experiencing. Simultaneously, this may reflect and connote the financial and social stresses that people of the working class or young people are under and consequently these audience memebers are able to gain social interaction and personal identity (according to Blumer and Katz's uses and gratifications.)

3. Again referring to the long shot of the gang in the park talking to each other, the mis- en- scene in the presence of a band stand (also used as a roofed sitting area) connotes the disequilibrium of the narrative and foreshadows how Laura will eventually resort to seeking refuge from the gang and hand herself in to the police. Consequently, our secondary audience will be able to relate to Laura's ordeal and therefore by watching the media product, they will be able to satisfy their need for scurity of morality and confidence (to do what's right) and our primary audience will satisfy their need for morality and problem solving, according to Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

4. Overall, I feel that the Longing attracts and addresses the audience quite well. However, there is always room for improvement. I think that we should have included more dialogue within the opening sequence so that we adhered more to the results of our pilot questionnaires and so that our characters could be developed more and make our audience(s) more intrigued to watch the rest of the film. From this, having more dialogue would have allowed us to provide a greater understanding into our character's relatrionships and also give a greater insight into our USPL (i.e. having a female protagonist and consequently attract more females to view our product.. However, I personally think that allowing the audience to actively think about the characters themselves rather than allowing the narrative explain it, will make our sophisticated audience members in particular more interested in our media product.

5. As the gang are often seen together, we again attract our secondary audience (i.e. teenagers) who will gain personal identity from this as they are able to relate to the ideology of the importance of community/ friendship.

   • Following the theme of personal identity, the inclusion of our rap/ chill- out music connotes not only the urban genre of the product, but also the effects of the drugs featured in the narrative, which is an example of a modern stereotype associated with the working class, that secondary audience members may gain from this,
     • Furthermore, the lyrics to the soundtrack delineate the narrative of the film and fundamentally challenge the dominant ideology and traditional stereotype that teenagers in the working/ underclass are moody/ bad and indicates that some people are peer- pressured and bullied into going against their morals. This consequently allows the need for morality in particular to be satisfied by our sophisticated audience members.
       • Moreover, the up- market setting for the shop that Laura steals from allows our primary sophisticated audience to gain their own personal identity.

6. As our main target audience for our media product are active and sophisticated, we can also apply David Morley's reception analysis, as this theory views audiences as being most active and independent and that they have complete independence over how they read a media product. For example, our primary audience (those in the A/B income bracket) would probably gain a negotiated reading from our product as they are sophisticated enough to recognise and understand the representations and challenging ideologies (and also what we as producers wanted to convey!) and then be able actively question, or adjust these representations to suit their moral compass/ their individual circumstances. However, our secondary audience (those in the E income bracket) would most likely gain either a dominant reading of our media product as they may not be sophisticated enough as viewers to actively challenge the representations in our opening sequence and therefore 'passively accept' the representations shown