AUDIENCE THEORY #1 - Stuart Hall's Reception Theory

Stuart Hall developed three readings when talking about how meaning is encoded in a media text by the producers and decoded by an audience.

1. Preferred Reading
2. Negotiated Reading
3. Oppositional Reading

EXAMPLES:

In a scene from Repo Man, a character says the word: "Gringo"

I don't speak Spanish, but I do know that gringo is a Spanish slang (insult) term for Caucasians (due to a Mexican character using it in an audio series I listened to as a child). 

So while I can't follow the preferred reading like someone who can speak Spanish fluently, and might detect signifiers of regional identity, I still understand some of what is being said here. Someone who does not know this term or any Spanish at all will have an oppositional reading towards this line, where as I have a form of negotiated reading.

These two YouTubers show the two alternatives, different readings on the content, in this case verisimilitude of the text, on the other moral issues



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The Opening Shot - Shaun Of The Dead

Shaun Of The Dead

Edgar Wright, 2004

LEAD ACTORS: Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Kate Ashfield

GENRE: Zombie romantic comedy

PRODUCTION COMPANIES: WT2 (Working Title)

DISTRIBUTORS: Universal Pictures 
BBFC: 15             MPAA: R

BUDGET: $6.1m 

BOX OFFICE: $30m (worldwide)

REVIEWS, wiki:

Shaun of the Dead received critical acclaim. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 92%, based on 201 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Shaun of the Dead cleverly balances scares and witty satire, making for a bloody good zombie movie with loads of wit".^[14] On Metacritic, the film has a score of 76 out of 100, based on 34 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[15] Nev Pierce, reviewing the film for the BBC, called it a "side-splitting, head-smashing, gloriously gory horror comedy" that will "amuse casual viewers and delight genre fans."^[16] Peter Bradshaw gave it four stars out of five, saying it "boasts a script crammed with real gags" and is "pacily directed [and] nicely acted."^[17] The film was placed sixth in Empire's top one hundred British films list.^[18]

TRAILER:



International trailer, with the classic booming American narrator



Minus the Universal ident, the opening sequence

THE SHOT

TEXTUAL ANALYSIS 

There is no Working Title ident, only the Universal ident. There is an audio bridge transition between the ident and the opening Shot.

The camera zooms out. So already in the first Shot there is camera movement, the camera isn't static. 

The unsettling sound on the indents, and suddenly the soft, upbeat sound signifies the hybridity of the horror comedy. His serious look can also be seen as a juxtaposition with the positive music.

This character is signified as important, protagonist, we are meant to sympathy with him.

• Background is in shallow focus and he is deep focus
• Rule Of Thirds applied
• Looking at the camera
• Alienated, the "Other"

Alcohol and cigarettes, negative connotations, signifies his precarious situation throughout the film.

Regional Identity: UK stereotype, "Last orders"

I myself know how non-British people perceive this as a stereotype, my German father once joked how I should say "Last orders" when we soon going to leave a restaurant.

Narrative enigma, female protagonist the conflict of romance set up. Common trope of issues in relationships, one doesn't listen to one's partner, often a female complaint? 

REPRESENTATION

Countertypical representation of the male gender, confused, bewildered, not the strong macho male protagonist leading the story, not the typical Proppian hero?

DISTRIBUTION/AUDIENCE - Age Ratings

From the BBFC website:

The Motion Picture Association of America, from the MPAA website:

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Prelim1 - The Brief

Continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting or standing opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. This task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180-degree rule.

What is continuity editing?
Continuity editing is the process of editing footage so that the narrative flows naturally and doesn't appear disjointed to the audience. This can take away realism from the text.

Media language: Angles & shot types

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AS Media - Camera Shots & Angles from Richard Dannenberg

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Box Office, The Gant Rule, Big 6

*Between The Film Cycle and Working Title A Short History*

Box office revenue comes from cinema chains.

The 20 highest grossing films, nearly all A-List stars or intellectual property, linking in to an existing audience that can be marketed to.

Charles Gant, box office analyst writing for The Guardian, set up The Gant Rule. 

Big hit films (a film is considered to be a hit when it makes at least 3 times its budget at the box office) will make ten times as much in dollars in US cinemas than it will in stirling.

The Big Six take this into account, so they will want to market towards that audience. This has utter dominance over the content of the films, including representation of social groups and issues, and the originality of its narrative.

As my main case study to show how companies owned by the Big 6 stick to this narrow representation I will use Working Title, a subsidiary of Universal, owned by conglomerate NBC-Universal which in turn is owned by Comcast.

DISTRIBUTION - Studio Subsidiary Vs Indie

WHAT I ENDED UP APPLYING:

• I created a fictional record company, Cosmic Heat Records, making the origin of my film company just like the origin of Warp, and creating a fictional indepedent artist who was contracted that record having created the OST 

In order to understand how the my film would achieve distribution, I have to understand the consequences of being an independent film company in contrast to a studio-subsidiary.

I am going to focus on two main case studies, Warp and Working Title, both British, one an independent company formed out of Warp Records, an indie  record company; and the other starting out as an indie but in the 90s merged with PolyGram and is now owned by one of the Big Six, Universal Studios (which is owned by multimedia conglemerate NBC-Universal).

I will create a timeline for both companies, then summarize what implication this has for my film opening.