Uses and Gratifications model

Blumler and Katz 1974
The 'Uses and Gratifications' model represented a change in thinking, as researchers began to describe the effects of the media from the point of view of audiences. The model looks at the motives of the people who use the media, asking why they watch the television programmes that they do, why they bother to read newspapers and magazines, and also why they find themselves so compelled to keep up to date with their favourite TV shows, and soap operas.
Blumler and Katz argued that the audience needs have social and psychological origins, which generate certain expectations about and within the mass media, leading to differential patterns of media exposure. This resulted in both the gratification of needs and in other (often unintended) consequences. This does assume an active audience making motivated choices.

Explaining the model
The idea behind the model is that people are motivated by a desire to fulfill, or gratify certain needs. So rather than asking how the media uses us, the model asks we use the media. The nmodel is broken down into four different needs:

• Surveillance
• Personal Identity
• Personal Relationships
• Diversion

Surveillance
The surveillance need is based around the idea that people will feel better having the familiar feelings that they know, and what is going on in the world around them. The surveillance model is all about awareness. We use the mass media to be more aware of the world, gratifying a desire for knowledge and security. We can associate to the dominant messages of conforming via the dominant ideologies given in media texts such as music videos.

Example: Blink 182 - All The Small Things



Blink 182 are a band that have been around for longer than a decade, and are still creating iconic and popular indie/punk music. Yet their most famous song, is All The Small Things. Even people who aren't fans of the band, always know this one song. The music video tot he song is also iconic, and an insult to those boy bands of a mainstream genre. In the music video, Blink 182 take the 'mick' out of several boyfriends who were around at the time. To do this, the band dressed up in ridiculous outfits, such as combat whilst dancing with other women. Another iconic scene being when one of the band members is being windswept by a fan, pulling faces at the camera. In which the video when zooms out to show the band member sitting on the toilet, grabbing hold of some toilet roll. The video became instantly famous, and also an outrage for some as it insulted those of a mainstream genre - as well as this, it also discussed topics around at the time within the music industry.

Personal Identity
The personal identity need explains how being a subject of the media allows us to re-affirm the identity and positioning of ourselves within the society. The use of the media for forming personal identity can be seen in music videos and also films. Pop stars can often become big role models, inspiring young children everywhere. This is also why there is such an outcry when one of them does something wrong. An example of this being the time when Justin Bieber was photographed smoking drugs, and his fans became heart broken and began self harming. This became a trending phase upon twitter, which then lead to more and more fans doing the exact same thing.

Personal Relationships
This section comes in two parts: Relationships with the Media, and Using the Media Within Relationships.
We can form a relationship with the media, and also use the media to form a relationship with others. Many people use the television as a form of companionship. This may seem sad, but think about how many times you've watched the TV on your own, or with the other people (family or friends) in silence. The television is often quite an intimate experience, and by watching the same people on a regular basis we can often feel very close to them, as if we even know them. When presenters or characters in a soap die, those who have watched that person a lot in a TV show, often grieve and become emotional when the character is gone, it almost feels as though they've lost a friend.

Pink
An example of growing with a character or artist, is the artist Pink. A lot of people were listening to her music when she first started off with early songs such as Family Portrait. Which was a video about the stories of her life, from when she was a little girl up until this song was released.

Since then, Pink has released more music videos, yet all of them have meaning to either her life, or at least the narrative/meaning within the lyrics. This allowing an audience to grow, as she does, as well as letting the audience in on her personal life, and what she has been through.

The more we watch the same personalities, the more we feel we get to know them. Reality TV shows such as Big Brother, or I'm a Celebrity give us such a feeling of intimacy with the participants that they can become a part of our lives. Even though the relationship is completely one-sided, it's easy to see how we can fall in love with TV personalities.

Using the Media Within Relationships
Another aspect to the personal relationships model is how we can sometimes use the media as a board to form and build upon relationships with real people. Having a favourite TV programme in common can often start a conversation, and can even make talking to strangers much easier. Some studies suggest that some families use sitting around watching the television as a stimulant for conversation, talking to each other about the programme, the characters, or related anecdotes whilst it is on.

Diversion
The diversion need describes what's commonly termed as escapism - watching the television so we can forget about our own lives and problems for a while and think about something else instead. We watch music videos to take our mind off our every day lives, we want to distract ourselves from the problems we are experiencing. We want to see that people experience the same feelings as we do, and want to forget about our own problems and focus on someone else's. 

Criticisms
The researcher Ian Ang also criticized Uses and Gratifications approach in three aspects:

• It is highly individualistic, taking into account only the individual psychological gratification derived from media use. The social context of the media use tends to be ignored. This overlooks the fact that some media use may have nothing to do with the pursuit of gratification - it may be forced upon the audience for example.
• There is relatively little attention paid to media content, researchers attending to why people use the media, but less to what meanings they actually get out of their media use.
• The approach starts from the view that the media are always functional to people, and may thus implicitly offer a justification for the way the media are currently organized. 

Audience types

There are numerous factors that effect whether we take the dominant, oppositional or negotiated reading. These factors are:

• Life experience
• Mood at the time of viewing
• Age
• Culture
• Beliefs
• Gender
• Sexuality

Reception Theory -

This theory is an active audience theory, which means the audience is seen as being actively engaged in the media, and in the interpretation of media texts, rather than as passive consumers. Individuals receive and interpret texts in different ways, depending on their age, race, etc.
This theory demonstrates that even though one message is sent out, not just one understanding is made from the text, many meanings can be interpreted from one message. This sometimes making it offensive to some, and not to others. This theory also allows for a media text to be consumed individually and takes in to consideration the meaning of a text, and the relationship an individual may understand from this in relation to sociological factors.

The creator of this theory is Stewart Hall, the theory was created in 1980. The study of semiotics: Encoding - Decoding.
This theory says that the media texts are encoded by the producer (the people who make the media texts) and that these texts are full of ideological values.
The text is then interpreted and decoded by an audience, but not all audiences will decode and respond to the text in the same way. In some cases not how the producer intended on the message being portrayed.

Lady Gaga:

An example of this being Lady Gaga's outfits, which she has worn to several different award ceremonies. One of the most memorable being her meat dress. This dress was made entirely from raw meat, including the shoes being coated in raw meat. This caused an uproar amongst some audiences, yet others seemed to find it amusing and stylish. The encoder (producer) wanted to provoke an understanding with this dress, and an opinion on a subject matter. Whereas the messages decoded by the audience resulted in several different opinions. As an example of the opinions, a lot of Lady Gaga's fans thought she was a fashion genius, and also extremely brave to wear such an unusual outfit. People who are vegetarian or even vegan caused an uproar in several occasions and on twitter sites, as it degrades animals, as they also state the animals died for her fashion crisis'.

How encoding and decoding works:When a producer creates a text it is encoded with a meaning or message that they want to convey to a mass audience. This is called the preferred reading. This theory will sometimes be correctly decoded and the audience will understand what the producer wants them to, however sometimes the producer can encode a message that is not correctly understood by an audience. This meaning the message then becomes un-effective and useless, often meaning it is taking out of the public's view, and also the media scene.

Audience types:Steward Hall identified three different types of audience readings, or decodings of the text. Those three readings were:

• Dominant or preferred - how the producer wants the audience to view the media text and agree with the message it is conveying on a dominant scale.
• Negotiated - a compromise between the dominant and the oppositional readings, the audience who negotiate are on equal terms, this is where the audience understand and agree with parts of the producers encoded messages. But they also disagree with others, as they have areas that they have their own views and opinions on.
• Oppositional - this is when the audience rejects the preferred readings and create their own meanings for the text, they then reject any of the message as they fully disagree with the encoded message being submitted to the audience.

Audience Theories

• Reception Theory - Steward Hall 1980
• Uses and gratifications model
• Selective filter model
• Two step flow model
• Audience reading theory
• Moral panics and folk devils mass response

Existing mise-en-scene

The above images are screen shots from YouTube, of music videos which exist in similar genres to the song that I have chosen to create a music video for. In this case the bands that I have used are Avenged Sevenfold - So Far Away (first two images), Billy Talent - Viking Death March (third image), Fall Out Boy - Dance, Dance (fourth image), Fall Out Boy - The Take Over, The Breaks Over (fifth image), Panic At The Disco - Mona Lisa (sixth image), A Day To Remember - I'm Made of Wax Larry, What Are You Made Of? (last three images). I have used these as an idea for mise-en-scene when it comes to creating my own music video, not only that but it also explains how the mise-en-scene can relate back to the lyric meaning, and theme of the video in general. It also varies with each genre, and it can also break the generic conventions of a genre. The Panic At The Disco screen shot is an example of the mise-en-scene matching the genre of the song, as the staircase is somewhat aged, yet different compared to average decor, and also the colours used within the wall. Which matches the mystical style of Panic At The Disco's music genre. Whereas the images which belong to the A Day To Remember video feature bright colours within the mise-en-scene and also sport outfits - whereas the song features some lyrics which are screamed, and it also features heavy guitar riffs. This meaning that the mise-en-scene breaks the common conventions of the genre in which A Day To Remember belong too.

Health and Safety

This grid is to help with the health and safety risks when it comes to filming my music video. With this, I can analyse the dangers which may be put into action at the scenes of where I am filming. With this grid, I can now see the dangers and sort them out before the cast or myself get seriously hurt, as well as this, I can also put objects in their rightful places out of danger. This helping to prevent any cause of danger happening upon the set, and also when filming.

How to define a target audience -

• Demographics (social class, economic power)
• Gender
• Age
• Education
• Research into sub cultures (social and cultural consumption)
• YouTube, MTV, Rock pack, smart phone/tablet
• Do they play games? How do they play them (xbox, playstation, smartphone, pc)
• Do they buy CD's? Vinyl? Download?
• Do they watch films? DVD's? Netflix? LoveFilm? Download?
• Do they go clubbing? Watch football? Shop online or in shops etc.
• Geographic location
• Do they drink? What do they drink?
• Do they have healthy lifestyles? Unhealthy lifestyles?

This list of items which define a target audience will help when it comes to appealing to the age group, and types of people which I want to with the use of the music video and digipak. Giving the audience what they want, and how they want it will be a large part of making the music video and album covers (etc) become popular, and also available to a large amount of audiences, instead of the odd few that stroll across the video on youtube/google.