Hello in this blog I will be going over the relationship between the producers and the audiences. In this I will be discussing the movie blockbuster Jaws from 1975. After that I will describe the relationship between the audiences and films and then of the film I'm choosing to study which is Star Wars Rogue One.
Jaws (1975)
"A giant great white shark arrives on the shores of a New England beach resort and wreaks havoc with bloody attacks on swimmers, until a local sheriff teams up with a marine biologist and an old seafarer to hunt the monster down." (IMDB 20th June 1975).
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Genre Adventure , Drama, Film
"This, of course, had been the reaction of millions of cinemagoers in the US, where Jaws had become a summer movie sensation. In his influential essay, The New Hollywood, film historian Thomas Schatz notes that Jaws “recalibrated the profit potential of the Hollywood hit and redefined its status as a marketable commodity and cultural phenomenon as well”. Significantly, it achieved this success at a time when “most calculated hits were released during the Christmas holidays”. Not so Jaws, which according to David Brown was “deliberately delayed until people were in the water off the summer beach resorts”. Indeed, one of the film’s most memorable tag-lines was “See it before you go swimming!”. Yet it wasn’t just the resorts where Jaws showed its box‑office teeth.
Despite the fact that the summer month had traditionally been slow for the cinemas (Why go to the movies when the sun is shining?), Spielberg's brilliantly constructed shocker struct a nerve with young audiences who natural environment was not the beach but the shopping mall." ( 31st May 2015)
By having this put on the summer time and with the Public relations make those adverts with Spielberg sayings which grossed 700,000$ advert revenue. It got so popular that new jaws ice cream flavours were introduced which included flavours such as Finnilla, Jawberry and finally Sharkalate. After becoming the number one film it grossed more than 100$ million dollars.
Which is now basically the godfather of Blockbusters.
Which brings me to the film I will be going through Star Wars Rogue One
Star Wars Rogue One
Directed: Gareth Edwards
Genre:Sci-Fi/Action
Synopsis:
Galen Erso lives on a farm with his wife and young daughter Jyn. Until Orson Krennic comes and takes him away for many years to become the empires lead engineer making him build the Death Star. Jyn joins forces with the rebels to get the key from her father to blow up the Death Star.
In doing so will keep the galaxy safe.
There have been prequels, sequels fan made films the lot this franchise is the biggest franchise in the world. It is loved and cherished by many and the movies themselves people have different opinions on them but they are widely received on a global scale. There were 6 movies in total the Prequels consisted of, I Star Wars the Phantom Menace, II Star Wars The Clone Wars, III Star Wars The Revenge Of The Sith which came out in 1999 to 2006. The Original trilogy came out in 1977 to 1983 starting with IV Star Wars A New Hope, V Star Wars The Empire Strikes Back, VI Star Wars Return Of The Jedi. The impact these movies had on the world were great and have kept going every generation because they are that good.
The Latest Sequel Rogue One has grossed an amazing 1.056$ Billion. The target audience is really anyone because everyone loves it but the initial Target audience is Teens to adults as the films is a PG-13 which means kids can watch it but with the supervision of an adult. Their Target audience would be Geeks, Nerds, Men, Women who love a sci-fi fantasy story. In terms of how well it did I will reference some excerpts from critic reviews.
As you can see these regarded critics have all in all good words to say about it. That and how much it grossed is another example of how well it did.
A personal example of how well it did would be, I went to a theater to see it for the Midnight release. There were 3 screenings for and all were booked out. The atmosphere was really good laughs at the funny bits and a good atmosphere of joy and fulfillment at the end. I myself quite enjoyed it as I also quite liked a the actors Donnie Yen and Mads Mikkelsen.
"Disney’s marketing timeline for Rogue One was very different from Force Awakens, and intentionally so. Initially, we saw the first trailer for Force Awakens more than a year in advance over Thanksgiving 2014. Partly, Disney did not want to confuse audiences in regards to Rogue One‘s connection to Force Awakens. It’s why they opted not to drop a trailer with Force Awakens and waited close to four months after that giant calmed down before they unveiled a Rogue One trailer on Good Morning America April 7. The launch drew 77M global views and was further bolstered by an in-theater trailer drop on Captain America: Civil War‘s opening weekend during the first frame of May.
Extensive synergy support across Disney, including ESPN SportsCenter takeover throughout December and unprecedented segment during College Football Games (Dec. 2-3) that featured fighter jets flyovers, Epcot’s Spaceship Earth at Orlando’s Disney World being turned into the Death Star (Dec. 5) with Mads Mikkelsen in attendance. This was live-streamed on Disney Parks blog and other Star Wars and Walt Disney Studios social channels. Major Rogue One promotional partners included Gillette, Duracell, Nissan, Verizon, General Mills, and Uber; digital partnerships included Google, Twitter, Facebook." (Anthony D'Alessandro DEC 19th 2016)
These are just two of the way this massive company had produced and advertised the movie across our televisions and the internet services you can see from the amount of views they had and programs they had the ads on it was bound to get out there and once 17+ million be see it all they have to do is spread it through conversation and its Star Wars so you automatically look it up because its that's good. Youtube is another big platform to advertise trailers as that's a primary resource were the youth today and adults go to watch film trailers..
Task 4 Understand the relationship between audiences and films.
Reception Theory is a way we can understand the relationship between audience and the films, Reception theory is broken up in Preferred/Negotiated and oppositional approaches to film studies.
Reception theory takes the viewer into context so you have to take into consideration contextual factors for example depending on our age, race, religion can determine how we see a film and how we pick up the underlying message the director is trying to get across to us through the movie itself.
"Reception Theories is when producers or directors constructs a text encoded with hidden message or meaning that the producers or directors want to convey across to the audience. If done correctly the audience will be able to pick up the meaning or message straight away, but the audience will need to be reminded of the message through out the film this could be done through character dialogue or actions within the film." (Dr RedPill July 2013).
Preferred Theory,
Is what the director would prefer to happen emotionally to the audience at a climax or sad part of a movie they have produced.
For example when I watched Hachi a Dogs Tail I realized there and then it was gonna be sad because Iv watched more than enough dog films to see where this was going. It was really a touching tale. His master dies at the end but the dog always goes back to the train station to wait on him coming back from work and sobbed at his grave it was quite emotional to see how the dog reacted and it was based on a true story so I cried because it was touching and that we don't truly understand how underappreciated dogs are.
The family with me cried aswell and that is what the Director wanted from that scene an emotional response which if you have a heart he would have gotten that response. But as we go into the other ones it can also be said that because when the dog festival in china if a Chinese person seen it or a person who hasn't had a dog before they may not feel the same impact than from someone who had a dog.
Negotiated Theory
"Negotiated is when the audience agrees, disagrees or questions a political speech or news broadcast due to previously held news, as many people in America question FOX news as it has been seen in the past as a biased news outlet who support the Republican party."(Dr RedPill July 2013).
In film media terms you could use The Interview as an example of this alot of people thought it was funny but a lot of other people thought it was really offensive and gave it bad reviews,
It was a controversial movie but it was to be taken as a joke even though some of the scenes were abit heavy handed. They make fun of the Supreme leader in North Korea therefore they banned the movie in their country and tried to have it banned worldwide it was quite a controversial film but in the end it was pretty funny nonetheless.
Oppositional Theory
Oppositional is when the audience recognizes the Dominant message but rejects it due to culture or political opinion(Dr RedPill July 2013).
For example the movie The Exorcist was banned in some countries due to its heavy and disturbing scenes. It was released in the 70s so people weren't ready for a movie such as this at the time. People fainted outright walked out and cursed the movie. This made the movie even more popular to the youth who liked it and gave it quite an impact to with sequels were made in the future of it. Also the same could be said for the move The Interview as the citizens of North Korea would not have been able to watch the movie and if they had they would have been executed.
Spectatorship
"The study of spectatorship is an attempt to understand why we choose to sit in the movie theater seat or on the living-room sofa captivated by a screen. What is it that makes the experience so pleasurable, desirable, meaningful-given that viewing subjects position themselves as filmic or televisual spectators voluntarily, in very large numbers, and with frequent repetition? What are the relationships between individual and filmic process: how are we linked to screen, narrative, character? Who exactly is the subject seated before the screen, involved in an activity which has been described as everything from passive absorption to active production of the text" (Toby Miller 2003)
in other words a passive spectator takes in the message whilst the active spectator takes in the meaning the director tries to get across but they go further and analyze to try and understand it differently
"In accounting for the process of how a spectator experiences a film, theorists drew on Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan's theories of early childhood development, suggesting that the process of watching a film recreates a similar dynamic between what Lacan called the imaginary and symbolic worlds. Because film language works so effectively to make the viewer feel as though he or she were enmeshed in its world, the spectator is able to relive the pleasurable state of being in the imaginary stage again" (2007 Thompson Learning)
Intertexuality.
"the interrelationship between texts, especially works of literature; the way that similar or related texts influence, reflect, or differ from eachother:
the intertextuality between two novels with the same setting."(1970 The Dictionary)
"The poet John Donne once wrote that "no man is an island," and for postmodernists, no text is an island. Postmodernism is all about the connections between texts, including the various ways in which one text references another (or many others). There are all kinds of techniques that authors can use in order to highlight these links, including pastiche, parody, quotes, and direct references, as well as subtler nods to other material. What these techniques have in common is that they're examples of intertextuality.
Julia Kristeva coined the term "intertextuality" in 1966, explaining that there are two relationships going on whenever we read a text: there's the relationship between us and the author (the horizontal axis) and between the text and other texts (the vertical axis). It's the vertical axis that gives us our definition of intertextuality; still, both axes emphasize that no text exists in a bubble and that we need to recognize how existing works shape current texts and readings." (2017 Schmoop).
if we look at the meaning from the words you can use The South Park movie as an example because they use the current worlds influences and put them into a movie for example you have Satan and Saddam in a relationship. When Satan is trying to plan his party you can see some controversial ghosts for example biggie smalls where they make fun by if you say his name in the mirror 3 times he will show up and "pop a cap in your ass" its controversial but they are reflected of what was reality and where Saddam is trying to use Satan to take over the world but gets quelled and sent back to hell. So you can definitely see that the real world has a big influence on anything related South Park but they twist it into a dark yet funny comedy. South park lives and feeds of the world whether they be famous people or controversial thing they take it and make it a show or movie.
Bibliography:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0073195/(IMDB 20th June 1975)
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/may/31/jaws-40-years-on-truly-great-lasting-classics-of-america-cinema (31st May 2015)
http://deadline.com/2016/12/rogue-one-star-wars-story-preview-box-office-social-media-1201871704/ (Anthony Dec 19th 2016)
https://mediafort.wordpress.com/2013/07/01/reception-theory/ (Dr Redpill July 2013)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1028532/ (IMDB Hachi 12th March 2010)
http://www.blackwellreference.com/public/tocnode?id=g9780631206453_chunk_g97806312064539 (Toby Miller 2003)
http://www.encyclopedia.com/arts/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/spectatorship-and-audiences (2007 Thompson Learning)
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/intertextuality (Dictionary 1970)
