Audience research

Audience research is important because it gives an understanding of the types of audiences and how the audience think, this is good for producers as they can target certain audiences to make the film successful as they can send across the right message to attract an audience.  If the producers didn't have the information from the research then they wouldn't understand the audience and may not be able to appeal to the audience to make them watch their film, which means the film wouldn't be successful. So Audience research is very important as it can be the difference on whether your film is successful or not.

Audiences are categorised so that the producers can target certain audiences, for example, children are most likely to watch animated films so the producers advertise animated films for children, this is categorising the audience. This is how audiences are categorised and producers do this because it allows them to target certain age groups such as mature adults, children etc in order to make their production a success.

Media theories are used to make a film successful, some of them theories are listed below:

Hypodermic Needle Effect
This theory suggests that audiences receive text from the media and the audiences experience, intelligence and opinion are irrelevant on the reception of the text as the audience will not challenge the information sent to them by the medias text. The theory suggests that the audience is manipulated by the creators of the media text and that our behaviour and thinking can easily be changed by the media makers. An example is that if a child watches a violent movie then they will be manipulated into being violent themselves.

Uses & Gratifications theory
This theory suggests that the audience has a set of needs that are met by the media. It suggests that the audience watch the films to get away from their own lives and that they place themselves within the film, this is so they can forget about all their problems and get away from them. It also suggests that different audiences interpret the media text differently depending on their own culture and way of living.

Reception theory
The reception theory suggests that people (the audience) base the film they are watching on their own lives, for example; when men go to watch a film and see men in the film with muscular bodies, they feel like they have to go and get a muscular body whilst comparing to their own, another example is when women see a film and the women have 'beautiful figures' and 'curves' then they compare the bodies they see on the film to their own, the theory suggests that the audience does not passively accept the text and they interpret the meaning of the text based on their own culture/life experience.

Bibliograhy:
http://www.slideshare.net/dphillips4363/reception-theory-presentation-833299
http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevkeyconcepts/alevelkeycon.php?pageID=audience