Attracting Audiences and Theories

Film openings use certain techniques to attract the audience attention, what they will do in a film opening is introduce the character and generally where the story is going but they will mostly try to make the audience ask questions and be inquisitive on what is happening. Films will always have a specific target audience in mind while making a film, mainstream films will usually aim for more than one target audience because they want to make profits by approaching a mass audience. Whereas independent only usually have one niche audience.

Audience in engagement is how the audience feel they are involved to the piece. With generic conventions being used the audience have some forknowledge and expectations towards the genre, forknowledge  is everything the audience may know from trailers or general information on the film such as actors where as expectations is what the audience will expect from the genre the film is, such as violence in an action and such. Mainstream films will use techniques like audience placement to make them feel as if the film was made for them and audience identification is also the way in which the audience feel connected to the piece. These are all techniques that I must consider if I decide to be an mainstream company.


In the Spiderman 2 opening we see these come into place, as we see the comic book feel and look to it, so it attracts the target audience of comic book and fantasy lovers. It introduces the characters and big actors ticking the boxes of audience forknowledge and expectations straight which is good for this mainstream film. It uses this special effects here for it to be appealing to a mass audience.

The BBFC distinguishes audience by a demographic group of by your job. The groups are:

A- lawyers, directors, doctors
B- teachers, artists, managers
C1- Office Supervisors, actors, floor manager
C2- Builders, receptionists
D- Part time workers
E- Unemployed

The Hypodermic Theory

This theory was developed in the 1900s after watching propoganda in WWI and WWII. The theory suggests that mass media is passed onto a mass audience, it requires the audience to be a passive audience so they consume the media, hence why it is called hypodermic needle theory because it suggests that you inject a mass audience with information passively. These passive audiences tend to enjoy the big mainstream blockbusters rather than niche films.

The audience then reflect these emotions or acts into real life, although now there is more of a active audience as film has become bigger so people enjoy decoding films this is known as the reception theory.

The Reception Theory

This theory suggests that audiences take in what is being said and look deeper into the film, almost decoding the film, as film has become majorly part of our lives, the recpetion theory is more common because people enjoy decoding films and making their own assumptions of things rather than consuming the film, these people are known as an active audience.

Active audiences are people that watch films for more than just the film, they like to make assumptions on why a director has done something in a certain scene and tend to decode storylines. These people also tend to enjoy more niche films as well as mainstream.