Uses and Gratifications for my Short Film

Uses and Gratifications theory  is an approach to understanding why and how people actively seek out specific media to satisfy specific needs. We all use media texts differently and choose what we want to watch and use. We expect to get something out of a media text, which is some kind of gratification.
There are 4 different types of gratification you can get from a media text:

• Information - we want to satisfy our audience e.g. fit in with the news and documentary film because it gives us a sense of learning.
• Personal Identity - we watch TV/films and identify the characters and help decide if they agree with their behaviour.
• Integration and social interaction: it helps emphasise and sympathise with a TV show through the characters.
• Entertainment - we use media for enjoyment, relaxation and fill spare time.

Reception Analysis is based on the idea that no text has one simple meaning, the audience create their own meanings of the text. Reception Analysts have found is that factors such as a gender, our place inside society and the context of the time we live in.

David Morley is the best known theorist to tackle this line of thinking. His 1980 study of audiences response to a BBC programme "Nationwide"  which analysed the different ways in the audience interpreted the media text. He said that audiences tend to fall into 3 groups:
(which is based on their different readings of the text.)

• Preferred/Dominant readings is the reading that you want your audience to get out your media short film.
• The preferred reading is the reading media producers hope will take from the text.
• Oppositional reading is the audience that understand and accept your short film and think its okay.
• Audience members from outside my target audience may reject the preferred reading.
• They can read the media short film in different ways and make up their own alternative message. 

Negotiated reading is the "third way" in which the audience recognizes the preferred reading, but modify it to suit their own values and opinions. David Morley's view  of dominant, negotiated and oppositional readings of texts and recognizes the importance of the analysis of signs e.g. visual signs and modern media output. 

I want to make a teen short film therefore I need to think about what uses and gratification I am going to use and what I want my readings from my target audience to be. I am going to make a short film about my sister 'Beth' and about her life, I am going to concentrate on how she stops becoming stressed. She will explains the ways she does this, introducing people through the film.


An example of a film with a female audience is "An officer and a Gentleman" (final scene), this film is a good film to show a typical females fantasy/dream of romance and love. It is a female gaze as woman want to be her and want to be with him. As this film is quite dated, woman use to be attracted to men in a uniform.

A good example a good dramatic opening scene is a film called 'Halloween' from 1978, it was successful as it releases tension, appeals to both genres and has a massive twist.

My film will appeal to the audience on a number of levels and I don't think it matters about having scopophila. I want people to relate and understand my main character therefore I want her it look like a normal teenager. I think my film will attract the teen age group especially females as it is about teenage girls at school. There will be a female gaze at the end as I want my audience to want to have friends like her and be her. My film will involve 'vicarious' as I want the audience to relate to the main role and live the film through her point of views.I want my audience to learn something from my film as I help through the film. The moral/message is very positive as it is helping the audience feel better. Asmy film is based around a normal person and their life, there will not be a storyline as its not telling you a story.