Audience theories Evaluation

Our movie 'Betrayal' conforms to many stereotypes but also subverts them. Our main characters are a group of girls who come across as very normal and ordinary but end up being victims to a group of psycho's. This. This makes the girl seem vulnerable, therefore conforming to the damsel in distress stereotype. The location conforms to the horror conventions of a creepy, dark woods. One of the main things that subverts the conventions are the way the antagonists act, you can tell they are young because they're not properly kitted out and they come across as not very well prepared, however we think this is a good thing because its a realistic representation of teenagers and young adults.
These conventions all have an effect on the audience in different way and this paragraph I will explain this.
The Uses and Gratification Theory which was first introduce in the 1970's by Blumer and Katz presents a model explaining why people watch media products especially films. The reasons are as followed: to be informed, to identify with a character, to be entertained, for social interaction and escapism. Because I film is in the Horror genre, not all the reasons are linked to our trailer. The main reason why we think people watch our trailer/film is to be entertained, the mix of ease and horror makes the film easy to watch and therefore makes it entertaining. We think our film is suitable for an audience of 15+ but our most likely audience will be 15-25 year old. Having it not as scary as some films means that we are able to reach a wider audience but also means that an audience that wouldn't usually watch a horror film may feel less frightened or nervous to watch it. Having teenagers as the main characters but also as our  main audience means that they are able to empathize with the characters more and therefore enjoy the film more. This also links to the reason to 'identify with characters' the main characters are a group of ordinary girls who decide to go on a camping trip, it a realistic and simple idea which any of our audience could of done, this means that our audience can feel closer to the characters because their similar to them. Like I said earlier the antagonists are clearly also teenagers and not well prepared which means that even the audience in some way can relate to the antagonists, which is very unlikely to see. Some may watch the film for 'escapism', although the film is scary and not a very pleasant story line people may watch the film to escape from their everyday troubles. Its a good form of escapism because if you feel 'down' then at least you can watch something that's very likely to be worse than your problem and it will put your life into perspective, 'at least I'm not a murderer or being killed'. The last reason would be for 'social interaction', by watching our trailer/film you can create conversation between your peers and debate over the characters and story-line.

The Hyper-dermic Syringe was first introduced by Packard, he suggested that the media injects their message straight into the passive audiences. This suggests that the media have control over how people take in information. In the case of our trailer/film the main storyline shows a group of normal teenaged girls go on a camping trip which leads to them becoming victims of murders. The audience will respond to this negatively which could lead to them having a negative perspective of society. From being scared to go into the woods because they think they could be killed or even not trusting their friends. This could have a negative or positive effect on the horror genre. Some people may not watch anything from the genre again because it becomes too real or some may find it even more interesting and intriguing. One of the main effects of this theory on our trailer/film is that the media and society could create a negative stereo type of teenagers ,from the antagonist characters, which could make out that all teenagers are like this when in fact a huge majority are not criminals. this could link to Claude Steeles Stereo Type Threat Theory is the idea of people trying to dodge the negative stereotypes represented by the media. For example in our trailer/film we represents the antagonists (teenagers) as a group of hoodies which could create a negative stereotype about people who wear hoodies. 
The Male Gaze was introduced by Laura Mulvey who argued that in films the audience view the film from a hetrosexual male point of view, which objectifies women theory isn't very relevant to our trailer/film because the girls in our film aren't supposed to come across as sex objects. However they are supposed to seem vulnerable and weak when the main storyline starts.