List of Props

We made a list of props that we would need to bring for our shoot day. By doing this, it helped us to put into words the materialistic things which would help to keep up the image of each character and the scenes we are hoping to propose.

Commissioning Music Videos

Although the music business changes with alarming speed, one thing remains constant: The record label's responsibility isto its artist's music production and to the marketing and sales of the music. Each label seeks out recording artists they feel will appeal to a wide audience, which, in return, will allow the label to sell a lot of music. The label then negotiates a recording contract with the particular artist. The contract outlines the artist's responsbilities to the record company as well as the company's responsibility to the artist, such as royalties. The label specializes in helping their artists develop the highest possible sales potential through marketing the artists and their music via the Internet, radio play, and television video networks and shows, and then selling their music through a vast array of audio and visual distribution outlets, such as Internet and iTunes and ring tones.

The record label-artist relationship is co-dependant. The reason an artist signs with a record label is three-fold:

1 - Firstly, the label advances the artist money to pay for recording their music, aswell as for album artwork and marketing campaigns such as videos and commercials. It may also go towards basic living expenses. It has become increasingly prevalent for the label to negotiate deals that involve merchandising.

2 - Secondly, an artist will sign to label due to their vast array of contacts in the music industry, as well as their know how in the business arena. Labels develop and market artists and act as a mentor.

3 - Thirdly, the label's prestige is an important factor. Record companies are reliant on artists putting out their albums and artists rely on them too. Labels exist only to promote the artists vision as long as that vision conforms to the label's goal of achieving financial gain through music sales.

Record Company's Role in the Video Project

Although creating music videos is a team process, each record company operates differently. While every department within a label has a specific role in the process of creating the music, certain departments are more involved in the video process than others. Every record company has an Artist & Repertoire department where its executives seek out new talent and sign them to a contract to record exclusively for their label. In return, the artist receives the guidance and financial backing of the A&R team, in addition to sharing in the profits the artist makes for the label. Some of this allows the artist to write, produce and record their music. Some A&R people get involved in the video process and some do not; it depends on the persons, the relationships and the label.

Theories on Representation

Other media texts as well as music videos offer excellent material for analysing the processes of representation of gender, sexuality, race, nationality, culture and place and of messages and values relating to aspects of personal and political life, for example attitudes to war.



Voyeurism:



This idea comes from the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud which originally refers to the notion that erotic pleasure may be gained by looking at a sexual object. While watching a film, we are all voyeurs, it is argued, but film presents us with variety of pleasures and not necessarily all of them sexual.

Laura Mulvey (1975) suggested that because the filmmakers are predominantly male, the presence of women in film is often solely for the purposes of display. The purpose of this display is to facilitate a voyeuristic response in spectators which is mostly known as the ‘male gaze’, some may consider this to be quite a controlling gaze at the female on display who is passive and objectified.

This has been used in Duran Duran’s work. Goodwin argues that the female performer is frequently objectified in this fashion, often through a combination of camerawork and editing with fragmented body shots emphasising a sexualised treatment of the star. In male performance videos too, the voyeuristic treatment of the female body is often apparent, with the use of dancers as adornments to the male star ego.

The idea becomes more complex when we see the male body on display – the post-feminist ‘female gaze’ where women are no longer just objects of the look, but exercise some power by looking at men as sex objects too.

The idea of voyeurism is also frequently evident in music video through a system of screens within screens – characters shown watching performances of others on television via webcam, images on a video camera screen, on CCTV. The proliferation of such motif has reached a point where it has become almost an obsession in music promos.



Exhibitionism:



The more powerful independent artists of recent years, from Madonna on, have added to the complexity of the politic and gender/cultural debates, by being at once sexually provocative and apparently in control of, and inviting a sexualised gaze – opposite to voyeurism (exhibitionism).

All these areas, together with the notion of a ‘queer gaze’ pose interesting questions on the diversity of audience experiences of music video and the contradictory messages and values its representations it may evoke.





Star Construction



Useful inter-related notions are ‘star image’, ‘star vehicle’ and ‘star power’.

“A star is an image constructed from a range of materials” – Richard Dyer (1979)



For pop music, these materials include:

- The songs (their lyrical themes and musical structures/genres)
- The record covers (singles and albums and the image of the star they present)
- Media coverage (from interviews about career and private life through to tabloid gossip)
- Live performance (the image through the stage show)
- And arguably most significantly the music videos, which may draw upon the image presented in the other materials.



Star Image



How a star is perceived by the audience and the characteristics ascribed to him/her may be a combination of conscious construction by the media for which s/he works and of extra textual publicity in other media. The star is always constructed through a mixture of textual and extra textual factors and can only be controlled by the star and his/her employers up to a certain point, particularly in the age of celebrity when magazines and newspapers or ‘tabloid TV’ can take advantage of any weaknesses. The music promo also has a significant part to play in creating an image by creating an iconography.


Star Vehicle



A product constructed around the image of the star in order to promote that star, a music video is an obvious example. Each video may also draw upon its predecessor both in reinforcing the star’s existing image and in taking their image further, or even seek to subvert the image to create a new one. This is particularly necessary in the case of a lengthy career as a star age.



Star Power



This takes several forms:

- Economic power through earnings generated by the sale of associated product (cinema tickets, CD’s, etc)
- Artistic power (creative control of their own image and how it is used by/appears in the media)Ideological power in terms of their influence upon the audience, which may take the form of style or attitude.



By looking at an artist’s retrospective collection of music videos is a useful way to analyse the development of a star’s image. For example, 're-invention' to help maintain careers can be found in the work of Michael Jackson and George Michael.

Arranging Props - Lesson 27/11/09

In today's lesson, the group and I thought it would be a constructive idea to make a start on the organisation of props. We began by making a 'Saucy Single's Speed Dating' sign. This was a main feature we need as it will give the audience the sense of atmosphere we are trying to create. The colours of red and white help to give it a feel of romance however the provocative symbols such as the devil horns and hearts help to give a comical feel to it.

Finishing Our Storyboard

As today was our final lesson to finish our storyboards, we made much effort to complete them and we succeeded. We completed all drawings with annotations to match it. Each frame was annotated with/and Camera angles, Movements, Instructions, Transitions and lastly Lighting.


Here are the annotations we made:

Sound and Vision in Pop/Rock

The relationship between sound and image evident in the use of song and underscore in film is also evident in pop videos. A great deal of research carried out on pop music reveals that pop is concerned with the issues brought up within the narrative. Alf Bjornberg argues that there are two structural aspects to popular music, narrative and epic, both of which are derived from Richard Middleton's studies of popular music, and his distinction between the two categories of musical syntax. In contrast to the narrative category, which privillages difference, there is what we can call an "epic mode, where the focus is on repetition and varied repetition; and inbetween comes a "lyrical" category".Bjornberg defines a narrative musical syntax as having "linear" properties, in which there is no repetition in the music so the music is continuously moving forward, while an epic syntax has "circular" properties which is most common in Pop music. He says "...Most popular music depends on repetition of some kind, be they musical riffs or hooks, chords, sequences arranged into sections such as verse and chorus or even vocal repetitions."The most common kinds of musical syntax evident in pop songs are therefore "epic" or "lyrical" structures, with musical "narrative" structure being much less common. This is the area where the sounds and visuals of pop music videos differ most greatly. General music videos may make great use of linear narratives, but pop music videos are just as likely to make use of a circular visual narrative.

The Value of Sound

Much of the research on music video makes only fleeting references (if any) to the music, causing one to question the value of sound in music video. Many music videos such as Madonna's Material Girl video from 1985 incorporates iconography and images from Marilyn Monroe's Diamonds are a Girls Best Friend film. There are obvious links between music videos and films, especially considering that many current chart hits are used to promote a movie rather than the the artist's own album. Recent examples are Guns'n'Roses You Could Be Mine from Terminator 2.
This features extensive film footage in their accompaying promo clips, and UB40's (I Can't Help) Falling In Love With You from Silver has been filmed in a style relevant to the themes of voyeurism and hidden cameras that dominate the movie it is taken from. However, music videos that apply film footage and similar filming techniques rarely follow the song lyrics and music.

Final Storyboard (2) and Discussions

Today’s lesson was very constructive as we continued with our storyboarding. We made progression with the sketches and annotations however we were unable to fully complete them. On the other hand our meeting was still very productive as we made discussions on what would help to maintain the high standards of not only our storyboards, but our entire project.

What we discussed...

- We discussed the angles of specific scenes, especially the scenes which accompanied the sharp beats at the opening to the song. The chosen angles were used to convey a specific attitude. For example the shot of the girl's earring illustrates the character's stylish persona.

- We also confronted a problem since we realised that the software we will use to edit our film does not have the specific editing technique we wanted. This proved a problem for our aspirations to edit three different takes into one shot. It is for this reason that we decided to change the filming technique of the scene instead.

- Furthermore, we discussed the reliabilty of the characters and have agreed that if the actors are not available on more than filming date, we must find another actor. This is due to the short time period that we have to film.

Music - Why Are Albums Getting Louder?

For years, producers have been using compression techniques to make music sound louder and harder. Some people may notice that television adverts are louder than the programme you are watching, and sometimes older records are quieter than the newer ones. This is all due to compression. The producers use this technique to help grab the audience’s attention as they want to be noticed.


What is compression?

Compression is the inbuilt volume in a track. It controls how loud the music sounds, whatever volume you have it at, levelling out the peaks and troughs of a track to a higher overall average.

More and more of us are listening to music on the move because nowadays, we have the ability to do so due to new and modern technologies such as iPods, mobile phones, car stereos and much more. Record labels want their music to be heard above all the background noise of the outside world, and so very slowly – over a period of decades – our favourite tracks have become much louder.

Many sound engineers feel under pressure to make records sound unnaturally loud, however, Ian Shepherd of http://www.productionadvice.co.uk/ believes that this is not a new phenomenon. He quotes that:

“…modern digital technology allows people to take excess compression to new extremes…Mastering always used to do the job of the mastering engine. But there is always temptations to make things louder – the ear naturally hears things that are slightly louder as sounding slightly better. So, over the years, levels have crept up.”

One of the main reasons we are making records louder is because the way we consume our music has changed. We no longer listen to music passively at home, through big speakers – we listen to them on our MP3 players while out and about, or sat in front of the computer whilst doing homework. Speakers we use are not as powerful as that of a stereo therefore more and more record labels and artists want their records to reflect this change in listening habits.

Many artists and labels have taken this approach and reaped the rewards. Albums by the Arctic Monkeys and Lily Allen have used dense compression technology to give their sound more bite, and have sold a lot of records as a result of this. However, many fans have made complaints as their favourite band’s records are being mixed. Metallica is an example of this with their new album ‘Death Magnetic’. Fans were not satisfied with this and were unhappy with the final mix of the album.

But why isn't louder better?

For starters, prolonged exposure to loud music can bring about a condition known as tinnitus. This is an inner-ear condition which affects the tiny strands of hair (known as stereocilia) which pick up sound vibrations and essentially transform them into tiny sounds you hear. These can be easily broken which can cause the brain to produce a ringing-sound. In serious cases the listener may find it extremely hard to hear above the ringing. In addition to this, listening to over-compressed music can tire you out.

Also, it is known that CD's have an absolute maximum level which cannot be exceeded, and pushing the level up too high can ruin the sound.

What can be done to combat this?

An organisation has been set up by Charles Dye called 'Turn Me Up', which promotes responsible audio practices and is anti-compression.

Canadian dance artist Deadmau5 released the first fully-remixable album for the iPhone. This application which was created by Irish software developers Future Audio Workshop, allows the listener to mix the record to their own specifications, making certain sections louder or quieter, and add new effects to the track.

Five Loudest Records of All Time

1) The Stooges - Raw Power (1997 Remaster)

2)Oasis - What's The Story, Morning Glory (1995)

3) Red Hot Chilli Peppers - Californication (1991)

4) Metallica - Death Magnetic (2008)

5) Arctic Monkeys - Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not (2005)

From AS Media to A2

Factors that the production group and I have decided to change from last years production to this years, is how we are going to become more organised and how we will make our planning more sustained. The reason why we decided to discuss these issues as a group is because we wanted to make sure that everything goes to plan and runs smoother than what the production did last year. On the other hand, when we were shooting last year, everything such as the weather, the days we filmed and what days we arranged to meet up as a group ran relatively in progressive order. However, in this years A2 course, we are aiming for everything to be continuous – therefore I have come up with a list of factors which we will aim to accomplish:


- We are going to become more organised with the cast and arrange clearly with one another the days we will meet up, as in last years production there were specific days that the cast were unable to meet up. To be able to accomplish this we will plan two weeks in advance the precise days we are hoping to meet up on shoot days. Therefore hopefully resulting in everyone turning up at the correct time.


- The weather can be a factor which may ruin the mise-en-scene of particular scenes. To overcome this, we will make sure that we check the weather forecast of each day we are going to shoot to make sure that the weather is similar if we are unable to shoot all of our scenes outside on the same day. This way, there will be more continuity in the final outcome.


- In last year’s production, we had problems with finding someone’s house to shoot in at last minute. Therefore, we have already planned to film in the house of one of our production team members.


- Also, another factor is the props, because last year we had problems finding props that were as suitable as what we actually imagined. So, we are going to meet up as a team and buy a few props which will enable our cast to appear precisely how we imagine our characters to be.

By taking into consideration all these factors, there should be a noticeable continuity in the production of our promotional music video compared to our production from AS. Hopefully this will enable us to produce a smooth running media production which will turn out to be at a noticeably higher level.

Locations for Shooting

The team and I have begun to discuss the difference areas of which to film in. We have already come to realise that the majority of our scenes were domesticated; however, we also wanted to shoot in areas which were relevant to our narrative as well as relevant to each character – this led us to look into various regions of London. To investigate the different regions in which we are considering would be appropriate, we decided it would be a good idea if we took photographs of the areas at different angles so we are able to decide what different camera angles would be best to make the area as familiar to our audience as possible. Also, by discovering the most appropriate angles, this would help to emphasize connotations which relate to each character.

For example, we came to the conclusion that Camden Town would be best suited to reflect the character of the 'Punk'.

The Gym helped to connotate the egotistical and vain attitude that the 'Arrogant' character had.

Finally, the Library emphasised the 'Nerd's' hobbies.

As we have arranged to stage the dating scenes at a speed dating event, we found that it would result in problems as we would not be able to attend a real speed dating occasion, therefore we have decided to simulate our own convention of this particular scene in a production team members residence, this enables us to be able to emphasise the mise-en-scene and create the atmosphere of a speed dating event accurately as to how we please.

Costume Designs

Today, the production team and I discussed the costume designs for the protagonist characters and what particular image would be suitable to help reflect their personality. We all studied the iconography of each individual character in depth and came up with a montage of images which helped to imply each characters individuality. Hopefully, by doing this, we are able to come up with a clear image of what is iconic for each character. Also, as we did not do this in the planning for last years AS production, our images of each character should come out more precise compared to last years outcome.

We analysed this characters costume through the study of semiotics. This characters personality is shown quite obviously through the fashion of her costume; the casual look helps to portray this characters personality as being quite ‘cool’. Additionally, it is clearly shown that the style of this characters clothing is like the majority of teenagers. Plus the costume design also gives the hint that this character has a general interest in fashion.

This character pursues the role of a punk. The use of black clothing helps to hold connotations of a sinister personality. However, this character is going to wear black make-up which could help to symbolise the lack of confidence that this character has.

In the first glance, this character may appear relatively similar to the main female character due to the sense of fashion. However, with a closer look, this character’s image holds connotations of an arrogant and ignorant nature.

This character’s image is stereotypically known as the ‘geek’. This characters costume appears old-fashioned which helps to portray his boring lifestyle and personality. On the other hand, this changes as the music will begin to progress. His confidence will develop and then he will turn out to be the ‘Superman’ – hence the Superman costume.

Characters and Cast

The production team and I thought that it was now a crucial time to begin organising and arranging who was going to be the characters. We realised that there were many factors involved in making the final decisions as to who was going to play what character. Factors which the group and I considered to be very important were the general image of each person, their availability and, of course, how good each character was at acting and staying in role for long periods of time. We all agreed as a group that the general image was one of the most important factors as each character had to look around the age they were actually playing plus the general image helps to portray the actor as who they are trying to represent as a character. This would therefore be for the audiences benefit as it would help them to understand the characters in more depth when viewing our final outcome.

Characters
(Protagonist characters)

- Female : Reena Chadee

- Boy Date (Punk) : Robyn Oliver

- Boy Date (Geek) : Krishna Mootoosamy

- Boy Date (Hunk) : Michael Chering


Characters

- Young Boy : Cameron

- Devil : April McKay

- Screaming Girl : Laura Fredericks

Starting the Final Storyboard

In today’s lesson, we had been given the valuable opportunity to begin our final storyboard, meaning that our written storyboard would be converted into a storyboard of drawings. We did not get the chance to complete this, but here are a few sheets of what progress we have made as a group of the storyboard. We decided to fill in the details of the camerawork, transitions and timing last due to the fact that we wanted to make sure that everything we changed at last minute would be precisely written down next to the correct pictures.

Beginning Our Storyboarding (2)

Today, the production team and I met up to complete our storyboard. We made only light changes to what we had done the day before.

Beginning Our Storyboarding

In today’s lesson we had been given the chance to begin our storyboard. The production team and I had many ideas, but they were scattered which made our storyboarding slightly complicated. We had the specific ideas we wanted to use in our music video, however applying these ideas to the lyrics of our song was rather confusing. Therefore we used a technique in which we did not use in the process of our storyboarding during our AS. Our technique was to play our song many times, and then keep a record of how many seconds each section was from the beginning of the song. After a while of doing this, we realised that this was very time consuming. Nonetheless, it was a more productive way of becoming more organised of what specific scenes were going to fit in with what lyrics and how many seconds each scene was going to take up, especially because our music video has a time schedule to meet.

As a group, we organised to have our next meeting on 20/10/09.

Foundations - Kate Nash (Director - Kinga Burza)

Kate Nash
Kate Marie Nash (born 6 July 1987) is an English singer and songwriter based in London. She had a UK #2 hit "Foundations" in 2007, followed by the platinum selling UK number 1 album Made of Bricks. Nash started her career in 2006. After several gigs, Nash uploaded her music to MySpace. She found a manager for herself before seeking producers for her music. On November 14th 2007, Kate Nash celebrated her debut album 'Made of Bricks' going platinum. Whilst playing a sold out show at Shepherd's Bush Empire the news broke that her album had passed the 300,000 sales mark after Fiction records conducted a massive sales check. The album currently sits as 2007's second best selling album.

Kinga Burza
Kinga was born in Krakow, Poland and raised in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia before moving to London in 2005 and signing with respected film production company Partizan of Michel Gondry fame in 2006. She completed a BA at the University of New South Wales, before she went onto postgraduate studies in Theatre and Film at UTS in Sydney. Whilst studying at university, Kinga began teaching herself by making amateur videos for her then boyfriend Sydney musician Jack Ladder and many other friends she had in bands. Since being in the UK, Kinga has shot videos for M.Craft, The Thrills, The Rakes, The Teenagers, Calvin Harris, Kate Nash, Ladyhawke and recent Billboard No. 1 newcomer Katy Perry in LA. Promo Magazine has dubbed Kinga to be among 'the next wave of up-and-coming directors' while both I-D and Dazed and Confused Magazine have also run features on her. She was nominated Best New Director at the CAD Awards in 2007 and won a Young Gun award for Music Video Direction for Kate Nash's "Foundations" in 2007. Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" reached No.1 on the BillBoard charts. In 2008 Kinga won Best Pop Video at the UK Video Music Awards in London for Kate Nash's "Foundations".I thoroughly enjoy watching the video to Foundations at every available opportunity. Its light-heartedness and simplistic techniques (excluding the animation) is something I would like to incorporate into my own music video. The humour used with simple camera angles and editing techniques I feel would appeal to the audience I am trying to reach, i.e teenagers around 14-18 years old. I believe it would create light hearted and at times humourous connotations throughout the video.

Superman - Barrie Gleden (Lyrics to our song)

Here are the lyrics to our song. We decided to keep a record of our lyrics so that we can analyse them to help us come up with ideas for the scenes in our promotional music video. Also, by writing down the lyrics, we are able to see if we are able to make up a narrative for the music video.


He struts his stuff like his the Mac daddy,

He's one of a kind, invincible and ready,

To take on the world, He's got sex appeal

The man is a dream, the devil did him a deal,

Unstoppable, incredible, irresistible and powerful,

The one and all number one,He's Superman [superman], he's Superman,

That man's got style, that man's got flare,

Try to compete, oh don't you dare,

He's got the moves, he makes me shiver inside,

And he knows it, yeh he knows it,

Unstoppable, Incredible, Irresistible and Powerful,

The one and all, number one,He's Superman [superman], he's superman,

He struts his stuff like his the Mac daddy,

He's one of a kind, invincible and ready,

To take on the world, He's got sex appeal

The man is a dream, the devil did him a deal,

That man's got style, that man's got flare,

Try to compete, oh don't you dare,

He's got the moves, he makes me shiver inside,

And he knows it, yeh he knows it,

Unstoppable, Incredible, Irresistible and Powerful,

The one and all, number one,

He's Superman [superman],

He's superman,Superman[superman]

Ehhhhhhhhhhh

C'mon Superman [superman]

Yeh he knows it [superman]

He knows it [superman]

Inspiration for our storyboarding

The production team and I in today’s lesson explored various music videos from the pop and pop/rock genres to see if any of the editing, animation, camera angles and possibly mise-en-scene could influence us for our music video and inspire us to look outside the box in terms of particularly editing and the use of special effects.

Nelly Furtado - All Good Things

The video by Nelly Furtado, 'All Good Things', I thought had a few effects which might be relatively influencing for the production of our music video because this video has a dream-like feel towards it due to the editing techniques. Some scenes such as the above screen shots show blurryness. This contributes to the dreamy feel, however at times, some scenes fade into one another which is a useful effect which can add on to the illusion of a dream-like world.

Blink 182 - Always

This video from Blink 182 is a specific video that the production team and I found stood out from many others due to the individuality of how the video represents its narrative. This screen shot of a scene shows the storyline of a girl opening the door to her boyfriend. The screen is divided into three different sections which symbolise the different outcomes of what could possibly happen. This, we thought would be a good effect in our music video as we all thought that by dividing the scene into three different sections it would be a good way of comparing the various characters for our narrative, as well as the different situations concurrently.

Powder - Up Here

This music video by Powder, I thought had very high relevance to our music video due to the fact that this video is based on the Marvel comics, which relate to a very high degree to our ‘Superman’ song. The acting in this music video is much exaggerated, which is one of our initial ideas of how characters should act in our music video. Also, the costumes in Powders music video are an important asset to the music video as this portrays each character individually as well as their intentions. For example, the hero in this music video is dressed in white – this colour obviously holds pure and angelic connotations. Relating this to our initial ideas, we had the idea that our characters costumes would represent their personality which proves that costumes are very crucial. Another aspect of this particular music video which caught my eye is the cartoon like comic book scenes which make an appearance. This plays a relevant role when again, relating these ideas back to our initial ideas because ‘Superman’, is based on a comic book, therefore we could give the appearance of onomatopoeias such as ‘POW’ which shows the sounds being made.

Influencing the Audience/ Theories

The Hypodermic Syringe Theory
According to the Hypodermic Syringe Theory, the media is like a syringe which injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audiences who as a powerless mass have little choice but to be influenced. This theory is based on people’s actions after watching films, specifically violent ones.
For example:
You watch something violent and then you may go and do something violent. Or you could possibly see a woman doing the cleaning in a house and then you want to go and do the same thing the woman is doing if you are a woman as well, and a man will expect women to do the cleaning for you.

A film called ‘A Clockwork Orange’ has been banned in the past, partly because of a belief that they might encourage people to copy the crimes within them.

Another example:
The serial killer Jeffery Dahmer, watched a clip from his favourite film before every murder he committed to excite him. This is the kind of fact that could possibly prove the Hypodermic Syringe Theory to be correct, however the film he was watching was ‘Star Wars’, and nobody has ever suggested banning this film for being too violent, therefore on the other hand, this could also be going against this theory.

The Cultivation/Culmination Theory
This theory takes the hypodermic syringe theory to the next level. This theory looks at how the audience of films become desensitized as time increases due to the fact that the more we view something in a film, for example violence, the more it is ‘normal’ for us to view this in everyday life, especially if this violence goes unpunished. The opposite to this is sensitization where one viewing of violence would leave a person so shocked, that they were unable to view this again.

Gratification Theory
According to this theory, we all have different uses for the media and we make choices over what we want to watch. In other words we only encounter a media text if we know that we are going to be satisfied by what we chose to entertain ourselves by – therefore we gain gratification because we have satisfied our needs.

Researchers such as Maslow (among the chief exponents of this model are McQuail and Katz) have identified the kinds of gratification we can be getting. Four have been found:

1) Information: we want to find out about society and the world – we want to satisfy our curiosity. We can also gain information from the news and documentaries because they also make us feel we are gaining knowledge from the world.
2) Personal Identity: we may watch the television to see if we can find people who are role models that we can admire and look up to for our behaviour. For example, we may identify with a character in a film and they might help us to decide how we feel about ourselves.
3) Integration and Social Interaction: we use the media in order to find our more about the circumstances of other people, this also helps up to sympathise and empathise with the lives of others. However, television also gives us a topic to talk about with our real friends.
4) Entertainment: sometimes we simply use the media for enjoyment, relaxation or just to fill time.

However, this theory ignores the fact that we do not always have the complete choice as to what we receive from the media. For example, we may see a poster on a billboard that we may consider extremely sexist but we are unable to change that poster to what we find more pleasant – therefore we are having to choose the media that we consume from what is available.

Reception Analysis
Reception analysis is based on the idea that no text has one simple meaning. Instead, reception analysis suggests that the audience themselves help to create the meaning of the text. For example, we may watch soap and some people may find a certain scene quite offending and sexist but another person may find this perfectly acceptable to society. Factors such as gender, our place inside society, and the context of the time we are living in can be enormously important when we perceive the meaning of the text. David Morley identified three categories in which audiences fall into when conveying the meaning of a media text:

Preferred reading – The preferred reading is the reading media producers hope the audience take from the text.

Oppositional reading – Audience members from outside the target audience may reject the preferred reading, receiving their own alternative message.

Negotiated reading – Audiences acknowledge the preferred reading, but modify it to suit their own alternative message and opinion.