Case Studies

Case studies

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ALL THEORIES

Genre

Theorist	Theory
Tom Ryall	Genre provides a framework of structuring rules, in shapes of patterns/forms/styles/structures, which act as a form of ‘supervision’.
Steve Neale	Genre is constituted by “specific systems of expectations and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema and which interact with the films themselves during the course of the viewing process.
Gill Branston + Roy Stafford	Genre is often taken to refer to cut and dried, simple boundaries: ‘Just another gangster film’. But in fact there is always both repetition and difference in genre products.
David Bordwell	“One could argue that no set of necessary and sufficient conditions can mark off genres from other sorts of groupings in ways that all experts or ordinary film-goers would find acceptable”
Rober Stam	“While some genres are based on story content (the war film), other are borrowed from literature (comedy, melodrama) or from other media (the musical). Some are performer-based (the Astaire-Rogers films) or budget-based (blockbusters), while others are based on artistic status (the art film), racial identity (Black cinema), location (the Western) or sexual orientation (Queer cinema).”

Representation

Theorist	Theory
Richard Dyer	“How we are seen determines how we are treated, how we treat others is based on how we see them. How we see them comes from representation”.
Roland Barthes’	Semiotics theory explained that the use of signs and signifiers contribute towards representation.
Stuart Price	“If gender are socially constructed, and society itself is based on unequal relations of power, then we can see why many writers argue that mainstream representations will be biased against subordinate groups. Dominant ideology is supposedly used to keep the downtrodden in their place. For example, sexist views of women in the media. It’s easier to make a short cut so why not use them…
Stereotypes	Stereotypes are used by the Mass Media as short cuts to allow audiences to understand who they are talking about.

Narrative

Theorist	Theory
Levi Strauss	Constant creation of conflict/opposition propels narrative. Narrative can only end on a resolution of conflict. Opposition can be visual (light/darkness, movement/stillness) or conceptual (love/hate, control/panic) – Binary Oppositions.
Roland Barthes	We can start by looking at a narrative in one way, from one viewpoint, bringing to bear one set of previous experience, and create on meaning for that text. You can continue by unravelling the narrative from a different angle, by pulling a different thread and create an entirely different meaning.
Propp	Story: fairy story structure.
Todorov	Characters: Hero, Villain, Princess.
David Bordwell	Audiences assume the film process within the narrative.

Audience

Theorist	Theory Name	Theory
Berger	Magic Bullet Theory	Our product has been made intentionally as a thriller film so using the codes and conventions of a stereotypical thriller film, we have attempted to shoot our ideas directly at our audience to get across our messages we are trying to portray within the opening.
Blumer & Katz	Audience Gratification Theory	Our product, as a thriller opening, could be said to appeal to audiences as escapism. Our thriller opening plans to take our audience on enigmatic and thrilling story of our protagonist and to let people be exposed to the information little by little. Our product provides escapism into someone else's fictional story.
Maslow	Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs	Our thriller film opening sees the protagonist being brutally interrogated. This provokes empathy of the audiences part as they realise that that protagonist doesn't have any control over anything. He has blood on his shirt and isn't being treated properly. According to Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs, we attempt to acquire certain needs to reach our ideal selves. Our main character's list of needs within the heirarchy are taken away and the audience is made to feel sorry for him. JUSTICE.
Stuart Hall	Encoding/Decoding	We have encoded ideas in our thriller film opening to portray it as a thriller film. Audiences will, according to Stuart Hall, decode these messages according to situations which are most relevant to them. Some audience may not see any relevance to our film at all and regard it as unrealistic whilst others may relate to elements of the film and review it highly.

Audience

Theorist	Theory
Althusser	We become bombarded with messaged, we become a subject rather than an individual as soon as we engage them, they control us (post modernism).
David Buckingham	“A focus on identity requires us to pay closer attention to the ways in which media and technologies are used in everyday life and their consequences for social groups”.
Henri Jenkins	Teens are constantly updating and customising their profiles online adding photos and songs and posting to each other’s virtual ‘walls’. While this could be interpreted as just playing around, these activities could also be a means to construct an experiment with their identity. In particular, it can be a space for exploring one’s gender identification and sexuality.
Merleau Ponty	We have an embodied experience and anything in which we use our bodies to create, we help builds our identity.
Strinati	Post modernism is said to describe the emergence of a social order in which the impotance and power of the mass Media and popular culture means that they govern and shape all other forms of social relationships. Popular culture signs and Media images increasingly dominate our sense of reality and the way we define ourselves in the world around us. Now reality can only be defined by surface reflections in a mirror.
Karl Marx	Marxism / Neo Marxism
Postmodernism	Our reality is constructed and led by the Mass Media
Anthony Giddens &  David Gauntlett	We are not in a post-modern era, Giddens says. It is a period of late modernity. He does not necessarily disagree with the characterisations of recent social life which other theorists have labelled as postmodern - scepticism towards metanarratives, heightened superficiality, consumerism, and so on. Giddens doesn't dispute these changes, but he says that we haven't really gone beyond modernity. It's just developed.