Joanne Perry

A2 Media Studies

Uses & Gratification Deconstruction - 17 Again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UQK5Hh0L1Sg

Blumler & Katz Uses and Gratification theory shows the 5 reasons why we, as the audience, consume any media. The more of the 5 we can gain from the product, the better it is as they meet the audiences needs for viewing the product. Blumler and Kats created the uses and gratification theory to try and understand what an audience wants.

1. Entertainment is built to entertain the audience and is purely for enjoyment purposes.2. Education is to educate the audience and produce learning through a media product.3. Escapism is created in order for the audience to escape reality and get reeled into the media

product. This allows the audience to escape the stress of their everyday lives.4. Identification is for the audience to identify themselves within the media product to make it

feel personal and belonging to the person.5. Social Interaction is to create a social link

between the media product which can be discussed and shared in order to increase popularity of the film. This also gives the audience a sense of belonging, making them feel a connection to the film.

Within the trailer 17 Again, entertainment is im-mediately presented through the narrative struc-ture. The narrative indicates that a 37 year old man gains the opportunity to be 17 again. This represents entertainment due to its surreal style which shows that the film is purely set to entertain the audience through enjoyment due to the impossible story line. Consumers will enjoy this film due to it not being a regular occurrence within everyday life. The entertainment within the film is presented throughout the trailer due to the various strug-gles which the protagonist has to face. This allows the audience to find enjoyment in watching his struggles and represents the build up to where his struggles lead him and creates excitement for what the final equilibrium is. Within my trailer, entertainment will continuously, conventionally be introduced through the use of sound, mise-en-scene, special effects and more. This also gives off a professional outlook on my film, which will appeal to the audience and entertain them through the enjoyment they will gain through not only these elements but the narrative style too which repre-sents a naturalistic style, providing enjoyment and entertainment throughout.

17 Again also aims to educate the audience through the lengths in which the protagonist goes to, to help his children. This educates the audience by representing the importance of family and helping each other. The trailer also has the protagonists voiceover within various clips saying, “when you’re young everything feels like the end of the world, but it’s not.” This represents the way in which this film aims to educate the youth target audience by identifying with them and their struggles and re-assuring them. It gives off the message to the audience to not give up and that everything gets bet-

ter. Due to the target audience for this film being mainly teenagers, it directs this well as it allows this age group to identify with the film due to the struggles within the film, which the teenagers face, which they may also face in their everyday lives. Therefore, educating them through their mentality. Within my film, education will be induced through representing to the audience that you should not lie. It will represent this throughout the film due to the continuous struggles that the characters in my film face all because of their lies. This ensures that the film benefits the audience by teaching them something vital, which they will not clearly identify but will hopefully effect them long term.

The escapism factor of this film is reflected within the trailer due to the surreal style, as stated previ-ously, allowing the audience to escape their every-day lives and get lost within the film. It makes the audience feel a connection between them and the protagonist due to the everyday struggles he faces at the beginning until he turns 17 again. This al-lows consumers to identify and wish that they had the opportunity to go back in time to avoid every-day struggles. The consumers are therefore reeled into the media product due to this escapism, al-lowing them to forget their own lives for a while and concentrate on the characters lives instead. This is one of the most popular factors within a film due to it being an easy theory to induce as con-sumers want to escape their everyday lives and focus on something/someone else to make them

forget about their problems for a while. My film will continuously endure escapism due to its natu-ralistic content, representing some elements of my film to not be real. This allows the audience to fo-cus on these elements to escape their everyday lives.

Identification is also present within the film due to the setting and props used within the trailer. For example, the high school setting allows teenagers

to identify with the film due to them being able to relate to the setting and various scenarios which occur in high school. This makes it feel personal and belonging to this particular target market, but also to an older target market as well as they are enabled to identify with this from their past experi-ences. Props used within the film such as fancy cars, allow consumers to identify, as the protagonist drives a fancy car, immediately making him more attractive and approachable to all the girls in the film, which would also appeal to girls in real life as well, due to the stereotype of girls wanting to marry rich. Within my trailer, I aim to create identification by using similar aged characters to match the age of my target audience. This will appeal to my target audience as they will feel as though they can identify more clearly with my film due to to similarities between them and the characters, creat-ing a connection between my film and the audience.

Finally, social interaction is used within the film due to the institution notes the trailer presents. Dur-ing the time of the films release, Zac Efron was a very famous, heart throb due to his recent success in High School Musical. Therefore, by placing him in this film, it immediately ensured that social in-teraction will be used as his status will increase the popularity of the film and various fans of his pre-

vious films, will also want to see this film. It will also make the audience feel a connection to the film if they had seen his previous work and are a fan of his acting and therefore discuss his role within this film bringing more popularity over so-cial networking and word of mouth marketing. Within the creation of my trailer, I aim to place an institution note of a large conglomerate to ensure that the success of my trailer can be marketed through social interaction as it will already have an established audience who have previously been a fan of the conglomerates work and therefore will already have a connection between the audience. However, I will not have the resources to have any famous actors, I am ambitious that the companies institution note will be enough to ensure social in-teraction.