Essay about Active Audience Theory (preferred, oppositional and negotiated reading)

According to the Active audience theory, there are three different reading of a piece of media; the preferred reading, oppositional reading and negotiated reading. I created a music video as a part of my advanced portfolio piece. The preferred reading of my music video is that we wanted to entertain the audience but also at the same time, we wanted the image of the entire band to come across that the band follows the conventions of a average rock band such as their clothing, performance skills, attitudes (generally and to being in a band) and that the mes en scene was correct for the band’s studio/practice area.

            When discussing the production of our music video we talked about what type of video we wanted to produce and what message/image we wanted it to portray. We decided that our video would be a performance based music video instead of narrative or concept and that the preferred reading we wanted to put across would be that we wanted to entertain the  audience but to display the band’s image, enthusiasm, performance skills and to get the correct mes en scene. We decided on these values as we believed them to be important for our band, because we wanted the fans to see that we are enthusiastic about being a part of a band and enjoy producing songs such as the one in the music video, we also wanted our image to be part of the preferred reading as we saw a band’s image as very important to modern music, as people’s preferences of artists go on two things; a their music produced and b the image they portray, for example it’s not likely for a rapper to dress like a rocker and be seen as cool or popular because people wouldn’t take him/her seriously, so we wanted to dress and perform like a conventional rock band such as Linkin Park, Foo Fighters or Green Day as we researched into these types of artists and knew that these bands all wear skater shoes, slim/skinny jeans and t-shirts with statements/slightly weird art on them, this is why we dressed pretty similar to a realistic rock band would, we also believed that it would help us to look more professional (i.e. a  real rock band). Another preferred reading we wanted was to be an entertaining performance and band, because we wanted to portray that we enjoy playing music and are enthusiastic about it, by using Mcquail and Katz uses and gratification theory to analyse our music video, I believe that out of the four different types of texts, our best fits under diversion and identity, diversion because it’s predominantly and performance based entertainment music video. We created a one location multi shot video where the band performed in a studio, which along with the song style allowed for a high fast pace tempo of quick editing, which helped with the entertainment as if we used slow editing our viewers wouldn’t have been less entertained. I have said Identity as although like I have said it mainly fits into diversion it can also be classed as an identity text, as our fans would want to copy our style, in respect to our interests in bands/musicians, fashion, places we go, type of activities we like, etc, although this isn’t a major factor in our music video, I think that it is still there as we have dressed in a specific way, performed in a way that we felt necessary and the mes en scene has been created to fit a certain style.

            The alternative reading of our media product would be that we are just another band who produces rock music in their studio, who can’t think for themselves so they copy other bands in their clothing, musical style, and performances. We tried really hard not to get the majority of viewers to get this sort of reading from our media product, and to a large degree I believe we succeeded as most of our viewers didn’t give this feedback, although it was inevitable that we would get some people thinking/believing this. This is possible because the mes en scene, among many other things included 4 posters of different bands that our band like and were inspired by, so it’s possible that a viewer could think this, because we filmed our video in one location which as much as we tried to look like a studio, although it didn’t look to bad still isn’t as convincing as we had originally planned/hoped for, as we ended up filming somewhere that we didn’t want to. If we had more planning and research time we could have filmed in a real studio. As it took us a multiple days to complete filming, during this time we found out about a place located nearby us that allows you to hire out equipment such as professional recording/video studios,  stages etc, we actually wanted to film here but as we didn’t manage to find this place in our planning and research period,  it turned out that we would probably miss our filming deadline and severely run into our pos production time, meaning that there was a high chance that we might not have completed our music video on time. To prevent this and to make our chosen location look like a studio we decided to improve the mes en scene and make it look like a bands studio/hang out area where they practice, by adding things such as posters of fellow rock bands for example Green Day, Foo Fighters, 30 Seconds to Mars, etc. We also decided that we wanted to distract the attention away from surroundings of the band and focus predominantly on the band members performing, to add to the entertainment.

            The negotiated reading of our text would be that our music video does fit into the diversion category, not so much the identity category, as our video didn’t focus on that as a main part throughout, but it’s still visible, although the location does kind of look how we wanted it to, and we mostly managed to focus on the band members and use the mes en scene as a feature which was noticeable but not over powering to the standard audience member, but the viewer can still tell that the location wasn’t a professional music studio and that it looked more like a large wooden paneled room or large summer house. Even though this is the case I don’t believe that it takes away from the viewing experience and that our music video to the majority of our viewers it still entertains them and portrays the identity of the band across.