Analyse a piece of media similar to your own using media audience theories.

The sleepover club:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-579y5LyYIQ

Hall was a theorist who had put through the idea of encoding and decoding. This theory showed us how a producer will try to encode the preferred reading of a text so that everyone in the audience can understand the context and message that it portrayed. In the opening sequence it was obvious that the producer had encoding the preferred reading that groups of girls where the best of friends with completely different characters that hung around together a lot. This also showed how each character had their own personality and where all individual, the way that the colour was used also helped to create this message because for example, the girly girl in the group ‘Fliss’ had a pink background and was wearing pink clothes whereas the sport tom boy in the group ‘Kenny’ was seen with an orangey/red background wearing baggy boyish clothing. Each character in the opening sequence was also shown in a different part of what looked like, a high school. This is showing the age of the characters and can appeal to the target audience more as they can relate back to it. In the school each character was shown in a different setting to also help show there personality’s out more. An example of this would be when ‘Fliss’ the girly ditsy girl is shown in a big crowd being pushed around, showing that in the show itself she may follow the crowd abit. The scenes in this opening sequence which apply to this theory the most and send out the preferred reading to be encoded to the audience is when all of the girls are shown together having fun, which the small clips are shown surrounded by bubbly effects to show how much fun they are. Hall had also stated that there was three different types of audience ways of encoding and decoding the media, the dominant type, negotiated and oppositional.

Morley was another theorist who has put forward his ideas for audiences and he had created the reception theory. This theory stated that your personal cultural background will affect the way that a person can interpret the text when they are decoding the media. These depend of things like the type of age of the person, the gender and social glass. For example if a boy watches this opening sequence he may not get the idea of it where as a girl may. Its showing that each girl has their own personality and how they are all coming together to be the best of friends. The gender of a person will also affect this as the scenes for the shots are shown around a high school, which for high school pupils will draw them in to the media and this will help them to understand it more. In this type of media Morley’s theory can be contradicted with stereotypes because the opening sequence shows different social classes with the different personalities and this is shown by what each character is wearing. The way that the editing and background colour is used in this opening sequence will not affect the way that people see and understand this media depending on their social class as every character has a different colour and the background in simple but fun.