The reception theory (media studies theories)

Extending the concept of an active audience even further, in the 1980s and 1990s a lot of work was done on the way individuals received and interpreted a text, and how their demographic (gender, class, age, ethnicity) affected their reading or in my horror film trailers case the way that they view the film and react to it.

As my film will probably be an 18 or a 15 rating, the audience will not be as passive as if it was a pg or even a 12a rated film, this is due to the demographic of the person watching the film and relates back to the earlier theory based on the hypodermic needle theory.

This theory was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience - the text is encoded by the producer, and understood by the reader, and there may be major differences between two different readings of the same code. However, by using recognised ideas and conventions, and by drawing upon audience expectations relating to aspects such as genre and use of more famous actors, the producers can position the audience and therefore create a certain amount of agreement on what the idea means.