Applying Uses and Gratifications

The uses and gratifications theory is an audience centered approach which states that audiences are active viewers, choosing to view texts for different reasons as well as in many different formats. Blumler and Katz (1974) then expanded this idea and created their own version, which stated that individuals choose texts for the following reasons:

Escapism – Removing themselves from everyday issues and routines. Music videos are a form of escapism from the real world. In reference to narrative videos, the audience have a chance to observe a character’s life, they are able to escape into that character’s narrative. This is applied through the narrative within our music video where in we show the emotional journey between the two characters to the point where the audience see it as reality as they are so drawn in and become the character themselves. The audience may never have experienced love before so by watching this video they feel the emotion for the camera, escaping into new emotions and situations just through watching and listening to the song.

Personal Relationships – Building emotional links within the music video. Some people will watch the music video because they can relate to it, they like to know that they aren't alone in certain situations  Also some people will watch it so that they can feel even more depressed, they want it to create emotion and/or back up their current emotions. This will be applied within the narrative, footage of flashbacks, chemistry between the characters(hugging,kissing, smiling,holding hands,)locations etc. For the smallest things could create emotion for the audience member as they could remind them of a specific time in their life, e.g. footage of the park could remind the audience of a time that they were in a park with a partner,friend,family member etc. This could create emotion for them as it reflects their personal relationships.

Personal Identity- Stating particular identities by consuming texts, 'finding yourself' and learning behaviour from them. Individuals are able to gain a personal identity from watching particular music videos. This is because being associated with various genres of music, places people into categories in the public eye. For example, this who enjoy rock music may be classed as 'emos.' The style within our video follows two different social groups. Adding to this, our video is indie pop which incorporates the mainstream social groups. The age of the band members.actors in our music video are supposed to be perceived as 19-21s, this will lure in an audience 19 and above. Adding to this there are both male and female actors band members(gaze theory) which means both male and female audiences could relate to our music video. The theme of love and romance implies that the audience intended would be 15+ as this is the age that teenagers become emotionally involved in relationships , this once again would create a personal identity for the audience as they can put themselves in the actors shoes and feel their emotions.