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Tuesday 11 February 2014

Uses and Gratifications from each of the studied texts

Peaky Blinders
Throughout this text the audience would gain various uses and gratifications from many parts of Peaky Blinder. This text would conform to the gratification of learning and self-educating on historical content. It does this by the narrative paying close attention to historical accuracy of the history around the time of post World War I. This is evidenced in narrative themes, key iconography and the mise en scene. During the the second episode the narrative demonstrates the attitudes and scenarios of World War I soldiers returning home, for example in series one and episode two, the police force is after guns stolen by the Shelby family from the army. Also in a lot of the scenes in this same episode, a lot of key iconography which reflects retrophillia is featured in the mise en scene that reflects on the period of time which is post World War I, such as the weapons, cars and the clothing.

Also, through this text another gratification the audience would gain is finding models of behaviour, it does this by the narrative using a-list, influential stars such as Cillian Murhpy, Helen McGroy and Sam Neil, all three of these actors have featured in a-star films playing a highly powerful positions that would attract a passive, mainstream audience.

Thursday 6 February 2014

How does Peaky Blinders attract its audience?

Peaky Blinders is a British historic crime drama series, produced by Steven Knight, set in Birmingham in 1919. It follows the soldiers return from World war I and creating an illegitimate business as well as forming a criminal gang.

One way this text attracts its audience is the use of highbrow cinematography in a lot of the scenes in the text, one example of this is in the second episode of the first series, one of the first scenes included a young Irish Gypsy boy cleaning a horse, which was later on won by Tom Shelby. The camera featured close up shots of horses skin and hooves. Cinematography techniques are of vital importance to any filmmaker as they help tell the story of the text in the most effective manner possible. Another element of cinematography used in this same scene is the fight between the Shelby lads and the Irish Gypsy lads, the fight was shot in a slow-motion manner which helped the audience see what was going on, if the slow-motion wasn't used then the fight would have been over in seconds. These features would attract the intended audience as it mixes up the mainstream and niche conventions that are able to clinch to the BBC TWO audience.


Another way this text attracts its audience is featuring film stars that have participated in big A-list movies, one of these characters is Cillian Murphy who has been in Inception and Batman(Tommy Shelby), and Sam Neil (CI Chester Campbell) who was in Jurassic Park, using characters such as these would target a mainstream audience, doing