His Dark Materials: Audience and Industries blog tasks

 Audience:

1) What audience do you think His Dark Materials is aimed at and why? Think about demographic and psychographic groups. You can revise Pyschographics here.

HDM's audience was aimed at families because they would run their shows at 8:30pm on Sunday because that's when most families would watch TV and they didn't do Saturdays because most families;/people were usually out going somewhere on Saturdays.

2) What audience pleasures are offered by His Dark Materials - The City of Magpies? Apply Blumler and Katz's Uses and Gratifications theory to the episode. Make sure you provide specific examples from the episode to support your ideas.

Personal Identity: 

Some people may relate to the children where they don't need to follow rules from their parents anymore, some can relate to feeling trapped before. only that now they can see what happens if they were just gone.

Personal Relationships:  Some people usually tend to watch videos certain celebrities had acted in as a fan. Example, the main character Lyra Belacqua was played by Dafne Keen who is a celebrity.

 

Diversion (Escapism):  Many people may want to leave the real world and run away into fantasy wolds. The genre of the series is steampunk, sci-fi, and fantasy, the audience gets to watch a world that has a possibility of having legends existing, which is not real.

3) Thinking of the 3 Vs audience pleasures (Visceral, Vicarious and Voyeuristic pleasures), which of these can be applied to His Dark Materials? Refer to specific scenes or moments in the episode to explain your answer. 

Visceral Pleasure:  used when the series usually show many establishing shots of fantasy landscapes, the sheer size of certain things that make people feel amazed and at awe.

Vicarious Pleasure: can be used when the main character was shown to be travelling alone, some could empathise with her as they might feel the same, like the feeling of being lost.

Voyeuristic Pleasure: Watching people e.g. hidden camera show/element of reality TV like Big Brother

4) How did fans react to Season 2 of His Dark Materials? What about critic reviews? You can find some possible answers for this in this BBC website article on the critical reception for His Dark Materials and watch the fan reaction video above.

The fan reacted to Season 2 of His Dark Materials as interested, shocked and often question on what is happening, showing very clearly how she wanted to know what happens and why certain things are shown. Their critic review was about how they did put a lot of information in the trailer and would rather be surprised during watching the video than the trail

5) What might be some of the preferred and oppositional readings for His Dark Materials? Why did some fans love it? Why have other people criticised it? 

They might have preferred people to read the series that there is a conflict between the 2 worlds and that children are in charge of saving said worlds to stop the conflict. The oppositional reading is that the children are pretty much weak and useless, so that is why they are trying to get rid of adults but later on show that children can be powerful. I think some people loved the story and the book it was based on that explore the idea of conflict between worlds and species. I do believe some may have not enjoyed it as it was a bit confusing, some things weren't made clear, like what is the motive and why there is a conflict in the first place.

Industries:

1) Which companies produced this His Dark Materials series?

The company that produce HDM was Big Bad Wolf and New Line Cinema which are also associated with the HBO and BBC.

2) What were the UK viewing figures for A City of Magpies? How did this compare to season 1 of His Dark Materials?

The first episode of HDM was "A City of Magpies", the second season of His Dark Materials, was watched by an overall average of 4.4 million viewers in the UK on BBC One. Season 1, episode 1, of His Dark Materials, had 7.2 million viewers on BBC One.

3) What was American network HBO's role in making His Dark Materials and why is this important? Look at the notes above for more on this.

Because it was co-commissioned for an international audience by the BBC and the American television network HBO, and was always intended to be distributed on a number of platforms.

4) What famous stars are in His Dark Materials and why do you think they were selected for the show? Watch the Comic Con panel video in the notes above to see the stars talking about the show.

Daffe Keen was selected in the show. She has discussed how her character changed from trusting to now distrust as she loses the two people who were keeping her stable in the first show. I think she was chosen because she was able to clearly not only show how she was not from the world she was currently in but also show the juxtaposition between her in the first show and the second show.

5) Who are Bad Wolf and what do they produce?

Bad Wolf is a British television production company known for high-end drama series.

Comparison: Doctor Who - An Unearthly Child and His Dark Materials - The City of Magpies:

1) How are the technical conventions different between 1963 Doctor Who and 2020 His Dark Materials (e.g. camerawork, editing, sound and mise-en-scene)?

Doctor Who in 1963 had only slow panning and is blurry as well as being black and white while His Dark Materials had very detailed CGI, many different camera shots and panning as well as having colours. The mise-en-scene(CLAMPS) in Doctor Who has their locations in a dark Junkyard, the school, and inside the TARDIS, there were not many different areas while in HDM they had the Hot air balloon, the submarine, the abandoned town, cave, ocean, etc. 

2) What similarities and differences are there between Doctor Who and His Dark Materials in terms of genre and narrative?

The similarities of Doctor Who and His Dark Materials is that they both follow the sci-fi genre, the difference being that Doctor Who is more science based and HDM is more Fantasy based. Doctor Who's narrative is that the teachers wanted to make sure the girl was okay, but the Doctor kidnapped them because they may snitch on him, while for HDM is about the war with witches, how children are in power as all the adults have been taken away.

3) How are representations of people, places and groups similar or different in the two shows?

In Doctor Who, they did not have much representation as they only casted white people, while for His Dark Materials, they had a much more diverse cast. They did have similar way of representing teenagers, they both had shown them in causal clothing, as well as make the older people be seen as the villain of the series.