Harry Potter and Audience Theory.

Okay, so the next bit I'm going to talk about is how 'Empire' magazine use audience theory to promote the newest Harry Potter movie which is coming to the cinema on July 15th!

Audience theory can be best explained by saying it is an idea of how audience will consume media. In this case, the audience of Harry Potter can consume the media in many different ways. They could read the 'Empire' magazine, read the books, look at the official website and of course, watch the movies.

'Empire' magazine has multiple pages in it that just go on about the latest Harry Potter movie. Not only have the producers of Harry Potter, Warner Brothers, caught the attention of the already Harry Potter fans which watch the movies 24/7 and read the books religiously, but also the attention of those who read the 'Empire' magazine. This has been done deliberately so that there can be a wider market and therefore more money can be made for the movie producers. Pictures to show this are being displayed below.

This page above shows the double page spread with Harry Potter (Daniel Radcliffe) on the front. They are showing this image because it shows in a very obvious way that it is about Harry Potter because we can clearly see Daniel Radcliffe is in the image.

This double page spread shows the readers the location and the interviews of the different cast and crew members. It also has images of the enemy and the hero of the books/movies. These images would probably have been put up there because members of the public who like to watch Ralph Fiennes (Lord Voldermort) in films which he has been in, will probably end up watching the Harry Potter films because Ralph Fiennes is in the films. This is another way audience theory could have been used to increase the target market.

This is, again, another page on the interviews with cast and crew members. This helps promote the upcoming movie in the Harry Potter series.

This shows the last bit of the interviews with cast and crew members as well as an advert for the Harry Potter movies from 1-7. This would have been inserted just after the interviews because as the target market consume this type of media they might want to buy the films and therefore the advert for the boxset of films has been placed specifically to help make more money.

All the pictures above show the interviews with the cast and crew on making the final instalment of the Harry Potter series. The type of audience theory shown here is the Two-Step flow. The Hypodermic Syringe effect has also been used but not as strongly as the Two-Step flow. The Two-Step flow can be explained by people using a certain piece of media for their own personal gain and then passing the positive comments about the type of media they have just watched to other people. Personally, I think that this is what the magazine is trying to do. The magazine is trying to do this because it will increase the amount of people going to watch the series by a considerable amount and decreases the amount of money spent on the movie by not having to pay distributors much money to distribute the movie effectively.

However, Warner Brothers will have to pay 'Empire' to produce the advert in their magazine. This is because they need to pay the magazine to have them put an advert for showing that the boxset is available to purchase.

To summarise, I have attempted to talk about how the movie stills in the magazine and the magazine itself have tried to increase the target audience.