His Dark Materials: Audience and Industries

 Audience

1) Read this audience rating guide for His Dark Materials. Based on the screening and this article, who do you think the target audience is for His Dark Materials and why? What about psychographic groups? You can revise Pyschographics here.


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: Teenager protagonists who are male and female  

Personal Relationships: Will is the 'everyman' and the audience can see relate to him and view the magic through his eyes as he is from our world.

Diversion (Escapism): Different worlds, talking animals, witches

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- the torture of the witch and Rita(another witch) beating up the villains and saving the witches' secrets.

Vicarious-  they can experience magical powers, talking to animals and traveling to divergent worlds through the characters.

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.

People found the episode good yet not reaching the standards they wanted it to.

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? 

Industries

1) Which companies produced this His Dark Materials series?

BBC,HBO, Bad Wolf

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

4.4million views was for this episode but 7.2 million views for the first episode.

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.

HBO's role in making His Dark Materials is that it brought more American viewers and allowed for more distribution.

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.

Dafne Keen as Lyra Belacqua, Ruth Wilson as Marisa Coulter, Lin-Manuel Miranda as Lee Scoresby, Amir Wilson as Will Parry are just some of the starts in this episode. This is a cast that have done many different   things so they can use Starr power to pull a larger audience.

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

Bad Wolf was established to produce high-quality drama content for the global market.

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)?

HDM uses much more fast paced editing , Doctor Who is obviously black and white while HDM isn't 

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

Both narratives have a sense of other worldly however Doctor Who is sci-fi so it could be a technical possibility while HDM is fantasy so it uses magic and impossible tools/items .



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