G235: Critical Perspectives in Media Theoretical Evaluation of Production

1(b) Media Language

Aims/Objectives

• To reinforce the basic media language that create meaning in texts.

• To have a basic understanding of how to evaluate your coursework against the media language that you used.

Importance of media language

• Every medium has its own ‘language’ – or combination of languages – that it uses to communicate meaning. Television, for example, uses verbal and written language as well as the languages of moving images and sound.

• We call these ‘languages’ because they use familiar codes and conventions that are generally understood.

Denotation, Connotation and Myth

• In semiotics, denotation and connotation are terms describing the relationship between the signifier and its signified.

• Barthes (1977) argued that in film connotation can be (analytically) distinguished from denotation.

• As John Fiske (1982) puts it “denotation is what is filmed, connotation is how it is filmed”.

Making connections?• Evaluating media language is an evaluation of

all micro elements and how they have created meaning to inform us about genre, narrative, representations/ ideology, targeting of audiences.

• This requires us to use semiotic terminology to explain our encoding of elements and codes and conventions within our texts.

• We must also remember to discuss the preferred meaning (Hall, 1980) that we wanted our audience to DECODE.

Micro Elements: Mise-en-Scene

• Mise-en-scène constitutes the key aspect of the pre-production phase of the film and can be taken to include all aspects of production design and Cinematography.

• Mise-en-Scene creates the diegetic world - the fictional space and time implied by the narrative, i.e. the world in which the story takes place.

Aspects of Mise-en-Scene – video and print style

1. Location - settings, set-design and iconography

2. Character – Costume, Properties and Make Up, Actors and Gesture

3. Cinematography - Lighting and Colour

4. Layout and Page Design – colour, juxtaposition of elements.

Micro Elements: Camerawork

• There are Four aspects to camerawork that you need to understand:

1.Shot Types – particularly relevant for print.

2.Camera Composition 3.Camera Movement4.Camera Angles

Continuity• Establishing/Re-establishing Shot• Transitions.• The 180° Line Rule.• Action Match.• Crosscutting.• Cutaway.• Insert Shots.• Shot-Reverse Shot Structures.• Eyeline Match.

Non-Continuity

1. Montage Sequence.2. Flash Back/Forward.3. Ellipsis.4. Graphic Match.

“Media is communication”. Discuss the ways that you have used media language to create meanings in one of your media products.

Think of this question as the first part of your revision...