Media Language Question

1b. Explain how meaning is constructed by the use of media language in ONE of your coursework productions.

For my AS production, my group and I created an opening sequence for a thriller film called ‘Fixation’, where a woman tried to comes her son’s death by preaching on a younger boy his age. As a film opening, we needed to make sure it draws in the audience to make them want to continue watching the film till the end, showing and introducing the main themes, genres and settings that we are going to include throughout the film. The opening sequence of a film is one of the most crucial aspects, as it gives almost a rough cut of what you can expect to see in the film and what the storyline is going to be about. We created an effective opening through media language by the way we (the producers) send messages to the audience through mise-en-scene, camera work, editing and sound. As our film was a thriller, we needed to ensure we use conventions of existing thriller movies to ensure our target audience are aware of the genre of our movie. From watching previous thriller films such as SE7EN, we noticed Rick Altman’s semantic elements such as the use of eerie music. We wanted to recreate this typical convention, so through thorough research on YouTube we were able to find the appropriate sound to create a scary feeling to the audience. As we have two main scene’s going on in our opening sequence, we had the decision on whether to use the same music throughout, or to change depending on what scene was showing on screen. We finally come to the conclusion that we would keep the same song throughout, to hint to the audience that the ‘party scene’ is not as normal as it seems and that there is something bad about to happen. We feel as though we successfully portrayed this meaning to the audience just by our use of sound alone. To continue the thriller/eerie feel, we created our titles around Rick Altman’s’ syntactic elements with the theme being stalking and obsession. We created a board which signified ‘Eileen’ our villain from Propp’s theory, taking down details about our protagonist ‘James’. With the use of mise-en-scene and music combined, we have told the audience that the film is going to be about an obsession due to all of the information that is written on the board. Out titles are within this shot, as we pan over the board and see ‘directed by…’ and all of the roles most films include within this camera work. We also used technology to enhance the effect that this had on the audience, by using the software Adobe Premiere in post-production to make our production more effective. We used the ‘ghosting’ effect to make the layers the board go over each other so it looked like this was a point of view camera angle and the information was being looked at over and over again by Eileen. To emphasise the use of technology today by how much it has an impact on people’s lives, we included a social networking site ‘twitter’ to express to our target audience the information that can be gained from social networking sites and how you need to be cautious of your safety online. We constantly used over the shoulder shots when the camera was on Eileen, and this was purposely done. From previous experience with most horror and thriller films, the villain is usually remained very mysterious and the producers try to leave it all to the audience’s imagination. We also see long shots of the villain Eileen walking towards a house, which we see the party scenes happening where our protagonist James is. This then leaves the audience asking enigma codes like ‘Why has she chose him? What does she want from him?’ and this follows Barthes codes theory, where media language is used which provokes the audience to ask questions. These questions that each viewer has, are not revealed until the main film is starting. We done this intentionally, so the audience don’t receive any answers in the opening sequence which means the plot is then much more mysterious which supports typical conventions of a thriller movie. We can also see how Levi Strauss’ binary opposition theory is applied throughout the opening sequence, as each character is shown in complete different lime lights to each other. James is shown in a bright environment, surrounded by lots of people, in colourful clothing and is very young. However, Eileen is shown all alone, in dark lighting in dark clothes which instantly signifies the difference between the good and evil characters. From reviewing all of our camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene decisions, it is clear to see how media language is used to convey a message to the audience. This follows Stuart Hall’s theory of decoding/encoding – how producers decode a message and want the audiences to encode it. I believe that every decision we made as a group we conveyed meaning well, and this was supported by the audience feedback that we received when we pitched our final production. The majority of our audience feedback understood what was happening in our opening sequence, with the use of Barthes action and symbolic codes and media language. 

Media Language Theorists

Blumler and Katz- Uses and Gratifications theory

- Explaining how your use of media language offers these to an audience

Personal Identification
Information
Entertainment
Social Interaction

Information

• finding out about relevant events and conditions in immediate surroundings, society and the world
• seeking advice on practical matters or opinion and decision choices
• satisfying curiosity and general interest
• learning; self-education
• gaining a sense of security through knowledgePersonal Identity
  
• finding reinforcement for personal values
• finding models of behaviour
• identifying with valued other (in the media) 
• gaining insight into one's self
  Integration and Social Interaction
  
• gaining insight into circumstances of others; social empathy
• identifying with others and gaining a sense of belonging
• finding a basis for conversation and social interaction
• having a substitute for real-life companionship
• helping to carry out social roles
• enabling one to connect with family, friends and society
  Entertainment
  
• escaping, or being diverted, from problems
• relaxing
• getting intrinsic cultural or aesthetic enjoyment
• filling time
• emotional release
• sexual arousal

Propp's Character theory

How your media language helps the audience identify particular characters as heroes/villains

Hero, Villain, Princess, 

Stuart Hall

Explain that your decision to use the media language you chose was to create a 'preferred' reading to your text. But that audiences are used to Encoding and Decoding tests and could take a negotiated or opposition reading.

Stuart Hall is an active audience theorist.  Hall states that audiences actively look for meaning in a text. He states that meaning is encoded into text by producers and decoded by the audience. The way the audience decode these texts and messages they get relies on their own experiences and social demographics, which are different for everyone. The theory is split into three parts, and Hall states that all texts are polysemic, which means they can have multiple meanings.  Texts can be read in different ways depending on the audiences identity, cultural knowledge and opinions. Texts can be read in three ways:

• Preferred reading
• Negotiated reading
• Oppositional reading

Preferred reading is when the audience respond to the product the way the producers expect and want them to.

Negotiated reading is when the audience partly agree with the message or product but may disagree with other parts.

Oppositional reading is when the audience is in complete disagreement with the product/message.

Rick Altman

Explain how you used media language to include semantic elements (e.g. signs such as blood, eerie music, knife, darkness) or to signify syntactic elements (such as themes like love, revenge)

Semantic Elements: Blood, Eerie music, Knife, Darkness 

Syntactic Elements: (Theme) love, revenge

Representation question 1

For age, we used a stereotypical representation of teenagers. During our opening sequence, we featured teenagers drinking alcohol as a house party. We used a strobe light effect to create a sense of distortion for the audience almost making them feel like they are involved. Our target audience was teenagers, therefore we wanted to make them feel a sense of self representation so they could relate to the situations on screen. However, with the oppose, the older woman Eileen, we used a stereotypical claim that females do a lot of things just for male attention. This supports McRobbies theory of male and female intentions. When Eileen is walking up the drive, the lighting shows the stereotypes of older people trying to almost ruin teenagers fun. This contrasts with the party scene as it shows a clear binary opposition between the two. The dark setting shows a clear pathetic fallacy which sets the mood and tells the audience how to feel about each character.

Within Gender, we challenged stereotypes for the different roles each character plays in our film. Stated by Propp, usually villain's are male dominated and usually they target younger girls as they are stereo-typically known as much weaker and more vulnerable. However, we reversed the roles to make it more appealing to more people as it is something that is not shown as much. When Eileen is in front of the board she created, we are by the mise-en-scene that her costume is very dark as she is dressed in all black. Black is a connotation of evil, so this informs us that this is the evil character, especially in her setting too. However James, the protagonist, is shown in a different way, as his costume is very bright which contrasts with Eileen so shows the opposition between the two. This shows Levi Strauss' theory of binary opposition, as it shows the characters as complete opposites as Eileen is shown in a negative way and James is shown in a positive way.

Representation theorists.

[things to talk about]

• Age
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Class
• Ethnicity

                                           

• Actors
• Mise-en-scene
• Camera Shots
• Sound
• Editing

McRobbie- Men are strong, women are weak

Cohen- Representation of a group as a whole

Propp- Characters- Villain, Hero, Dispatcher

Narrative Question 1.

Apply theories of narrative to one of your productions.

The production that I am going to talk about is my AS Level film opening, Fixation, that I created last year as part of my coursework. During our opening sequence, the first character that we see is Eileen, one of our main characters. We conform to Barthes' theory of Codes, as we include no dialogue to create the atmosphere in our sequence. The narrative is told by the enigma code, action code and symbolic code. Even though there is no dialogue throughout our whole opening sequence, the story is still being told and the audience can understand the narrative just by the actions that are shown on the screen. The parallel music sets the mood which makes the audience acknowledge the difference between two characters. We see Eileen adding things to a board, and we see lots of information about someone who we have not yet seen or do not know who he is. This then leaves us an enigma code, How does she know him? What does she want from him? Where did she gather all this information from? which immediately leaves the audience wanting to know more. The symbolic code portrays Eileen as a dark, evil character and this is shown through her costume. She is wearing black, and black is a connotation of evil, therefore the audience will put two and two together and instantly know she is the villain within this film. The pathetic fallacy also creates a setting to make the audience feel a certain way about the evil character.
This then supports Propp's theory, as we have set characters which shows typical conventions of any film. However, we subvert to Propp's theory as our characters are not the typical expectations that people would expect. He stated that the character in distress who needs help is usually a women, however we have reversed this so the woman is the villain, and the protagonist is male. However as the plot goes on, we also establish that there is a villain within a villain in our story, as Eileen is suffering from a mental health issue due to what happened to her son. This then gives our film a unique selling point and an unusual plot due to this not being very popular in the film industry. Our dispatcher is Eileen's husband, an older man, which conforms to typical stereotypes of heroes, a strong man.  This then links to Todorov's theory of equilibrium, as there is several obstacles that each character has to overcome and they take the audience on this journey with them. Within our film, you will come across several things that characters go through, like Eileen loses her son, then her husband, then she takes James, so James has to try and escape and then get over his trauma. The regular plot twists will keep the audience interested and want them to continue to watch the film. 
Levi Strauss' theory of binary opposition conforms to our opening sequence. We have our evil character Eileen, who is dressed in all black and this contrasts with our protagonist James, who is dressed colourfully therefore the audience can distinguish the difference between each role in the film. James is also shown with lots of people around him, but Eileen is shot on her own, this shows that James is popular and Eileen is lonely. James is partying which shows he is happy, whereas Eileen's posture and attitude tells us she is very lonely due to her being very solo throughout the sequence. 

Narrative Theories

Propp- Characters Theory.
Villain: Eileen, who had a mental illness due to her son's death.
Protagonist: James, vulnerable young boy.
Princess: Megan (James' love interest)
Dispatcher: The husband (Who saves James)

Levis Strauss- Binary Opposition
Two opposite characters.
James- young. popular. happy, good, male, healthy
Eileen- old, alone, sad, evil, female, unhealthy

Todorov- Equilibrium
Different obstacles that arise in the film.
Eileen loses her son, then her husband leaves, then she kidnaps James, James has to get away.

Barthes- Codes
Enigma code- why is she stalking James?
Action code- (no dialogue) Eileen is evil, due to the music that is shown with her presence
Symbolic code- (How she is shown) Eileen's costume and posture shows that she is evil.