Post 8

Media Language

Media Language could be seen to be the understanding of the micro elements of film including camera, sound, mise-en-scene and editing and a deeper analysis of shot sizes, match-on-action, rules of continuity, framing and how they are pieced and edited together to create a sentence and therefore a language of communication. The language of film arguably the language can’t be used separately from genre, narrative, representation and audience as the knowledge of each of these influences the decisions you made throughout production.

When constructing the plot of our short film we were led by the conventions of the short film genre, for example, depicting an underlining message and constructing the story around the development of one character. This is shown in my opening sequence last year where we started to develop the film around the character of Liam and the story of his mixed up life where he turns to drug dealing.  You also want your film to be successful with its target audience and therefore the constraints of the conventions of that genre need to be acknowledged, used or diverted from, so that while audience expectations are fulfilled at the same time you are offering up a film that will be remembered for its ‘creativity’.  

Film has a seperate language known as the media language, its a way of communicating using images which is known universally. Like other languages it has rules and conventions, which we can deconstruct and understand. The narrative world of the film is also known as the diegesis which can be divided up into two areas, the mise-en-scene and the mise-en-shot. The mise-en-scene is the things we find in the scene. Most things we will find within the scene are all or mostly significant however nothing is accidental because film is not reality it is a representation of it. This includes the actors, set, costume and lighting. The mise-en-scene could reflect the production values of the films. The mise-en-shot is the process of translating mise-en-scene into shots and the relationship between the two, this includes the camera position, camera movement, shot scale (long shot/medium shot/close up), duration of the single shot, the pace of the editing and the depth of focus.

Post 7

Audience Theory

When looking at audience theory we looked at four short films and from using our background research on audience theory we analysed these using some of the following possible audience receptions:

- Dominant Hegemonic Position
- Negotiated Hegemonic Position
- Oppositional Hegemonic Position
- Aberrant Decoding
- Moral Panic
- Mode of Address

Audinece theory in existing short films
About a Girl

The first of the four short films I watched was About a Girl. This short film looks at a teenage girl who is experiencing her dreams of the average working class teenage girl. The Dominant Hegenomic Position in this short film was that it was intended to shock the audience with its ending and leave the audience with an enigma. Throughout this short film whenever the audience sees the young girl start to build up emotion it cuts to the next scene therefore to some we see that the audience won't sympathise with this young girl till we see the end scene. At the end of this short film we see her drop a baby into the canal, to begin with we see this girl is mixed up and reinforces the point that she has not got a strong relationship with her family as they would have realised this. The fact that she drops a baby into the canal shows that she can't hide these things from her mum which she claims she could. The Negotiated Hegemonic Position that the audience could see from watching this short film is the effect that teenage pregnancy would have had on the young girl. There is a short mention of the girl talking on the bus of when she 'grows up' and the fact that she has had a baby could have in some way made her feel that she is 'grown up' and seen as an adult. The oppositional hegemonic position from watching this film is that initially the audience may agree with the message coming across however there are parts of the short film clip that in some peoples opinion are wrong. One of these segments within this clip is when she throws the baby into the canal. Parts of the audience, including religous viewers would feel that someone killing a life is wrong. Some would also blame the death of this young baby on her parents as she is obviously isolated from them and if they had made more of an effort to get closer to her and look after her they would have known she was pregnant and would have been able to put it up for adoption. After the audience have finished watching this short film clip it will lead them into a moral panic. They will leave wanting to know more background on the girl and to get more of an insight into her interesting life. It will also leave the audience with unanswered questions, they will wonder why she is pregnant at such a young age and what she has done to create such a tense atmosphere and a distant relationship from her parents, whether her pregnancy has caused this.

Bro
The second film I watched when analysing audience is Bro. This short film consisted of a teenager coming to terms with his brother's disability. From the beginning of the clip the audience see that the teenager is his brothers main carer, this is shown when the teenager and his brother are making a cup of tea together and from that moment we see their main bond and how distant they are from their mother, shown through how hard she is having to work. As an audience we also see that this family come from a lower class background due to the council house they are living in and the area around it, this is also shown through the mise-en-scene of the characters clothing and items in the house, but also through the plot as the mum is working nearly every day to get money to support her family and is rely on her son to look after his disabled brother. From this as an audience we can feel sympathy for the family as not only do they have to work hard to earn some money to keep their family afloat but they also have to work hard to support their disabled child/brother. Not only do the audience feel sympathy for the family as a whole but we feel sorry for the teenage boy. He is struggling to come to terms with his brothers disability and with a family that cannot support him on a constant basis because they are busy earning their keep he is unable to learn how to deal with it at his own pace and therefore resorts to putting his brother through danger and hell to impress a girl, which makes us feel sympathy for his brother because he has been left to fight for himself and do things that menatlly he is uncapable of doing. At the end of Bro the audience sees a resolution as the teenage boy realises that his brother's disability is accepted within the community and he shouldn't be ashamed by any part of his life.

Pop Art
Pop Art is a short film about a young boy who is struggling with life and has no relationship with his father until we see a real insight into this boys feelings when a new 'blow up' boy enters his school. The preferred reading into this short film is the fact that the 'blow up' boy is bullied this is 'preffered' because from the position of the audience this is a common and familiar situation. The fact that this boy is bullied puts the audience in an uncomfortable position as it brings back memories to the audience of times when they may have been bullied or bullied others and feel guilty. Other parts of the audience may not concentrate on this out of place 'blow up' boy they may focus on the young boy who is isolated from his family and classmates, we see this primarily through the bad language, 'shithead' but also through the mise-en-scene of the shabby home he lives in and his scruffy uniform. The reason this rough background could be important is because the audience are able to have a nice relationship with the 'blow up' boy because he is helping the young boy to stay on track and his bad attitude has now turned into a better one. The audience will leave this short film feeling sad because the blow up boy has been deflated but has gone for a better life up in the sky and has succesfully changed the young boys attitude towards life.

Jade
One of the short films I watched when analysing audience is 'Jade'. In the opening of the film the audience have no connection with this girl. We can tell by her expression she is not happy and the blue atmosphere of the swimming pool, water and the pregnancy test being positive comes out blue, the colour blue is a cold colour and could show her insular attitude and when comparing the colour blue to warmer colours like red we see that she doesn't bring a warm and friendly atmosphere towards the audience. It's not till later on in the film that the audience start to connect with the girl when we realise that she is in a difficult situation as the audience we know she is in a relationship with an older man but we also know she has a relationship with someone her age. We are left with an enigma at the end of the short film as the audience don't know which one the dad is we are just left with a shot of her and her boyfriend in the car with her expression being sad.

Post 6

Representation theory

Representation

• Describes the signs that stand in for and take the place of something else. It is through representation people know and understand the world and reality through the act of naming it. Signs are manipulated in order to make sense of the world.

What does this mean?

• This means that media texts are intentionally composed, lit, written, framed, cropped, captioned, branded, targeted and censored by their producers, and that they are entirely artifical versions of the reality we percieve around us.

So why do we pay attention to these biased interpretations of reality

• It is important to remember that without the media, our perception of reality would be very limited, and that we, as an audience, need these artifical texts to mediate our view of the world, in other words we need the media to make sense of reality. Therefore representation is a fluid, two way process, producers position a text somewhere in relation to reality and audiences assess a text on its relationship to reality.

Signs

• Signs help us to decipher what exactly is being represented. Signs are the smallest piece of meaning we can use to decode meaning. Almost anything can act as a sign and more than one sign makes up a code. For example glasses and a bowtie makes the audience think of a nerd.

Why is understanding representation important?

• Ideologies
• Cultural beliefs or a way of looking at things.
• Often thought of as common sense
• Things we believe as true but aren't necessarily true.
• Media creates and nurtures these ideas creating possible false truths for us to identify with.

Representation of Gender
The representation of men and women. Gender could be seen to be the basic category we use for sorting human beings, and it is a key issue when discussing representation. Essential elements of our own identity, and the identities we assume other people to have, come from concepts of gender, what does it mean to be a boy or a girl? Many objects, not just humans, are represented by the media as being particularly masculine or feminine, particularly in advertising, and we grow up with an awareness of what constitutes 'appropriate' characteristics for each gender.

Representation of Women
Feminism has been around for over 30 years yet media representations of women have not dramatically changed. Representations of women across all media tend to highlight the following:

• Beauty (with narrow conventions)
• Size/physique (within narrow conventions)
• Sexuality
• Emotional (as opposed to intellectual) dealings
• Relationships (as opposed to independance/freedom)

Women are often represented as being part of a context (family, friends, colleagues) and working/thinking as part of a team. In drama, they tend to take role of helper (Propp) or object, passive rather than active. Often their passivity extends to victimhood. Men are still represented as TV drama characters up to 3 times more frequently than women, and tend to be the predominant focus of news stories. The representations of women that do make it onto our screens tend to be stereotypical in terms of conforming to the communities expectations, and characters that don't fit into these expectations are therefore seen as dangerous or deviant. Discussions of women represented in the media tend to focus on their physical appearance rather than to the reality experienced across the world.

Representations of Men

• Masculity has more rigid stereotypes compared to femininity
• Representations of men in the media tend to focus on physical and intellectual strength, power, sexual attractiveness, physique and independance
• Male characters are often represented as isolated, and not needing to rely on others, (the lone hero) . If men are seen as being part of a family, it is usually part of the resolution of the narrative
• Men are starting to find it difficult to live up to their media representation as women are to theirs mainly because of the increased media focus on masculinity, for example the growing market of male lifestyle and health magazines. 
• As media representations of masculinity become more specifically targeted at audiences with product promotion in mind, men are encouraged to aspire to be like their role models. This is an unrealistic target and there is growing unawareness of this.

Representations of Age

• As the audience we are quick to judge people on their age. We criticise all ages for all different reasons including the way they dress. This is because of the media, we live in an age obsessed world and all ages are subject to some of the most rigid stereotypes. There are a few common representations of age including the rebellious teen, senile old women or man, male in a mid-life crisis, middle age woman clinging to her youth and silly old men.

Representation - further detail 
Representation refers to the construction in any medium (especially the mass media) of aspects of 'reality' such as people, places, objects, events, cultural identities and other abstract concepts. These representations may be in speech or writing as well as media products.

Representation is a key concept in Media studies, much debated and discussed, examples including the riots. This means that some critics highly rate the way media representation affects our world, 'Representational values in the media shape our understanding of the world we live in and shape ourselves as individuals'. Critics debate as to whether representations in the media reflect cultural climate or do they create it. Who affects the representation?

All media texts are created in a particular institutional context, as film companies need to make money and so they therefore don't break away from conventions. This context will modify the representation. There is an interplay between the target audience, the institution and the generic conventions.

The target audience has expectations which are influenced by inscription in texts. The target audience will find representations aspirational, for example Jordan or the representation will link to the values of the target audience.

The institution will require the biggest audience for its product, unless it is the BBC or a non profit organisation, which can affect the type of representation we get.

The generic conventions provide the framework that we expect and thus the representations we expect. Genre has a big impact on representation, limiting the kinds of representation involved by the use of stereotypes or archetypes and by certain values being representation.

The micro elements of texts create larger meanings and values which construct representations. The types of codes vary depending on media form (film, tv, magazines etc)

• Camera angles, shots, framing, shot composition
• Editing
• Sound and dialogue
• Mise en scene
• Narrative

Representation in three existing media products
Representation of gender in Doctor Who
Doctor Who represents the idea of men being in more power than women, this is shown when the Doctor gives Rose commands like 'off you go' showing the authority he has over her. However a few seconds after the "ditsy blonde" Rose is then portrayed as being clever as she is able to work out where she is, while her boyfriend stands there looking dazed and is therefore seen as "not just a pretty face". Rose is also seen as the strong female instead of the meek stereotype as her boyfriend faints at the sight of outer space whereas she is able to cope with it showing how strong she is. Women are stereotypically seen as sex objects and this is portaryed through the woman Rose who flicks her hair towards The Doctor and says 'I'll do anything'.

Representation of gender in Halloween
In the film 'Halloween' women are seen as having stereotypical domestic roles this is shown through the scene where the girls are seen baby-sitting, cooking and cleaning, which stereotypically would be seen as a role that the women would fulfill. Annie and Lynda are alson seen in a sexual way and portrayed as sex objects as Annie takes off her clothes and changes into a shirt and when Lynda flaunts her body. There is also references to social status and men being of a higher status, shown through the character of Annie's dad being the sheriff. Annie and Judith are also driven to be with their boyfriends. However Laurie is not seen as a sex object or in a sexual way as she isn't concerned with her appearance and is not driven by the thought of having a boyfriend.

Representation of age in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
In the film 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory we see the representation of old-age as being ill and sick and them being a 'sickly old person'. The majority of the adults  are not presented as greedy or desirous of worldly things so much as they are as enablers of their children. Mike TV’s parents gladly serve him TV dinners so they don’t have to tell their son to come to the dinner table. His dad even says Mike need only be 12 to get a real gun. Veruca’s father shuts down his factory to have his employees unwrapping candy bars. Augustus’s father eats a microphone. Violet’s father is so busy trying to shill his car dealership he barely notices what’s going on. Grandpa Joe is supposed to be the kindly loving grandparent we all did or wish we had. Grandpa Joe is supposed to be the kindly loving grandparent we all did or wish we had.

How will representation affect the designs for my new short film
When designing my short film I will research into the representations of characters concerned, looking at gender, age, ethnicity and sexuality.