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.