Global Lehigh Strategic Initiatives (without descriptions)
Media Language
1. Media Language
Recap the media language that create
meaning in texts.
Understand how to evaluate your
coursework against the media
language that you used.
2. Media Language
Micro elements of Media Language:
Camera, Sound, Editing, Mis-en-scene
Everything from your AS TV Drama exam!
4. Media Language
Theorists?
All covered so far...
Media Language is about how your film communicates
the other key concepts.
Use theorists on Semiotics to evaluate the Media
Language and how it works.
Then, use theorists on Genre, Narrative and Audience to
evaluate how the Media Language affects these
elements.
6. Media Language
Camera
Create a document with four screenshots from
one of your Coursework texts.
Next to each screenshot, describe the Media
Language and Evaluate how it communicates
one of the other Key Concepts.
7. Media Language
Close up of an old fashioned pocket watch on an
antiquated book. Composition is focussed on the
watch. Camera movement travels slowly across
the book.
8. Media Language
Audience – the focus on the watch and old book provide the
audience with a diversion from everyday life as they
communicate a historical setting for the film. Blumler and
Katz identify the concept of Diversion in their Uses and
Gratifications Theory.
9. Media Language
Narrative – the Close up of the watch and book, accompanied
by slow camera movement help to communicate a calm and
studious atmosphere at the start of the film. This state of
equilibrium was identified by Todorov as one of the four stages
of a complete narrative.
10. Media Language
Editing
Create a Pages Document with four sets of
screenshots, representing sequences, from one
of your Coursework texts.
Next to each sequence, describe the Media
Language and Evaluate how it communicates
one of the other Key Concepts.
11. Media Language
A sequence of short takes in a film comprised
of predominantly long takes. The sequence
shows the main character moving to the blinds
and includes two POV shots form his
perspective.
12. Media Language
Genre – this sequence communicates the suspicion and
intrigue of a historical thriller. Steve Neale recognised that
genres are established by instances of difference and
repetition and repetition can be identified in this sequence as
the audience is placed in the main character's shoes,
experiencing the mysterious elements of the genre created by
such films as The Name of the Rose and Gosford Park.
13. Media Language
Representation – by combining the main character with the act
of looking through the blinds, semiotics have been used to
produce a connotation fitting to the film. Ferdinand de
Saussure identified two levels of meaning with semiotics,
denotation and connotation. In this instance, the connotation is
created through the audience's familiarity with the idea of
peering through blinds as a sign of suspicion and paranoia.
14. Media Language
Repeat for Sound and Mis-en-scene
In the exam, choose one or two examples from
each and use these coupled with three
theorists.