This document provides guidance for answering an exam question on media language in relation to a student's film production. It defines media language as the technical elements that communicate meaning in a specific medium, like film. These include mise-en-scene, cinematography, sound, and editing. Students are instructed to analyze how they used these elements in their own production to create meaning and communicate with the audience. While media language can be discussed separately, it is also connected to other concepts like genre, narrative and representation that influenced production decisions.

1. G325 1B: Media Language
L.O: Identify how media language is
used to create meaning in one of
your productions

2. Section A: Theoretical Evaluation of Production
(50 marks)
Section B: Contemporary Media Issues
(50 marks)
The exam is 2 hours which allows for 2x30
minutes for questions 1(a) and 1(b) and one
hour for the postmodernism question in section
B.
G325 Exam

3. • You MUST answer both question 1a and 1b!
• Question 1(a) is about you and your skills
development across your production work,
from Foundation Portfolio to Advanced
Portfolio. You need to describe and evaluate
your skills development from AS to A2.
• Question 1(b): You need to select one
production and evaluate it in relation to a
media concept.

4. • You need to select one production and
evaluate it in relation to a media concept.
• Concepts:
• Representation
• Genre
• Narrative
• Audience
• Media Language
Question 1b: Concepts
What terms do
you remember??
Competition
time!

5. • Media language refers to the ways in which media
producers make meaning in ways that are specific to
the medium in which they are working
• How audiences come to be literate in ‘reading’ such
meaning e.g the ‘language of film’
• These medium-specific languages will often be
closely connected to other media concepts such as
genre or narrative and candidates are at liberty to
make such connections to a greater or lesser extent
in their answers.
Media Language- What ‘they’ say

6. Quotes
• “Film is one of the three universal languages, the
other two: mathematics and music.” Frank Capra
• Marshall McLuhan argues that media are
languages, with their own structures and systems
of grammar.
• When a film is created, it is created in a language,
which is not only about words, but also the way
that very language encodes our perception of the
world, our understanding of it. Andrzej Wajda

7. Media Language
 Is also the conventions that we expect of the
media product
 E.g. music video – editing in time to the music,
montage, direct address, abstract or visuals that
may link to the music or the musical genre, star
construction, the creation of the relationship
between the star and the performer
 Intertextuality is important in music videos and
gives additional meanings for the audience.

8. Media Language
• Trailers – use of narrative/thematic/genre/
signifiers from the film cut together in order to
make the audience want to see the film.
• The ordering of these – so that it gives a taste
of the film and a sense of its visual style
• The use of intertitles to anchor meaning
• The use of sound to anchor meaning
• The use of institutional titles to make
intertextual links to similar films etc.

9. What is Media Language? Race!!
• Mise en scene
• Cinematography
• Editing
• Sound
In your pairs/trios, choose a
station.
You will have two minutes
with your specified colour
pen to write down all of the
media language you can
remember for this element.
You will then… move on!!!

10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMqwSTe
5rvo

11. You are all invited to…

12. You are all
pretentious
film critics!

13. As you watch
the opening-
make notes for
the element of
media language
I give you. For
example…
The use of pull
focus really
emphasised the
anguish of the
protagonist and
reinforced
notions of the
male gaze.

14. Answering a question on Media
Language
L.O: To be able to talk about your
own productions

15. As the group feedback- make
notes on all that they say
about your production- even if
their interpretation was not
what you intended. This could
raise interesting issues of
audience response.

16. Now- focus on your intentions.
Complete the chart with your
choices and the effect.
If the critics made an
exceptionally good point-
include their comments.

17. Media Language Cinematography: camera
shots, angles, movement
Type of media language Example/s: How it creates meaning/is
understood:
(connotations, signifiers)
Links to audience/ other
key concepts:
Mise en Scene
e.g. costumes, props, settings,
iconography, body language
Cinematography: camera
shots, angles, movement
Sound: diegetic, non-diegetic,
synchronous, asynchronous,
dialogue, effects, music
Editing: type (e.g. continuity,
montage etc), style,
transitions, effects, pace

18. Type of media language Example/s: How it creates meaning/is
understood:
(connotations, signifiers)
Links to audience/ other
key concepts:
Mise en Scene
e.g. costumes, props, settings,
iconography, body language
Cinematography: camera
shots, angles, movement
Sound: diegetic, non-diegetic,
synchronous, asynchronous,
dialogue, effects, music
Editing: type (e.g. continuity,
montage etc), style,
transitions, effects, pace

19. Actual question!

20. • P: Mise en Scene e.g. costumes, props, settings,
iconography, body language
• E:
• E: How it creates meaning/is understood:
• (connotations, signifiers)
• L: to audience/ other key concepts
• P: Cinematography: camera shots, angles,
movement, framing
• E:
• E: How it creates meaning/is understood:
• (connotations, signifiers)
• L: to audience/ other key concepts

21. • P: Sound: diegetic, non-diegetic, synchronous,
asynchronous, dialogue, effects, music
• E:
• E
• L:
• P: Editing: type (e.g. continuity, montage etc),
style, transitions, effects, pace
• E:
• E:
• L:

24. • We know that each language consists of learnt “words, phrases, grammar,
punctuation, rules and common practices” (Wohl, Michael; The Language
of Film 2008). Therefore we could transfer this understanding to the micro
elements of film, camera, sound, mise-en-scene, editing etc, and/or go to
a deeper level of analysis with a detailed look at choices of shot sizes,
match-on-action, rules of continuity, framing and how they are
pieced/edited together to create a sentence and therefore a language of
communication.
Unlike the other concepts in this part of the exam, we are not so much
looking at what we are communicating but how we are communicating it.
All of the decisions you made in your short films about which shots,
angles, costume, set design, location, lighting, character movement, etc,
play a part in this discussion.
Arguably the language of film can’t be discussed separately from genre,
narrative, representation and audience as your knowledge of each of
these influences the decisions you made throughout production.
Useful links
http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/language_of_film.ht
ml
http://www.mediaknowall.com/as_alevel/alevel.php?pageID=f
ilmlang