Media Language

Recap the media language that create meaning in texts.

Understand how to evaluate your coursework against the media

language that you used.

Media Language

Micro elements of Media Language:

Camera, Sound, Editing, Mis-en-scene

Everything from your AS TV Drama exam!

Media Language

Media Language is used for communicating...

(to you) Audience, Genre, Narrative, Representation

Media LanguageTheorists?

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.

Media Language

How do we prepare?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.