Using Conventions from Real Media TextsWhat skills did we develop in the understanding of the relationship

between text and audience – i.e. The creation of meaning in texts.

G325: Section A: Theoretical Perspectives in Media

Question 1a)

Mediation – Encoding and Decoding, Open/Closed Texts

• Your answer must focus on skills development from AS and A2.

• How did you encode meaning into your texts to create a preferred (Hall, 1980)/closed (Eco, 1981)reading for the audience based on your knowledge of the conventions of real media texts?

• This is going to involve an assessment of the micro and the macro in relation to audience readings.

Video

• How did you pastiche/develop the conventions of real documentaries/music videos when creating your product.

• Print conventions include:•Shot types, camera angles, camera movement, framing, etc.•Mise-en-scène – lighting, costume, framing, props, blocking etc.•Continuity/non-continuity Editing (including montage, transitions etc.).•Sound.•Music.•Special effects (including onscreen graphics).

Print• How did you pastiche/develop the

conventions of local newspapers when creating your product.

• Print conventions include:•Masthead.•Sell Lines.•Bylines.•Images.•Lead/half lead stories.•Rule offs.•Columns.•Fonts style/size.•Above/below the fold.•Colours.•Captions.•Borders/gutters.•Pull quotes.•Use of language.

Macro Analysis

Pre-production: Ideology and Discourse (discussion or debate): Mediation of Ideas, Representation and Debates/Agenda – what the meanings/messages were.

Production and Post Production: Form and Style: Postmodernism – Bricolage and Intertextuality, Medium and Genre, Narrative.– how the meanings/messages were communicated.

Micro Elements

What choices did you make in terms of the following in order to communicate your meaning to audience (mode of address and persuasion)?

Media Language: •Mise-en-Scène, •Camerawork, •Editing,•Sound

Macro: Ideology and Discourse, and Audience Reception

Stuart Hall (1980) – Dominant/Hegemonic reading. Preferred Meanings.

•Stuart Hall - texts have preferred meanings, but the decoder will not always necessarily read them as intended by the producer as everyone has a different social/cultural background. •Texts that are meant to communicate hegemony will be encoded so that they are easily interpreted and understood by a mass audience.

Umberto Eco (1981) – Open and Closed Meaning.

Texts aimed at large audiences (mass) will be encoded so that the majority of the audience can only decode a very preferred meaning. This is known as a closed text.

An open text is one that has many meanings, or is deliberately ambiguous, and can be understood in different ways by a number of different audience members.

Roland Barthes (1979) – Anchorage and Myth

•Images can be polysemic.•The meaning of images can be pinned down to give a preferred meaning through the process of anchorage (text/music).•All texts are encoded in such a way to reinforce dominant, cultural ideologies or values. •Myth: The way that a text is encoded makes the representation seem ‘natural’ or ‘common sense’.

Macro: Meanings and Messages across AS and A2 coursework

TASK 1: What was the purpose of your text?

TASK 2: What were you trying to communicate to the audience? What was the theme? What was the discourse (point of view/agenda debated) in your texts?

TASK 3: Who was your target audience and what was the main mode of address?

Macro: Postmodernism, Genre, Narrative

Postmodern Style: Irony, Parody, Pastiche, Bricolage, Intertextuality.

Bricolage is the process of deliberately ‘borrowing’ or adapting signs or features from different styles or genres to create a new mixture of meanings (O’Sullivan et. al, 1998).

Pastiche: Bog standard copying of conventions or can be done for bricolage effect. Whichever, this ultimately reinforces their importance in culture and society. Parody is a kind on pastiche which makes fun of the subject.

Intertextuality is the way in which media texts gain their meanings by referring to other media texts that the producers assume that the reader/decoder will be familiar with and recognise (O’Sullivan et. al 1998).

Genre:Was it a hybrid? Did it have a sub-genre? What were the stereotypical elements of real media texts that you encoded into your video?

Narrative: Is it an open/closed narrative? Did it have a beginning, middle and end or not (i.e. follow a classic narrative structure)? Linear or non-linear? Anti-narrative (deliberately doesn’t make any sense – surrealism)?

NOW THINK BACK:There are additions to the ‘Creativity’ PowerPoint now you have studied postmodernism for obvious reasons –this is centred around postmodernism.

TASK 1: How did you pastiche or parody any other media texts? (this includes bricolage and intertextuality).

TASK 2: In relation to the above, can you be more specific in terms of generic conventions of your medium?

TASK 3: In relation to the above, can you be more specific in terms of narrative theory of your medium?

Micro Elements – advanced editing theory

Editing is its most literal sense is to remove unwanted elements.

Production: “a photograph Barthes claimed, involved a mechanical process where the image – that which is denoted – is recorded, but there is also an expressive, human and cultural process that involves the selection and interpretation of such elements as camera angles, framing, lighting and focus” (O’Sullivan, 1998:33).

Post-production: Photography is a process of framing, not pointing. You didn’t just decide what elements to put in your images – it was what to leave out/take out in order to create meaning.

Editing and Sergei Eisenstein (1920s)

Intellectual/Dialectical Montage – process of putting images together so that a new meaning is created through the juxtaposition. It identifies a struggle between opposites.

Charlie Chaplin - Modern Times (1:11 – 1:27)http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHdmaFJ6W6M

Deadmen Don’t Wear Plaid: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dk2qB3SgNp0&feature=related

Vertical Montage - Create meaning through the juxtaposition of an image with some other element (text (anchorage) or music).

“It is impossible to create a media product that is entirely original”. From your own experience discuss the extent to which you used conventions of real media texts to produce your media products and/or to the extent they allowed you to be creative.

“Creativity is always constrained by generic conventions”. To what extent did you adhere to or subvert generic conventions in the creation of your media products.