Representation of Ethnicity in the Media

http://www.slideshare.net/lilyvalentine/ethnicity-28406584

Microcodes Camera Shots Revision (Will be adding more to)

Extreme Close Up

An extreme close up shot is a shot usually of the eyes of someone. It is used to show the emotions of that character. This helps the audience to understand what is happening in a scene and the emotions of a character.


This extreme close up shot of Magneto shows his emptiness and lack of emotion, despite being hurt (blood).

A close up shot is used to show the entire face and emotions of the character. It shows all of the face including the mouth and eyes.


This is a close up of Briony Tallis from Atonement.

Medium close up shot is a shot in between a mid shot and a close up shot.

This is a medium close up shot of Alice in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

Meet the Superhumans homework

Meet The Superhumans

 

The opening of this advert shows an Olympic swimming pool, the lights begin turned off before being switched on. This could link to the idiom, “making light of a situation”, as this is exactly what the Paralympic contenders have done. They take their unfortunate situations that have caused their disability and not let these things prevent them from taking part in sporting events. This gives a positive representation of disabled people, as they are overcoming things that were seemingly impossible after a truly tragic event.

The following shots continue to back this representation of gender in the same way, the basket-ball, the race track (which is shown with a moving camera suggesting it is the movement of someone along it?), the bike track, the Olympic arena. Sports would not normally be associated with disabled people, however it is in this case, representing the contenders as being heroic and brave. This links to the name “Superhumans” that is given to the contenders, similar to the word Superheroes.

Low key lighting is used to highlight a medium shot of the first introduced contender, presumably a man. The lighting hides his facial features and only shows his silhouette, a powerful effect which clarifies that disabled people contending in the Paralympics are the main focus in this advert.

The tilted angle shots are used several time throughout the advert, perhaps shows the sight of a contender and representing how life for them is not straightforward due to their disability but they are still taking part in sporting events despite this. This again backs up my first point, of a heroic image being created of disabled people.

The medium shot of a man looking directly ahead, not at the camera, shows his determination and suggests he is trying to calm his nerves before taking part in an event. His serious expression shows that this is a very important thing to him and suggests he wants to be successful.

There are a few more low key lighting shots which contrast against the high key lighting shots. This creates an almost flashing effect which adds to the speeding up pace of the advert. The music is very sport appropriate as it has a slow intro which builds up, representing how a sports contender might feel in an event. The lead up from the beginning of the song could represent the growing tension and nerves that are felt by the sporting event contenders.

The extreme long shot of a man in a wheelchair on a racing track could link back to one of the earlier shots, where the camera is moving along the track from the point of view of someone racing around the track. This is an anaphoric reference, as the disabled competitors are beginning to be introduced by the advert.

A long shot of a girl in a shower shows that she is missing a limb, she is wearing a swimming costume. This tells us that she is taking part in a swimming event at the Paralympics, she has overcome her disability and is competing. This makes her a “Superhuman”, as despite her missing an arm, she is swimming. This is something unimaginable in terms of possibility for people who aren’t disabled, as they will use both arms and legs when swimming.

The shots begin to focus in on the disabilities of the competitors, before zooming out or moving the camera to show them engaging in a sport. This shows a contrast between their physical state and what they are capable of doing. This causes the audience to feel sympathy towards them, when shown their disabilities, before also feeling in awe towards their capabilities of overcoming the disability they face, when they are shown competing.

The close ups of their face shows that they are un-phased by their disability and are concentrating on their capabilities on their field rather than what they can’t do outside of their sport. This also represents disabled people as being very stoic, they get on with things.

High and low key lighting homework

High and low key lighting in Harry Potter

Lighting can be used to have a dramatic effect, it can make important objects or characters stand out. It can also affect the mood of a scene, making it look for example, bright and cheerful, or dark and mysterious. There are two types of key lighting, low key and high key.

Low key lighting: created by using only key and back lights, produces sharp contrasts of light and dark areas, and deep distinct shadows or silhouettes are formed.

High key lighting: more filler lights are used, lighting is natural and realistic to our eyes. It produces brightly lit sets or a sunny day.

This is an example of low key lighting from Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. It gives the scene an eerie mood, and suggests that the characters can’t see where they are going due to the darkness.

In contrast to this, here is an example of high key lighting from the Deathly Hallows part 2. It is the scene where Harry has entered a spiritual world and encounters Albus Dumbledore. The lighting gives the scene a heavenly like feel, as there are no shadows or areas of darkness, perhaps implying how in this paradise that Harry has entered, there is nothing sinister or evil.

breaking the fourth wall homework

Breaking the Fourth Wall

The fourth wall is an imaginary “wall” dividing the audience from the action of the set. Breaking this wall occurs either when the audience is directly addressed by someone within the set or when someone within the set acknowledges that they are fictional.

This can have the effect of humour, as it brings the characters out of the fictional story into the real world.

Examples of this are in The Emperor’s New Groove as the llama will pause what is happening on the screen and directly address the audience to try to explain what is happening in the film from his perspective. He literally scribbles on the fourth wall. This has the intended effect of humour for older audiences (parents, older siblings etc) who might be watching the film with younger children. They are more likely to understand this concept of humour than younger children.

In Two and a Half Men, there is a scene that has three incidents of where the fourth

wall is broken. Watch this clip bellow ↓

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=24juICcNUTQ

Firstly, Walden breaks the fourth wall by hinting that they are in a TV drama by saying “Sort of like a recap on a reality show?” This has the intended effect of humour, because they are in fact on a TV show. He then says, “Shame we can’t let America vote on it”, which again he is hinting at something which would be possible to do and again breaking the fourth wall as he toys with the idea that they are on a television program, rather than accepting the fact that they are fictional characters. To these subtle breaking the fourth wall attempts more obvious, Alan then goes and makes this very obvious by turning to face the camera, looking directly at the audience and saying “or can we?” The fact that he looks straight on at the camera alone is significant to breaking the fourth wall, as in most TV dramas, the characters will address each other by facing each other, not the audience. Also by saying “or can we?” he is questioning his own reality and his place within that TV series. This, again, has the intended effect of humour.

Another effects of breaking the fourth wall could be to scare the audience. I could not find any examples of this for films or TV, however there are many video games that will use the breaking of the fourth wall to scare the player. For example, Eternal Darkness, which has a sanity bar, will produce game like glitches on purpose in order to cause the player to feel scared and uncomfortable, such as turning the volume down to silent automatically during a tense fighting scene.

One final subtle example of breaking the fourth wall is in Scrubs. Season 8 episode 1, at the very beginning JD walks along the corridor towards the camera. He then turns to the side and points down at the bottom right hand corner of the screen and says, “That’s new”. His finger is pointing at the “abc” logo, but within the TV drama it is implied that he is pointing at the janitors watch. The relevance of this is that Scrubs, previously owned by NBC, was now being screened by abc. By JD pointing out the watch being new, he also shows that the abc logo is new.

Desperate Housewives Homework

Desperate Housewives Opening

 

The feature of Adam and Eve gives the connotation that women are responsible for the fall of man. However, the scene clearly shows the snake passing Eve the apple. The snake is often perceived as a male, and the connotations of this suggest that men brought on their own destruction; the snake passes the fruit to Eve before disappearing into the tree, then a large apple falls crushing Adam, perhaps the snake pushed it onto him? This mocks the theory that women are to blame for the fall of man, making female audiences feel powerful and in a sense are getting revenge for sexism. This also fits in well with its subgenre of rom-com, linking to its main target audience of women.

 

The Egyptian mummy in the temple, with child figures popping up connotes that women are child bearers and mothers. The short scene mocks this traditional role of women, implying that the ideology should be laughed. It is made comical by over emphasizing the childbirths, the mother appears to drown in amongst all of the children, her arms waving in the air helplessly. It could also be thought of as a play on words, the term mummy describes a mother and the body of a person who has been preserved after death.

 

The characters from the Dutch painting – the Arnolfini couple are shown in a way that mocks the male gender and sympathises with the female gender. The man in the couple takes a bite out of a banana before throwing it over his shoulder for his wife, who is pregnant, to sweep away. It is just viewable his eyes flickering slightly in her direction, almost prompting her to sweep it away. The connotations of the banana could be that it is male genitalia. This could be interpreted as his ungentlemanly behaviour, as he expects his wife to continue domestic chores, despite being far along in her pregnancy, maybe hinting that the careless attitude of men towards their wives could make them have homosexual traits. Another interpretation is that the show is aimed at women, so it emasculates men who have been unfair to women. It gives women power in this sense, taking away the men’s pride. It could also be used to show how men treat women unfairly and it promotes the ideologies that men are lazy. This fits with the rom com genre, where men and women who are together have ‘comical’ issues; men not helping out and expecting their wives to do all the work with keeping on top of the house.

 

In the ‘American Gothic’ painting by Grant Wood the ideology that men go out to work whilst women stay at home is supported. This supports the idea that men are ‘stronger’ and women are represented as only capable of doing house chores. This is shown by the positioning of the characters, as the man is further from the house than the woman. Neither of the characters look very satisfied, suggesting they are unhappy with their relationship (presumably they are married). In this case women are seen as objects, they are either to be kept at home or not allowed to work or they are only for the purpose of looking attractive and sexual relations. This is implied by the wife being stood nearer to the background house, suggesting she doesn’t go out to work. Also it is implied by the younger woman who is wearing provocative clothing; she hooks her finger on his collar and winks. This scene also supports the stereotype that men are only satisfied when they are getting ‘good sex’. This is suggested by the appearance of the younger woman makes the man smile and seem very content. Another stereotype is shown, as women are seen as emotional, presented by the facial expression of the lady, she appears hurt when she sees her husband adopting a ‘mistress’ (again, another stereotype, men having mistresses).

Film Title Sequence Homework

http://www.slideshare.net/lilyvalentine/analysis-of-rome-title-sequence

Analysing Film Opening Homework

http://www.slideshare.net/lilyvalentine/scooby-doo-monsters-unleashed

Mise en Scene Beginners Guide Homework

http://www.slideshare.net/lilyvalentine/beginners-guide-to-mise-en-scene

Semiotics Homework

Semiotics

(The study of the meaning of signs)

 

What do these signs mean?

Although they may seem obvious to you, each sign has come to mean very different things to different people.  The skull and crossbones has its root in piracy, since then it has come to represent a warning against poison.  It has also been used in a children’s cartoon, and features on car stickers and badges.

The swastika, in ancient times, was used religiously to symbolise the power of God or nature.  The German Nazi party adopted it in the 1930s, so that it became linked to fascist politics.  It has since been used by Hell’s Angels and punks on the backs of jackets and on Destroy shirts.  Other groups have revived it to signify racial hatred of ethnic minorities in Britain.

Such signs do not in themselves mean anything at all.  People give them meaning, and it is the study of such meanings that is the purpose of semiotics.

A sign can be any physical form to which we give meaning, including words, pictures, colours, clothes, etc.

A sign, such as a word or image, is composed of two parts:

a)     The physical form – that which we can see or hear.  This is what we call the signifier.

b)     The meaning of the form, which is called the signified.

For example, the word ‘cat’, composed of the letters C, A and T is a signifier, which those people who speak English all agree signifies a four legged, furry mammal with a tail and pointy teeth which makes a ‘miaow’ sound.

Discussion point

When you hear or read the word ‘cat’ what image do you see in your mind?  Describe the image you see here (be as particular as you can – size, colour, etc):

                 

Cute

Small

Black

Do we all see the same ‘cat’ in our mind’s eye? 

Yes (my mum said pretty much the same), but this depends on the representations of cats we are exposed to. My mum and I both owned a small, cute black cat called Tia which could influence what we imagine when we hear the word cat.

Why do you think this is?

The media creates an un-generalised image of something so that we all see the representation of it as the same. For the cat in this case, there are examples of black cats in the media such as Salem from Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and Cat Woman who wears a black suit. Also most people adore small kittens, represented in The Aristocats (one of these kittens is black) and the cute kitten in the surprised kitten video on YouTube.

It would be surprising if everyone in the whole group imagined identical cats.  The reason we don’t is because we bring our own experiences and knowledge to our understanding of signs.  I have had three different tabby cats, so it is my pet’s image that will probably first spring to my mind when I hear the word ‘cat’.  This means that we all read slightly different meanings into signs all the time because we use our own personal experience to understand them.

Subject Position

On a bigger scale this means that we will all read media texts slightly differently because we approach them from our own personal subject position.  Our subject position is everything that goes to make up what we are and where we fit in the world.  For example, my subject position is female,, white, married with no children, not very rich teacher who lives in Bristol.  Because of this, I might read some images very differently to somebody who is male, black, gay, 26, wealthy and lives in Scotland.  This is because we will have had very different life experiences.

What do you think your subject position is?  Note it down here:

In a relationship, weird, lives in Portishead, female and shy.

 

Denotation and Connotation

Think back to the example we used to illustrate the meaning of ‘signifier’ and ‘signified’ – the word (or sign) ‘cat’.  We discovered that CAT is the signifier, and the image in our mind is the signified.  The signified is the obvious meaning of the signifier or sign – the denotation.  But many signs have other meanings as well as their obvious ones – these are meanings that they have picked up from the culture that they are used by.  We call these extra meanings connotations.

For example, think about the word (or signifier) ‘heart’.  The obvious meaning (denotation or signified) of this sign is, according to the dictionary: ‘the hollow muscular organ which makes the blood circulate’.  Now think about the underlying meanings of the word that we use in our culture – for example, love, courage, warmth and affection, passion, comfort and good health.  These are its connotations.

Exercise

Note down the denotations and connotations of the following signs:

Sign	Denotation	Connotation(s)
‘Rose’	A pretty flower.	Love, romance, beauty.
‘Gold’	An expensive metal.	Wealth, royalty, high status.
‘Mouse’	A small animal.	Disney- Mickey Mouse, helpless, scared.
‘Wicked’	Another word for evil.	Witches, crows, demons.
‘Black’	A dark tone.	Evil, scary, night, empty.
‘White’	A light tone.	Bright, day, snow.
‘Feminine’	A way of behaving often associated with women.	Make up, shopping, ponies, long hair, pink.
‘Masculine’	A way of behaving often associated with men.	Strong, athletic, un-emotional, short hair, blue.

Now do the same thing with the following:

Sign	Denotation	Connotation(s)
ÿ	A dove, a type of bird.	Christianity, hope.
!	A spider.	Spiderman, scary, super powers, poisonous.
%	Trophy.	Winning, achievements, rewards, congratulations.
	Lips.	Kissing, smiling, lipstick.
	Graduation hat.	Achievement, success, intellectuality.

Finally, once more think back to the signifier ‘cat’.  When we are considering the connotations of an image we need to think not only about what is represented, but also about how it is represented.  This also affects the meanings of a sign.

Consider the following representations of cats:

		What are the different connotations of these two signs?
		Black cat - witches cat, dark spooky and sinister.
		Grey cat - cute, innocent and cuddly.