Key Terms Flashcards
Advertising Agencies
Most makers of products do not make the adverts for the products themselves. They will use an advertising agency whose job it is to research the target audience and then create a campaign to sell the product.
Anchorage
The words that give an image meaning.
Annotate
This means labelling a design to show an understanding of the main codes and conventions. This is also a chance to use the correct media terms.
Aspirational
This type of advertising makes the audience want to buy the product even though what it is selling may be out of their reach.
Audio Codes
The different sounds within the media text and the connotations attached to the sound used.
Audio-Visual Media Text
One that uses images and/or sound.
Bird’s Eye View Shot
This is where a scene is shot from overhead. This is often used to film car chases. It allows a lot of the scene to be shown at once but not in too much detail.
Brand
This is how an audience recognise a product and it is also how the product shows it is different from others. The branding may include the name, logo and any celebrity endorsers.
Brand Identity
The meanings an audience will attach to a particular brand. This will be built up over time.
Broadcasting
This is where a media text tries to attract as wide an audience as possible.
Campaign
This is run by an advertising agency. A campaign is a sequence of advertisements for a product and links the packaging, radio, TV, print and Internet adverts.
Celebrity Culture
This is where people are obsessed with famous people. These celebrities may not have accomplished much, but they have extensive media coverage.
Challenged
This is where you may investigate a media text that shows a different representation or set of genre conventions to the usual ones.
Chronological
This is a narrative where the events follow in the order in which they happened from beginning to end.
Clearly Defined Roles
This means that everyone in the group must have a technical job to do, for example filming, editing or sound. The roles can be shared.
Cliffhanger
This is where the audience is left with an enigma at the end. This encourages the audience to watch the next episode to find out what happens.
Colloquial Language
This is conversational language where the words used are different from those in written speech.
Commercial Channels
These are channels like ITV and Channel 4 that raise their money through advertising , unlike BBC which currently get it’s money through the license fee.
Conform
This means following the rules of a particular genre and including all or most of the main conventions that are shared by similar texts.
Connotations
The meanings attached to a sign.
Construction
The way in which the text is put together. For example, the choice of font, headline or main image.
Consumable Products
These are products we use regularly and need to replace.
Conventional Points of View
This means that the representation in the text is what is expected by an audience.
Conventions
What we expect to see in text belonging to a specific genre.
Convergence
This is way in which one topic can be presented across different media forms.
Cover Lines
These usually run down the side and give the reader clues as to what is in the magazine. Their aim is to persuade the audience to buy.
Crane Shot
This shot is not as extreme as an aerial shot; here the camera is elevated above the action using a crane.
Credit Sequence
This is usually the same every week and includes the name of the programme, the stars, the production company etc. Some times this will appear at the start; sometimes it comes after some of the narrative has been introduced.
Cultural Background
This is what makes a person the way they are. It includes where you live, your ethnicity, what you have been brought up to believe in etc.
Cultural Values
This is the idea of what is important and what is unimportant, right or wrong and is shared by a group of people.
Decode
The different interpretations of messages by different audiences.
Desensitised
This is where an audience is less shocked or upset by violence because they see so much of it in certain media texts.
Diegetic Sound
Essentially this is sound you can see; the sound that is part of the scene and can be heard by the characters.
Digitally Enhanced
This means that an image is changed on a computer.
Direct Mode of Address
In an audio visual text, this means that the subject is looking straight at the audience.
Disruption
This is what changes the balance in the story world; it may be a character or event.
Dumbing Down
This term refers to the fact that some people think that television programmes are not challenging and that audiences are ‘couch potatoes’ who just watch programmes that are easy to watch.
Editing
In the production of a film, film-makers will have a lot of footage to choose from . Editing is the way in which the shots and scenes from a film are put together.
Effect
The technical code will have been included to have an effect upon the audience.
Encode
The messages and ideas that producers package into the texts.
Endorse
If celebrities endorse a product they say that they use it and they think it is good. In this way the advertisers hope to persuade the audience, if they like the celebrity, to buy the product.
Enigma
This is a mystery or a puzzle in the narrative. Enigmas keep an audience interested in the story.
Equilibrium
This is the state of the story world at the beginning of the narrative where everything is stable.
Ethnicity
This is something that links you with a particular group of people who share things like customs, food or a way of dressing.
Flagship
A programme that is important to the channel as it is popular and audiences recognise it as belonging to the channel.
