Media terminology Flashcards
Who are the target audience?
The group of consumers who the media text was made for.
What is a billing block/credit block?
A block of text at the bottom of a film poster or dvd
What are binary oppositions
Conflicting values
What is a age certificate?
Age rating of the film
What are props?
An object used on stage by an actor
What is the setting/scenery?
The place or type of surroundings where something is positioned or where an event takes place
What are colour codes
Colours used for a certain genre/ sets the mood
What is lighting?
Effects used that helps create the atmosphere or emphasize particular parts of the poster
What is a denotation?
To draw attention to something to show what it means. What an image actually shows.
What is a connotation
Imply or suggest an idea of a feeling in addition to the literal or primary meaning
What does signifies mean?
Also use this word for meaning ‘shows’, for example ‘ the man running signifies to the audience that there is a threat nearby
What is a tagline?
Memorable motto or phrase - Like a slogan but for a film
What are codes?
All media texts are encoded. The codes themselves are symbolic, technical or written. The technical code used depends on the platform.
What is encoding and decoding?
Meanings are encoded by producers and decoded by the audience.
What is positioning?
Media texts attempt to place the audience in a position whereby they hold a point of view or feel a particular emotion (basically manipulation)
What is a preferred meaning?
A preferred meaning is one that might be put in place by the producers, or by the dominant values of society.
When does an aberrant reading take place?
An aberrant reading takes place when the audience is resistant to the dominant values of society and instead negotiates or resists the intended meaning.
What is Todorov’s narrative structure?
The media trains us to see the world in terms of narrative: beginning (equilibrium), middle (disruption and conflict), and end (new equilibrium). All media texts have a narrative structure.
What is genre?
A category of texts with common conventions of style, narrative, and structure.
What is iconography?
Particular visual signs associated with certain genres.
“The iconography of this text includes a deserted house and a sinister clown, both evocative of the horror genre.”
What does evocative mean?
Bringing strong images, memories, or feelings to mind.
What is mediation?
Anything we experience through the media (as opposed to directly) is mediated.
What is the translation for mise-en-scene? What is mise-en-scene?
‘Put in the scene.’ Whatever appears within the frame.
“The director uses mise-en-scene to create a sense of loneliness by framing the character against an enormous, empty landscape.”
What are regulations?
Laws, rules, guidelines which define and restrict the parameters within which the media work.
What is self-regulation?
Regulations within the industry (e.g. press complaints commission).
What is government regulation often operated by?
Often operated by QANGOs (Quasi-Autonomous Non-Governmental Organisations - like OFCOM)
What is dismemberment?
In advertising especially, women’s bodies are cropped in order to emphasise sexualised body parts
What are news values?
Criteria applied to determine what is newsworthy.
“News values determine the prominence given to news stories, their order, and whether they are included or excluded from the news agenda.”
What is a stereotype?
An oversimplified, sometimes humorous, representation which is used to categorise and evaluate members of a particular group.
What is voyeurism?
The practice of gaining pleasure from looking at other people whilst remaining anonymous.
What are the three main ways of looking at audiences?
Hypodermic model/needle, uses and gratifications model and reception model.
What is the hypodermic needle theory?
The media is powerful and influential, able to inject ideas and behaviours directly into the audience - which must be protected from its power
What is Blumler and Katz’s uses and gratifications theory?
Theory of audience which emphasises the range of needs/pleasures fulfilled by consumption of the media.
What is the reception model theory?
Theory of audience that emphasises the range of ways in which audiences receive and respond to media texts - including resistant or negotiated readings
What is open text?
- May have a variety of meanings dependent upon the age, sex, cultural background of reader.
- It’s open to interpretation.
- Tend to be more high brow, high culture whereas closed texts tend to be more popular, mass culture e.g mass media texts.
What is closed text?
- A term used to describe a text that contains a dominant or preferred meaning
- Such texts attempt to direct audiences into understanding one particular meaning
- This is often done through a process of anchorage where words, captions or logos are used to direct a reader towards a particular meaning (adverts, newspapers, photos etc)
What is anchorage?
Is about how particular aspects of a text helps pin down (or anchor) its meaning.
E.g.
- Newspaper photographs are anchored by their captions
- Adverts may be anchored by a logo, slogan or the product itself in the picture.
- A celebrity endorsement may pin down down the message for a brand.
What is a direct address?
- Refers to texts that address you, the audience, directly to create a more personal connection either as an individual, friend, mother, wife etc.
- Often through a face that looks directly into a camera at you
- E.g. Magazine front covers
- The age, gender, values, lifestyle, look of a face on a magazine cover or characters/themes within a drama (e.g F.R.I.E.N.D.S) are designed to promote audiences identification.
- To get the audience to engage and feel connected to the text and ultimately spend money usually via adverts.
What are media texts?
Media texts always address somebody, they seek to engage their audiences in the practice of reading or viewing.
What is indirect address?
- Not looking directly into the camera
- More observational
- Less formal
- Audience addressed as casual observer/voyeur (looking into someone else’s world)
What is preferred meaning?
- Refers to a text that prefers one particular meaning.
- This can result from the agendas and assumptions of media producers and can be ideological in nature
E.g - A right wing (capitalist/conservative) or left wing (socialist/labour) newspaper can present news items with a particular political bias
Stuart Hall (1980) - 3 main types of audience decoding
1) Dominant - When the reader accepts the full preferred reading offered by the text.
2) Negotiated - Where the content of the message is adapted to fit the specific social condition of the reader to produce a new meaning.
3) Oppositional - Where the dominant reading is contested and a reading which opposes it is produced.
What is Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze theory?
When the audience is forced to view a media product through the eyes of a heterosexual male. Where women are sexualised and treated like objects.
What is the female gaze?
More recently, some media texts have reflected changing roles and empowerment of women by offering points of view from a female perspective (e.g viewing men as sexual objects).
Give examples of mise-en-scene.
Production design Set Location Actors Costumes Make-up Lighting etc
Why are close ups (and variations) used?
Close ups, including extreme, big and medium close ups, are used to draw the viewer closer and to involve them in what is happening; they’re also used to observe reactions and emotions.
These shots are often used to privilege the protagonist over the other characters and position the audience with them. Long shots are more about context and are less subjective/emotional.
Why are high angles used?
To provide a view from above the subject(s), often making the subject look vulnerable, isolated or powerless. This is sometimes combined with a crane shot into a closer shot of the subject(s).
What can low angle shots indicate?
Power, aggression, strength etc.
What is diegetic sound?
Sound generated from within the narrative/production (natural).
What is non-diegetic sound?
Outside of the narrative such as an orchestra playing rousing music during a battle scene.
What is an enigma code?
A narrative technique that involves the creation of riddles or problems to be resolved. Refer to Barthes. E.g: suspense and horror genres use enigma to retain the attention of an audience.
What is high key lighting?
Bright lighting, often studio lighting/sun. Connotes optimism.
What is low key lighting?
Darker lighting scheme. Connotes mystery and suspense.
What is realism?
A film and television style that attempts to represent the real world. Most documentaries attempt this, some more successfully than others.