1. TODAY
QUESTION 1B

2. Question 1(b) requires you to select one production and evaluate it in relation to a media concept.

3. Question 1(b) requires you to select one production and evaluate it in relation to a media concept.

4. QUESTION 1B
The list of concepts to which questions will relate is as follows:
• Media language
Genre
• Narrative
• Representation
• Audience

5. Question 1b:
Media Language

6. Media language
Media language refers to the ways in which media producers make meaning in ways that are specific to the medium in which they are working and how audiences come to be literate in ‘reading’ such meaning within the medium..

8. Media language
For example, the ‘language of film’, print layout conventions, web design and navigation conventions and rule economies in gaming. These medium specific languages will often be closely connected to other media concepts such as genre or narrative and candidates are at liberty to make such connections to a greater or lesser extent in their answers. In the examination, questions will be set using one of these concepts only.

9. Media language
In some cases you will be describing their productions in terms of them not relating straightforwardly to the concept. For example, a candidate producing three websites over their two portfolios might describe ways in which websites cannot be understood easily through applying conventional narrative theory.

10. Semiotics
The study of codes and conventions within media texts

11. Semiotics The signifier
any material thing that signifies, e.g., words on a page, a facial expression, an image.

12. Semiotics
The signified
the concept that a signifier refers to.

13. Together, the signifier and signified make up the
Sign: the smallest unit of meaning. Anything that can be used to communicate (or to tell a lie).

14. Semiotics

16. AUDIENCES DECODE MESSAGES

17. PREFERRED READING (Hall 1980)

18. Denotation
The most basic or literal meaning of a sign, e.g., the word "rose" signifies a particular kind of flower.

19. Connotation:
the secondary, cultural meanings of signs; or "signifying signs," signs that are used as signifiers for a secondary meaning, e.g., the word "rose" signifies passion.

20. “denotation is what is filmed, connotation is how it is filmed”
John Fiske (1982)
“denotation is what is filmed, connotation is how it is filmed”

21. Paradigmatic relations
Where signs get meaning from their association with other signs

22. Syntagmatic relations
Where signs get meaning from their sequential order, e.g., grammar or the sequence of events that make up a story.

23. Myths
a combination of paradigms and syntagms that make up an oft-told story with elaborate cultural associations, e.g., the cowboy myth, the romance myth.

24. Ideologies
Codes that reinforce structures of power. Ideology works largely by creating forms of "common sense," of the taken-for-granted in everyday life.

25. Mise en scene
Deconstruct your diegetic world (diegesis)- how does it create meaning?
Location
Setting
Character
Layout and page design
Fonts

26. Camerawork
Angles
Shot type
Movement
Framing
Composition

27. Editing (continuity) E/S Eyeline match Action match Crosscutting
Shot reverse shot

28. Editing (non-continuity)
Montage
Ellipsis
Flash back forward

29. EXPLAIN HOW MEANING IS CONSTRUCTED BY THE USE OF MEDIA LANGUAGE IN ONE OF YOUR COURSEWORK PRODUCTIONS (25 marks/30 mins)

30. Media language table Media text: MEDIA LANGUAGE
EXPLANATION OF HOW THIS CREATES MEANING
PREFERRED READING
MYTHS
EDITING
MISE EN SCENE
DENOTATION (SIGNIFIER)
CONNOTATION (SIGNIFIED)
CODES AND CONVENTIONS
CAMERAWORK
Paradigmatic relations
Syntagmatic relations