Semiotics

Semiotics - This is known as the study of signs and sign systems - the social production of meaning by sign systems, how things come to have significance and meaning.

Signifier + signified = sign

There are two parts of a sign:

• Signifier: Ant symbol, image, or word that can be seen or read. 
• Signified: The particular meaning or meanings of the signifier in a particular context or situation.

There are three types of a signifier:

• Iconic: These signifiers always resemble what they signify - 'a window on the world'.
• Indexical: These signifiers act as evidence - Smoke means fire, sweat is proof of effort etc. 
• Symbolic: These are the visual signs that are arbitrarily linked to referents. The diamond hats of monarchs, crowns, symbolise monarchy. 

Denotation: signs signify or 'denote' different aspects of our experience of the world. They are the work of that part of the sign (the signifier), which is immediately recognisable to the reader and which has a direct relationship to a real world entity or referent. The colour red for example we know as a colour in the light spectrum, different from blue or pink.

Connotation: These are the meanings interpreted from a sign, which link other values to it. For example: the colour red brings up notions of love, blood, stop signs, danger, hot, roses etc.

Semiotic terms:

• Binary oppositions: sets of opposite values said to reveal the structure of media texts. These define through their opposite and chose a lesser and greater position. E.g: man/women, weak/strong.  
• Conventions: 'un-written rules' in the production of mainstream texts. Conventions are the dominants codings in any media. 
• Anchoring: written text used to control or select a specific reading of an image. 
• Mise-en-scene: literally 'putting together the scene' how we read the actions of the creative personnel in a film crew who visualise. Everything on screen.
• Mode of address: How a text 'speaks' to its audience. How the audience is positioned in relation to text.  
• Polysemic: literally 'many signed' an image in which there are several possible meanings depending on the ways in which its constituent signs are read. 
• Metonemy: literally 'substitute naming' possible meanings depending on the ways in which its constituent signs are read. 
• Index: Measures a quality not because it is identical to it but has an inherent relationship to it. 
• Symbol: an arbitrary sign in which the signifier has neither a direct nor an indexical relationship to the signified, but rather represents it through conventions.  
• Synecdoche: The idea that 'part' of a person, an object, a machine, etc can be used to represent the 'whole', and work as an emotive or suggestive shorthand for the viewer, who invests the 'part' with symbolic associations.
• Icon: A sign in which the signifer represents the signified mainly by its similarity to it, its likeness.  

Editing vocabulary

Action match: A shot that cuts to another continuing a piece of action or movement between the shots.

Continuity editing: An editing style that aims to present the text in chronological order to emphasize the real-time movement of the narrative and to create a seance of realism for the viewer by giving the impression of continuous filming.

Cross cutting (also known as parallel editing): When an editor cuts between two separate scenes happening in two separate locations at the same time, The narrative technique of showing two ro more scenes happening at the same time by cutting between them.

Cutaway: A brief shot that is not totally necessary but is cut into a scene to show a related action, object or person, not necessarily part of the main scene, before cutting back to the original shot.

Dissolve: When the first shot is on the screen and the second shot starts appearing on top of it more and more until all you can see if the second shot.

Ellipsis: The removal or shortening of elements of a narrative to speed up the action, (e.g. an editor might use ellipsis on a sequence about a young man taking a drink by cutting straight to him as an old man, drunk and alone).

Eyeline match: A type of editing that maintains the eyeline or level when cutting from a character to what the character sees.

Fade: A type of moving image editing where the image gradually fades and disappears, leaving a white black screen.

Graphic match: A cut from one shot to another that look visually the same. This could be possibly linked by a similar shape or colour etc.

Jump cuts: A cut that moves to a very similar part of the same scene but missing a piece of action out.

Linear narrative: A sequential narrative with a beginning, middle and an end in that order.

Long take: Each time a shot is recorded it is called a take. A long take is one that is allowed to remain on screen for long periods of time.

Montage: This is a series of shots edited together to show time passing and something happening in that time.

Short take: A short take is allowed to remain on screen fro a short time before the editor cuts it to something else.

Shot/Reverse shot: cutting between two people having a conversation can help contrast them and make the seem different.

Slow motion: When the action is slowed down.

Split screen: the cinema screen being split into two or more parts to allow the showing of events that are taking place at the same time.

Superimpose: The appearance of writing/symbols or images on top of an image so that both are visible at once, increasing the amount of information the viewer has in one shot.

Visual effects: Often it depends on what the characters reactions to those special effects are. For example: a man who has no reaction to an explosion will seem brave and masculine.

Wipe: A moving image editing technique that involves one image wiping another off the screen.

Camera vocabulary

Aerial shot (crane): A view from directly up ahead to give a clear view. ( a shot which involves a camera being lifted on a crane to get a higher shot).

Canted angle: A shot which is tilted to one side.

Crab shot: A type of shot that involves it being put into a small space. (e.g. placed in cupboard).

Deep focus: When objects both near and far from the camera are in focus.

Hand-held shot: A shot filmed by someone holding the camera in their hand.

Head-on-shot: A type of shot where the camera is coming directly to them.

High-angle: when the camera is placed above a character so you are looking down on them.

Low-angle: When the camera is placed below a character so you are looking up at them.

Loose frame: A shot where there is a lot of room around an object.

Master shot: A shot used a the beginning of a sequence to establish the component elements and relationships in such a way as to allow the audience to make sense of the action that follows.

Point of view shot: A shot taken from the position of the subject.

Pull focus: This describes a shot where one thing was in focus and then the lens is changed so that something else stops being blurry and become in focus.

Rule of thirds: This is when rather than placing a person directly in the centre of the shot they have placed him to the side.

Shallow focus: A shot when the objects nearer the camera are in focus and everything else is blurry.

Soft focus: This is the use of a special lens or filter to create a hazy light around the subject.

Subjective filming ( or POV): A type of shot in which the camera is poisoned as if looking at the world through the characters eyes.

Tilt: A camera movement that involves moving the camera vertically up and down from a fixed position.

Tracking shot: A camera shot in which the camera moves along rails to follow the subject.

Whip pan: A very fats pan between two or more characters all points of interest.

Wide shot: This can be used as an establishing shot or to set a location or to show a large crowd of people.

Zoom/Reverse zoom: The adjustment of the camera lens so we can progressively move closer or further away from the subject.

180 degree rule: When during a scene which includes two or more people, we can imagine an imaginary line joining those two people together. Adhering this rule would mean that the camera would stay on one side of that line and would never cross over to the other side.

Sound Vocabulary

Ambient Sound: The sound of the location e.g. water noises near a river.

Direct Address: Where the character talks directly to the audience.

Diegetic Sound: Sound that you would hear if YOU were one of the characters.

Non-Diegetic sound: Other sound that the characters in the scene could not hear.

Pitch: Low pitch describes a sound that is deep and low (eg thunder) and high pitch describes a sound that is higher and lighter ( eg phone ringing).

Rhythm: describes the beat of the music, whether it is fast or slow.

Voice over: the use of voice over images perhaps as an introduction, a linking narrative device for or to comment on action.

Sound effects: A sound accompanying an action, sometimes musical.

Synchronous sound: Sound that is in sync with the visuals and was filmed at the same time.

Asynchronous sound: Where the sound is either out of sync with the visuals or is unrelated to the visuals.

Contrapuntal sound: Sound or music that seems strange in comparison to the scene we are seeing.

Vocabulary #2

Polysemic: This is when a sign can have more than one meaning i.e. red could connotate danger, as well as love.

Enigma: This is a puzzle or question that they audience want ot find the answer to. ''This creates an enigma where the audience are wondering...''

Juxtaposition: This is the placement of two contrasting ideas alongside each other - e.g. 'The bright colours of spiderman's costume juxtaposes the colours of the villain suggesting that...'

Binary opposites: When two ideas are the complete opposite - good/evil, light/dark, female/male, old/young. i.e. ''The use of the binary opposites of old and young suggest that there might be a conflict between...'

Protagonist: The main character that the audience want to succeed.

Antagonist: The character that opposes the protagonist, (the character that the audeince does not want to succeed).

Iconic Sign: A sign that looks like the idea that they are trying to represent. - i.e. a printer icon n word looks like a printer, the male/female toilet sign looks like the gender they are trying to represent.

Indexical sign: A sign that points to something else having happened (like an index points the page) i.e. smoke points to a fire, black eyes point to a fight, tears point to hearing bad news.

Symbolic Sign: A sign that symbolises an idea that doesn't look like what it is representing but instead is something we have come to associate with. - i.e. a dog representing family, a tie representing professionalism, purple representing royalty, pink representing femininity.

Vocabulary #1

Media Consumption - The recipients of a media text, or the people who are intended to read or watch or play or listen to it. A great deal of media studies work is concerned with the effects a text may have on an audience.

Media Ownership - This is a process whereby progressively fewer individuals or organizations control increasing shares of the mass media.

Audiences - People or market segment at whom an advertising message or campaign is aimed.

National - The nationally distributed or marketed broadcast and print products of a country, e.g. major newspapers and television programming.

Local - Newspapers and radio and TV stations in a small area of the country.

Institution - A formal organization (with its own set of rules and behaviours) that creates and distributes media texts

International - Advertising media that cover several countries and can be used to reach audiences in them.

Global - This is when certain Tv programs for examle are translated into a different language so that people can watch it in another country.

Global Institution - An organization or company, publicly or privatly owned that produces and/or distributes media products.

Hardware - The different types of data storage options.

Content - Is the information and experience(s) directed towards an end-user or audience.

Convergence - The way in which technologies and institutions come together in order to create something new. Cinema is the result of the convergence of photography, moving pictures (the kinetoscope, zoetrope etc), and sound. The iPad represents the convergence of books, TV, maps, the internet and the mobile phone.

Cross Media Convergence - Is where a media product is promoted across other media platforms.

Technological Convergence - Technological convergence is the tendency for different technological systems to evolve towards performing similar tasks.

Synergy - The relationship between different media products in which one is used to improve the exposure of another.

Proliferation -  The increase of films in a genre or the use of technology.

Issues - Those ideas that are the source of controversy and debate in a society at any given time.