The Language of Media: Form and Meaning

The concept of form in advertising: conventions, expectations, the language of media (grammar, syntax/paradigms, language)

Genre: reality, documentary, testimonial, interview, news, abstract, thriller, mystery, romance, detective, gangster, promotional, etc.

1990s: playing with genre expectations (postmodern).

Different types of meaning that might be associated with form:

Concrete content: what the episode is about:

This is basically a plot summary

Skylimit: Two friends having an argument about McD’s chicken strips in various locations

The explicit meaning: what the explicit message of the film is:

Cool guy with the chicken selects is being badgered by his less cool friend who does not believe that the advertising is true. Cool guy is always enjoying himself and his chicken strips, not-so-cool guy is portrayed as victim of his own critique.

The implicit meaning: what is being suggested by the film at a more abstract level:

The critique of advertising is a loser’s game, don’t fight it just do it. I am lovin’ it. It is so much easier and more enjoyable to just eat the juicy, crispy chicken strips then it is to doubt McDonald’s intentions and business practices.

This implicit meaning must be derived from the interaction of form and content: the film must be interpreted in a more abstract sense. In the ad the not-so-cool guy is not on a scooter, he is not playing poker, he is implicitly missing out on all the fun because of his stance against McDonald’s. This allows us to make a more general statement about the relationship between criticism and consumption.

The ideological meaning: what the film suggests about the society in which it plays, about its position within the debates of its time:

The ad makes reference to a growing movement against McDonald’s. Critiques in popular culture concerning McDonald’s business practices, health concerns, advertising practices, etc. are subverted by positioning these concerns as coming from people who are not enjoying themselves and who are missing out in life.

This ideological meaning must be derived from the interplay of form and content within the ad and our knowledge of the broader debates within the society in which the ad plays. The film is contextualised within the history, society and debates in which it was produced. We may also consider the position of the ad in relation to other media on the same subject (ie SuperSize me)

Elements of Form

Similarity and Repetition

Recall and identify characters. Reappearance of dialogue, music, camera positions, behaviour and plot. Motifs and parallels.

Creates pleasure, comedy, comfort, orientation. Also invites comparisons

Difference and Variation

Often within the context of similarity and repetition. Contrasts, oppositions and conflicts

Creates interest, rewards the audience for spotting differences. Invites contrasts.

Development

Progression through stages, or chapters: segmentation

Ads are often structured as journeys, as narratives, as development towards an end (self-realisation, resolution of conflict, solving the crime, situational resolutions, etc.)

Narrative forms

• Standard form is chronological, linear narrative (with editing, flashbacks, flashforward intercutting, or cross-cutting)
• Narrative: a product of the interaction of diegetic and extra-diegetic material (credits, music, etc.)
• Cause and effect: standard narrative form depends on one action causing another (these causes may be withheld for suspense, or we may be left to infer effects)
• Story and plot: what ‘happens’ and plot is everything that we see and hear (including extra-diegetic material)
• Time: standards or ‘marks’ to indicate flashbacks or flashforwards (dream sequences, lighting, etc.) to allow us to structure narrative chronologically
• Time: ‘real duration’ and ‘screen duration’. Also: contraction, selection and expansion of time for economy or emphasis
• Space and Locale: vistas, panoramas, rooms, doors, cities
• Openings, closings and patterns of development: in medias res (suspense and economy), resolution, gaining more information

Non-narrative forms

• Categorical – documentary, explores, shows
• Rhetorical – opens with an argument/statement then provides evidence
• Abstract – focuses on unusual, unfamiliar aspects of the known (colour, shape, rhythm, sound) can use mood and objects.
• Associational – juxtaposition of loosely connected images to suggest new insights, can use metaphor and suggestion

About shots…

Reading an ad is also about reading the way in which technical composition (shots, camera angles, lighting, staging, etc.) interacts with context.

Mise-en-scene

• Mise-en-scene is, quite simply, setting, staging, lighting, costume, behaviour of characters.
• Mise-en-scene may be more or less realistic, expressionist, background, protagonistical, atmospheric

Setting: location, props, context.

Costume and Make-up: period and social indicators

Lighting:

• High Key (balanced, normal) Low Key (fewer lights, more shadows)
• frontal lighting (eliminates shadows and produces a flat-looking image:)
• sidelighting/crosslighting (casts long shadows, mystery, suspense)
• backlighting (behind the subject, creates silhouettes, lights the character in otherwise dark space)
• underlighting (lighting from below the subject, creates distortion, horror)
• toplighting (lighting directly from above the subject, tends to emphasise facial features)
• Key light and fill light, sometimes also backlight

Colour – affects mood, represents emotions

Acting: performance ‘realistic’, ‘actorly’, pantomime, reality, etc.

Space: background, middleground, foreground, composition and depth, focus

The Shot

Speed – slow-motion, ordinary, accelerated, freeze-frame

Perspective – depth of picture: wide-angle lens (exaggerate depth), middle-focal lens (normal perspective), telephoto lens (reduces depth), zoom lens (adjusts depth within a single shot)

Focus – selective focus (all else blurred), deep focus (faster film, shorter focal-length lens: deeper focus)

Framing – what is in the image, what is cut out: onscreen and offscreen space, vantage point on to image (whole bodies, whole rooms, or cut off bodies, half rooms)

Distance of shot – extreme long shot (landscapes, vistas, cityscapes), long shot (figures, but background dominates), plan américain (shot from knees-up, allows balance of background and figure), medium shot (waist-up shot, allows focus on expression), medium close-ip (chest-up), close-up (head or small object, emphasises facial expression), extreme close-up (detail: lips, eyes, etc.)

Subjective angles – point-of-view shot (shot as if it were the character’s pov)

Moving Cameras (mobile framing) – pan (panorama: rotates camera on vertical axis left-to-right), tilt (rotates camera on horizontal axis, up and down), tracking shot (camera travels on ground following action), crane shot (camera moves off ground above action)

Duration of image – the long take (shot of long duration): discomfort, focus, attention

Editing is about how the various shots in the film are joined together

Ways of joining (editing) shots:

• Cut to new shot (most common means)
• Fade-out (darkens towards end of the shot into black)
• Fade-in (new shot gradually lightens)
• Dissolve (end of shot A is briefly superimposed onto shot B, implying continuity)
• Wipe (line moves across film, replacing one shot with another)

Continuity editing – The classic technique

• Cutting shots to tell a story, ensure narrative continuity and smooth flow from shot to shot
• Keeping figures in continuity, lighting remains constant and action stays central to the frame
• Long shots have longer takes than medium shots, and medium longer takes than close-ups (spectator needs more time to take in detail)
• The 180º system – everything happens in the half-cricle in front of the camera, which marks the ‘centre line’
• This ensures that the same space is described in each shot
• Establishing shot (establishes the space in which action is to happen)
• Shot/reverse shot – one shots shows one end of the central line, the other shows the other end
• Eyeline match – character look looks off-screen, next shot shows us what they see
• Match on action – character begins to move in one shot, we see continuation of movement in next shot
• Montage shots – dissolves of ‘external information’ (newspaper clippings, etc.) giving information in compressed form, ensuring orientation

Non-continuity editing

Non-continuity editing is one way in which more arty ads challenge conventions. By breaking down continuity, producers reveal that the ad is ‘constructed’, not ‘natural’, and also challenge the relationship between cause and effect and the assumed standard ideologies. It can also increase the reality of an ad by revealing the process of

The jump shot – shooting a subsequent shot from almost the same angle and distance, even though the action has moved on (gives the impression that the camera is not ‘with’ the action – ie it is ‘there’ – and makes the film feel jerky)

Non-diegetic insert – insertion of something from outside the plot, ie a metaphorical image, intertitle, etc.

‘Poor editing’

Voices talking over another, ‘poor’ sound quality

Plot, subplots, logical progression challenged