• French term that refers to a series of elements of film construction that may be seen within the frame of the individual shot

• Communicates essential information to the audience

• The 6 elements are: 1. Body Language and Facial Expressions 2. Setting and Props 3. Costume, Hair and Make Up 4. Colour and Lighting 5. Positioning of Characters within the Frame 6. Technical Choices

• Facial Expressions provide clear indications of how someone is feeling

• If someone is smiling broadly we assume they are happy but we may get a different feeling if this accompanied by scary music

• Body language may also indicate how a character feels towards another character or may reflect the state of their relationship

• Costume, Hair and Make Up act as an instant indicator to us of a character’s personality, status and job

• It tells us immediately whether the film is set in the present and what society/or culture it will centre around

• Certain costumes can signify certain individuals (i.e. Batman in his Batman suit)

• Colour carries certain connotations which may add meaning to a scene (i.e. Red = Danger/or Love)

• Can give a scene a particular look, feel or mood

• Can be used for dramatic effect

• Can be used to: Highlight important characters or objects within the frame; to make characters look mysterious by shading sections of the face and body; to reflect a characters mental state/hidden emotions (i.e. Bright = happy, dark = disturbed, strobe effect = confused)

• Both involve violence, both showing them in black and white it takes away the feel and mood of the scene, meaning you have focus on the emotions on the characters faces

• Heightens the impact of violence in the film and duality of good and evil, hence the henchmen being in black and the worker in a white shirt, represents good and evil • The film starts in colour, then shifts to black and white, this represents past and present

• Perhaps the audience see James Bond in black and white because in the scene it is going back to a memory, perhaps it suggests he doesn’t want to remember it

• Positioning within a frame can draw attention to an important character or object

• A film-maker can use positioning to indicate relationships between characters

• Camerawork, why are certain camera shots used to gain a certain affect?

• The use of certain angles to represent different things to the audience watching a movie

• Sound and Editing are also important in gaining an affect in a movie

These are the ‘big ideas’ of a media text. To do with USP but also the morals and messages the text is supposed to communicate.

• These are all the little decisions that go into forming the macro viewpoint.

• E.g. The macro decision about how to represent British teenagers in the Inbetweeners movie is due to: • Props, editing, music, action, sound effects, settings, hair cuts, make up, camera angles, accents, scripting, casting, lighting and costume

• Argues that media texts serve to reproduce dominant ideologies

• Encoding/Decoding (1980) • Dominant Ideology is the preferred reading • ‘Dominant’ readings are produced by those whose social situations favour the preferred reading; • ‘Negotiated’ readings are produced by those who alter the preferred reading to take account of their social position • ‘Oppositional’ readings are produced by those whose social position puts them into direct conflict with the preferred reading

• Media texts don’t have an inherent meaning

• The creator of the text encodes the meaning they want

• The audience or reader of a text decodes the text – Taking a meaning that, according to Hall, is dominant, negotiated or oppositional.

• Sign – Describes anything that carries meaning

• Signifier – Physical Sign

• Signified – Meaning carried by sign

• Visual pleasure and Narrative cinema’, publish 1975

• “In a world ordered by in sexual imbalance, pleasure in looking has been split between active/male and passive/female. The determining male gaze projects its phantasy on to the female figure which is styled accordingly”.

• The ‘Male Gaze’ is a hugely influenced theory

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