Induction To Media Studies

We must create two pieces of media and evaluate the process and outcomes. We will be creating a sixth form magazine and a music magazine.

Media language
Refers to written,verbal,nonverbal,aural and aesthetic communication.  For example a scene where characters are having a phone call is communicated through lighting,camera shots, acting, editing and sound. We don't have to think about these things meaning they are non intrusive.

Form and Style

Form and style is the shape,structure and combination of micro elements (e.g dialogue,sound effects,editing etc). The form of a text is instantly recognisable to the audience and the style is how the text uses the form.E.g shameless uses a unique style within the genre.

Convention

The ingredients of a form or genre. For example a period drama is a particular sub genre in which must contain certain conventional ingredients that are required by the genre and expected by the audience (costume's, the edit, language).

Signification

Signification is often applied with the theory of semiotics. The study of signs and the idea that everything with see is a sign and carries a meaning. However each sign depends on the audience. For example a skull might mean pirates to a child but danger to an adult. In media we deconstruct signs to look at what they might mean (connotation depends on the audience).

Representation

We see that media texts meditate between our sense of reality and also the factual/fictional sense of reality.How the text represents reality is always a reconstruction of the real world. As a media student I must deconstruct representations at an extremely detailed level.

Audiences

We must look the target audience for a product. Not only that but we must research into the secondary audience and the way different people respond to different texts. Analysing audience theories, approaches and behavior is crucial in Media.

Narrative and Genre

Texts such as the news have particular narrative structures. TV and film concentrate on conflict that the attempt at a resolution. Narrative balances what we see and what we assume. Genre is when certain media texts share forms and conventions in which the audience has expectations for.  Genres shift over time and examples such as hybrid genres and parody's (High Anxiety) pop up.

Creativity

The "key performance descriptor for the media student. Not only must the student be ably to use technology to convey there products to the audience, but there ideas must be engaging and interesting. It must be about the audience responding well to the text (the audience enjoying there experience on a website)

Connecting the Micro to Macro

Micro features are technical and symbolic which need detecting and recognising (lighting speech). When the small elements add up to a believable representational impression, it is called the macro sum of micro part . I will have to how the process works in specific areas.

Multi modal Literacy

Media literacy is changing in the context to web technologies. Technology allows us to read and write in many different ways and communication processes have to adapt. It basically means we have to be careful when theorising simple producer-audience relations. The nature of the Internet and the media could mean we change the way we read texts forever.