Month: September 2020

In A1, we get to choose what project are we going to work on the whole year. We get two choices to choose from, a magazine cover or a film opening. I, as stated previously, chose film opening.

The main question is, what is a film opening?

It is a way which the film production gives credits to cast and the crew while utilising sounds and visuals. It introduces us to the main story and characters and the upcoming confilict.

Why?

Film opening, unlike magazine cover, establishes and introduces the whole mode and the setup of our story. Albeit, the cover does the same job, but film opening gave me a wider variety and a better way to convey my message. The moving images and characters infatuates me more than a still photograph and hence, I also wanted to do the same.

Now to the most important question, What is the Importance of the Film Opening in a movie?

The film opening establishes the tone and the mode of the whole film. It is the part of the film which has the most pressue to captivate the audience. The chance to introduce myself via my cinemetography and my means of communication. It also introduces the characters and It gives a chance to touch upon important themes and elements, and apply certain techniques, such as foreshadowing and juxtaposition.

This is mainly why I chose Film Opening as my project for this year.

Some examples :

Codes :

Codes generally means signs and symbols in a film which creates meaning. These codes can be divided into two main parts. Technical and Symbolic.

Technical Code means how an equipment or a gadget is used in a film to convey a message. For example, the camera work in a film. Symbolic codes show what is beneath the surface of what we see. For example, a character’s actions show you how the character is feeling.

Some codes fit both categories – music for example, is both technical and symbolic.

Conventions :

Convections are the ways the media is generally accepted. There are general conventions in any medium, such as the use of interviewee quotes in a print article, but conventions are also genre specific.

Both, Codes and Conventions are used together to decipher the meaning, because we cannot discuss the technical code, like using a camera, without explaining it’s use and convention symbolically.

For example, the technical code of lighting is used in some way in all film genres. It is a convention of the horror genre that side and back lighting is used to create mystery and suspense – an integral part of any horror movie.

The conventions of a genre are the elements that commonly occur in such films. They may include things like characters, situations, settings, props, themes and events. For example, a convention of the science-fiction genre is that the story often includes robots, aliens, time-travel or genetic manipulation.

The difference between Codes and Conventions:

The difference between codes and conventions, is that codes might be individual to the media text you are analysing for example, a film might use high angle shot to show vulnerability whereas in a music video it may be complete irrelevant . On the other hand, conventions are something they all share within a genre.

Why are Codes and Conventions important:

At a more critical level, knowledge of codes and conventions invites prediction, sets up expectations and allows ways of navigating complex texts. The patterns provided by codes and conventions in a text are cues for our understanding.

To study Media Studies, it is important to first understand the meaning of Media. From the Language of Media to the Institution, for this I referred mainly to this YouTube video

The Media Insider

The first post of the blog should be learning about the history and evolution of media. For this I relayed mainly on different youtube videos.

The Evolution of Traditional to New Media by Jo Marchianne Pigar

A Brief History of Media – Dan Gillmor by O’Reilly

These two videos are the ones which summed up the evalution and histroy in an understandable manner, and got me the idea of how media helped the way indivuals communicate thorugh different means of media.