Semiotics

Semiotics is 'the study of signs and symbols and their use of use of interpretation'. There are many people involved with this: Ferdinand de Saussure, Roland Barthes and Stuart Hall.

Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913):
Ferdinand de Saussure had the idea of 'the signifier and the signified'. The signifier is basically what we see; either an object or an image. The signified is the idea we associate with the signifier. For example, a rose is a signifier, therefore the signfied idea is love, or black would be associated with either darkness, death, evil, fear and so on. The sign or symbol we see does not make sense without the actual object and the meaning it creates.

Roland Barthes (1915-1980):
Roland Barthes had the idea of 'denotation and connotation'. The denotation is the object or image placed within media texts, while the connotation is the idea we think of after we've seen the object or image, or the ideas we associate with said image. For example, if a person sees red, they'll either think of love, danger and lust, or if they thought of green, they'll either think of nature or vomit.

Stuart Hall (1932-):
Stuart Hall came up with two theories: reception and audience, in 1981. The reception theory consists of encoding and decoding, while the audience theory consists of preferred, negotiated and oppositional. For reception theory, encoding is what is written within a media text, while decoding is an interpretation of what the image means. For the audience theory, preferred is where the reader has the idea of what is intended, negotiated is when the reader applies their own context but comes up with a similar reading to that of what was intended and oppositional is where the reader applies their own context and has a different meaning to that of what was intended.

Introduction

Our next unit is Advanced Production. We have been given a choice of three briefs:

1. A promotion package for the release of an album, to include a music promo video, together with two of the following three options:

• A website homepage for the band
• A cover for its release as part of a digipaak (CD/DVD package)
• A magazine advertisement

2. A promotion package for a new film, to include a teaser trailer, together with two of the following three options;

• A website homepage for the film
• A film magazine front cover, featuring the film
• A poster for the film

3. A short film in its entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which may be live action or animated or a combination of both, together with two of the following three options:

• A poster for the film
• A film magazine review page featuring the film

I'm working in a group of three; with Adam Dignam and Dominic Wilkinson. We've taken the decision of doing a film trailer. We have a couple of ideas, with either the choice of doing a trailer for a comedy or an action film. We're more likely going to go for comedy, because action films have quite a lot of budget, for things like pyrotechnics, fake weapons, lighting and so on.

The two ancillary products I am going to do are a poster and a website homepage for the film. To do the research for this, I am going to look up images of posters using websites such as IMP Awards. I order to create a film poster I will use Adobe Fireworks because it has a lot of advanced tools on there, such as the magic wand, as well as the usual basic tools, such as the paintbrush to help modify pictures. When I create a website homepage, I will use Microsoft Expression Web 3 because it is really popular and is fairly easy to use.

Our intended date for creation of our main product is unknown, but Miss Furness insists that it has to be done during the summer holidays. We are possibly going to create our main product mid-summer. I'm also probably going to create my ancillary products after the summer, when we've filmed the finished product.

Of course, I am going to write up my evaluation at the end of this module - it is unknown when that'll be, however. Much like the evaluation for my music magazine work, I would first write up the evaluation on Word and then type it up again here on Blogger. It's better to write it up again because if you paste the text in on Blogger and preview it, the font for the post would be different compared to other posts.