G325: Section A: Theoretical Perspectives in

Media
Using Question
Conventions
1a)

from Real Media

Texts
What skills did we develop in the
understanding of the relationship
between text and audience i.e.
The creation of meaning in texts.
Mediation Encoding and
Decoding, Open/Closed Texts

You will need to investigate, across

AS and A2, how you encoded
meaning in texts to give a
preferred meaning (Hall, 1980)
or closed reading (Eco, 1981) for
the audience based on your
knowledge of the conventions of
real media texts.

This is going to involve an

assessment of the micro and the
macro in relation to audience
readings.
Macro Analysis

Pre-production: Ideology and

Discourse (discussion or debate):
Mediation of Ideas, Representation and
Debates/Agenda
what the meanings/messages were.

Production and Post Production:

Form and Style: Postmodernism
Bricolage and Intertextuality, Medium and
Genre, Narrative
how the meanings/messages were
communicated.
Micro Elements

What choices did you make in

terms of the following in order
to communicate your meaning
to audience (mode of address
and persuasion)?

Media Language:
Mise-en-Scene,
Cinematography,
Editing,
 Macro: Ideology and Discourse,
and Audience
Reception
Stuart Hall (1980) Dominant/Hegemonic
reading. Preferred Meanings. Stuart Hall
detailed that texts do have preferred
meanings, but the decoder will not always
necessarily read them as intended by the
producer as everyone has a different social/
cultural background. Texts that are meant to
communicate hegemony will be encoded so
that they are easily interpreted and
understood by a mass audience.
Umberto Eco (1981) Open and Closed
Meaning. Texts aimed at large audiences
(mass) will be encoded so that the
majority of the audience can only decode
a very preferred meaning. This is known
as a closed text.

An open text is one that has many

meanings, or is deliberately ambiguous,
and can be understood in different ways
by a number of different audience
members.
Roland Barthes (1979) Anchorage and
Myth

Images can be polysemic and Barthes argued

that the meaning of images can be pinned
down to give a preferred meaning through
the process of anchorage (text/music).
Barthes also argued that all texts are
encoded in such a way to reinforce dominant,
cultural ideologies or values. The way that a
text is encoded makes the representation
seem natural or common sense. This is the
concept of myth.
Macro: Meanings and Messages across
AS and A2 coursework

TASK 1: What was the purpose of your text?

TASK 2: What were you trying to

communicate to the audience? What was the
theme? What was the discourse (point of
view/agenda debated) in your texts?

TASK 3: Who was your target audience and

what was the main mode of address?
Macro: Postmodernism, Genre, Narrative

Postmodern Style: Irony, Parody, Pastiche,

Bricolage, Intertextuality.

Bricolage is the process of deliberately borrowing or

adapting signs or features from different styles or
genres to create a new mixture of meanings
(OSullivan et. al, 1998).

Pastiche: Bog standard copying of conventions or can

be done for bricolage effect. Whichever, this
ultimately reinforces their importance in culture and
society. Parody is a kind on pastiche which makes fun
of the subject.

Intertextuality is the way in which media texts gain

their meanings by referring to other media texts that
Genre:
Was it a hybrid? Did it have a sub-genre?
What were the stereotypical elements of real media
texts that you encoded into your video?

Narrative:
Is it an open / closed narrative? Did it have a
beginning, middle and end or not (i.e. follow a classic
narrative structure)? Linear or non-linear? Anti-
narrative (deliberately doesnt make any sense
surrealism)?
TASK 1: How did you pastiche or
parody any other media texts? (this
includes bricolage and
intertextuality).

TASK 2: In relation to the above,

can you be more specific in terms of
generic conventions of your
medium?

TASK 3: In relation to the above,

can you be more specific in terms of
narrative theory of your medium?
Micro Elements advanced editing theory

Editing is its most literal sense is to remove

unwanted elements.

In terms of production : AS and A2 for your

photographs: a photograph Barthes claimed,
involved a mechanical process where the image
that which is denoted is recorded, but there is
also an expressive, human and cultural process
that involves the selection and interpretation of
such elements as camera angles, framing, lighting
and focus (OSullivan, 1998:33).

In terms of post-production: You didnt just decide

what elements to put in your images it was what
Editing and Sergei Eisenstein (1920s)

Sergei Eisenstein was a Soviet film maker and

teacher of film theory.

Intellectual/Dialectical Montage process of

putting images together so that a new meaning is
created through the juxtaposition. It identifies a
struggle between opposites. It is like putting an
image of bankers quaffing wine next to an image of
pigs in swill it creates a meaning: bankers are like
pigs (metaphorical).

Vertical Montage - Create meaning through the

juxtaposition of an image with some other element
(text (anchorage) or music).
Apply this to your own product : What
conventions across AS and A2 did you
adhere to? Use the editing theory as part of
your answers.
It is impossible to create a media product that is
entirely original. From your own experience discuss
the extent to which you used conventions of real
media texts to produce your media products and/or
to the extent they allowed you to be creative.

Creativity is always constrained by generic

conventions. To what extent did you adhere to or
subvert generic conventions in the creation of your
media products.