OCR G325 A2 Media Studies Section A 1b Essay Plan: Language

Analyse use of Media Language in one of your Coursework Productions

“I will be analysing my thriller opening sequence which I filmed and edited as my main task which formed part of my Foundation Portfolio in Media. In class, we studied media language in existing Thrillers such as Seven, Psycho, Taken 3, Skyfall and Escape Plan. This enabled us to fully understand how cinematography, mise-en-scene, composition, editing and sound could be applied to our own productions to help understand genre, narrative and representation”.

• Analyse visual language and connotations of diegetic and non-diegetic sound in your opening sequence – how it creates meaning for audiences and establishes conventions. You can use Roland Barthes’ narrative codes initially – deconstruct the technical (editing, sound, camera movement, framing, type of shot, special effects) and mise-en-scene (settings, costume, objects and props, lighting and colour, pose, body language posture….).
• Example analysis – “excessive use of tight close ups encode claustrophobia and anxiety ensuring audiences deconstruct narrative enigma or the hermeneutic code”. Or, “ the colour palette is de-saturated with a blue filter. This gives clues to the hybridised genre of social realism but also adds a cold, detached feel symbolising the personality of the character”.
• Remember, unlike other 1 (b) responses you will be expected to analyse your production in significant detail, fully understanding how it links with the other question topic areas of narrative, genre, audience and representation e.g. “body language, framing and type of shot can establish character representations as in Hitchcock’s Marnie. I have also tried to tell the story with limited dialogue, focusing on camera movement”.
• Think about how you have used media language to construct a non-realist representation (if this is the case). According to Bordwell and Thompson – “meanings are constructed, never naturally or universally real” – are yours?
• Stuart Hall is useful for audience positioning and representation: “the media deliver hegemonic representations that serve powerful interests”. If you make a statement like “my sequence on one levels delivers cultural stereotypes suggesting a dominant ideology and on another challenges” with this 1 (b) question you really need to find evidence. Hall allows you to understand that the audience are positioned into decoding meaning through media language:
• Camera angles – what are the connotations?
• Does the rhythm of the editing help to construct narrative tension and identify genre?
• Does framing and type of shot suggest a specific type of representation, for example are any of your female characters framed for Laura Mulvey’s male gaze?
• Within the mise-en-scene, do objects and props suggest a form of juxtaposition that can be analysed using Levi-Strauss’ framework of narrative binary oppositions?
• With this essay try and be detached (as with other question areas) and develop a close textual analysis of your own media production like it is something you have studied as a media consumer.
• A strong ending could use a key scene to illustrate Rick Altman’s theory that genre offers audiences a set of pleasures.

Don’t let this question phase you – it is the least obvious of the 5 areas that could be explored in the exam. Simply do what the question is asking you – analyse your production in terms of media language, identifying how meaning is constructed for audiences in relation to genre, narrative and representation.