Question 2: Media Language (practice essay)

Explain how meaning is constructed by the use of media language in ONE of your coursework productions.

For our AS production, my group and I produced an opening sequence for our sci-fi/action film ‘Hacker’, set in London where- due to the main character Drea finding corrupt files on the government’s data base- a chase broke out between her and two special agents trying to damage the world. As a film opening, it needed to draw in audiences to make them want to carry on watching the film, showing and introducing the main themes, genres and setting. Therefore we needed to do this to create an effective opening, and we did this via media language- the way a producer conveys messages to the audience through the use of camerawork, editing, sound and mise-en-scene. As our film was predominantly action, we needed to convey this message to our target audience.

From viewing previous action films such as ‘Catch Me If You Can’ (2002), we saw that a main convention of actions was that a lot of the shots were close ups or wide shots. We wanted to recreate this, so when editing our footage in the program Adobe Premiere Pro, we kept the same zoom on the shots that we had chosen to use when filming. We decided these shots would look effective to connote two meanings- the first that it is an action and secondly that audience viewers need to focus on the specific characters. To further these technological connotations, we used the program Adobe Premiere Pro again for the opening titles. We created a sci-fi typing look for our titles, with the fonts being in a green coding colour. As we used this font- inspired by the film Iron Man (2008)- it helped again convey this action/sci-fi theme and a world where a single woman is trying to save corrupt files being exposed to the world.

This exploitation of technology in our film plot follows the theory proposed by Levi Strauss about binary opposites being just as important as narrative, as without the idea of good vs evil we used we would have no narrative to incorporate and therefore no media language to construct.  At the moment everyone uses technology and many people prefer to text and e-mail rather than talk face-to-face. We wanted to develop this idea and create a film which wonders ‘what if these corrupt files get out over the internet?’ To emphasise the use of technology in our film, the beginning of the sequence shows a close-ups of the main character on a laptop, showing their thumbs typing away. We then crosscut these shots with close-ups of the special agent’s mouths feeding information into their ear pieces saying they had eyes on the target, relying on technology to include the conventions of our genre.

I believe that in making these important creative decisions we conveyed meaning well, and this was backed up with the audience feedback received. The majority of our audience understood our plot and gave positive feedback, and this was due to the fact that we could construct meaning by the use of media language.

Throughout our sequence, we see many wide shots of Drea being chased by the special agents which is most effective as she is our main protagonist.  This raises questions in the audience’s minds, such as ‘why is she being chased?’ and ‘what has she done?’ This follows Barthes’ enigma code, where media provokes audiences to ask questions. The answer to their questions are only revealed at the very end of the sequence, where we show a scene of her being cornered in an alleyway, we then know she is good and they are bad. The fact that we used a cut shot shows that this is an important part of the sequence, making audiences concentrate and read the text. The use of speech saying ‘well this’ll be interesting’ makes the audiences want to carry on watching the film.

In retrospect, viewing and evaluating a film opening, we could easily see how Levi-Strauss’s theory of binary opposites can be applied. This is shown as we dressed Drea in innocent colours and clothing and the boys in strict suits = dialogue and actions by the characters eventually reveal that Drea is the ‘goodie’ and the boys are the ‘baddies.’

From viewing all our camera, editing, sound and mise-en-scene decisions, it is easy to see how media can convey a message through media language. This follows Stuart Hall’s theory of decoding/encoding- how producers decode a message and want audiences to encode it. Furthermore, theorist David Bordwell stated that in film, ‘every gesture and every camera movement is designed to shape our uptake’

I believe that in making these important creative decisions we conveyed meaning well, and this was backed up with the audience feedback received. The majority of our audience understood our plot, and this was due to the fact that we could construct meaning by the use of media language.