Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs. Within media it is important for the audience to be able to interpret the signs that are placed within a scene so that they can understand what is happening. Semiotics is split into denotation and connotation. Denotation is what you literally see when you look at something and connotation is what you can infer from looking at it (what it means).
In this picture (left) there is a denotation and a connotation.
Denotation: A woman with brown hair in a white ball gown.
Connotation: She is getting married. We can infer this from the colour of her ball gown which is white and symbolises purity.

Identifying and Analysing shots

In today's lesson we were learning about how to Identify different shots and why they have been used.

Me and my partner analysed a shot from my favourite film Mrs Doubtfire. We counted the number of shots used in the scene and counted 14.

The first shot is a medium shot and these are used quite often through the scene because the characters are all in close proximity. The first medium shot is used instead of a shot reverse-shot because the other man that is being spoken to is not important to the scene or the film. It briefly shows the face of the man Stu is talking to and then it changes to a shot of the kids playing in the pool. this shot ensures we know who he is talking about and shows us what the other man is seeing when he looks over.

In the next shot instead of a medium shot of both of the them it focuses on Stu's face as he is talking and we can also see Mrs Doubtfire's reaction to what he is saying in the background. There is then a close up of Mrs Doubtfires face as we see her/his reaction to what Stu is saying. We then see him/her pick up a lime and throw it, the shot quickly changes to the back of Stu's head just in time to see the lime hit him.

Some great websites for getting started

Last lesson we learnt about some great sites to help us with the course and they are a good resource of information and clips.

The first site im going to talk about is YouTube. Most people are familiar with YouTube, but just incase you're not, I will explain a little bit about it. YouTube is a website where anyone can put up videos or watch other people's videos and it is very easy to use: you simply type what you you would like to watch into the search bar and it will list all related videos.YouTube is useful for looking up other Media students' opening sequences for examples and ideas.

Another useful site is Art of the Title. Because we will be making our own opening sequences, this will be really useful for looking at many different title sequences and helping to find those of a specific genre or watching and trying to determine what kind of film it is and what its about.

Lastly there is the BBFC website that you can visit and learn all about film classification, why they do it, and how they decide on what rating to give a film or trailer.There is also an education resources section which will give you all the information you need to do work on the BBFC or simply get to know it.