Media language: how the media through their forms, codes, conventions and techniques communicate meanings
Media representations: how the media portray events, issues, individuals and social groups
Media industries: how the media industries’ processes of production, distribution and circulation affect media forms and platforms
Media audiences: how media forms target, reach and address audiences, how audiences interpret and respond to them and how members of audiences become producers themselves.
Definitions:
Drama: What is TV drama? TV drama is a broad genre. At its simplest, it is fictionalized action in narrative form.
Long form TV drama: Long Form Drama is a term coined to describe the recent shift of interest towards television series of high quality that many consider to have replaced the cinema as a locus of serious adult entertainment. Unfolding over multiple episodes, hours, and even years, these TV shows are seen to provide a content, often dark and difficult, and an innovative style that strain against the conventions of cinema as well as network television.
A code is a system of signs which can be decoded to create meaning.
In media texts, we look at a range of different signs that can be loosely grouped into the following:
•technical codes – all to do with the way a text is technically constructed – camera angles, framing, typography etc
•verbal codes – everything to do with language -either written or spoken
•symbolic codes – codes that can be decoded on a mainly connotational level
Genre: A genre is basically the category of any type of art or literature, for example categories of movie would be comedy, horror, thriller etc.
Genre Hybridity: Some media texts are hybrid genres, which means they share the conventions of more than one genre. For example Dr. Who is a sci-fi action-adventure drama and Strictly Come Dancing is a talent, reality and entertainment show.
Synopsis: A brief summary of the major points of a written work
Barthes' Narrative Codes
These codes can be applied when referring to the narrative of a show or film.
A narrative can also be described as open or closed, with an open narrative being unravelled in several ways to keep the narrative exciting or closed where there is only one obvious storyline.
The 5 codes are hermeneutic/enigma code, proairetic/action code, semantic code, symbol code & referential
The Hermeneutic Code (Enigma) refers to any element of the story that is not fully explained and hence becomes a mystery to the reader. The purpose of the author in this is typically to keep the audience guessing, arresting the enigma, until the final scenes when all is revealed and all loose ends are tied off and closure is achieved.
The Proairetic Code also builds tension, referring to any other action or event that indicates something else is going to happen, and which hence gets the reader guessing as to what will happen next. Action code - applies to any action that implies a further narrative action. For example, a gunslinger draws his gun on an adversary and we wonder what the resolution of this action will be.
The Hermeneutic and Proairetic Codes work as a pair to develop the story's tensions and keep the reader interested. Barthes described them as:
"...dependent on ... two sequential codes: the revelation of truth and the coordination of the actions represented….."
The Semantic Code
This code refers to connotation within the story that gives additional meaning over the basic denotative meaning of the word.
The semantic code - any element in a text that suggests a particular, often additional meaning by way of connotation.
House of Cards episode 1
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