Q1a Using Conventions from Real Media Texts

What could you discuss in an essay on Using Conventions from Real Media Texts?

Have a look on Pete Fraser's Blog for Inspiration, Production and Revision Tips
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REMEMBER --> for Q1a You MUST mention AS and A2 production. Therefore, throughout your essay you’re writing about what did you do at AS and how you’ve developed into a more proficient Media student at A2

What ARE Codes and Conventions in Media?

• The media construct reality.
• The media have their own forms, codes and conventions.
• The media present ideologies and value messages.
• The media are business that have commercial interests.
• Audiences negotiate meaning in media.

Media mediate reality via the use of recognized codes and conventions, and the credibility or realism of a media text may be judged by the degree to which the audience identifies with what is being portrayed.

Media students identify three main categories of codes that may be used to convey meanings in media messages:
technical codes, which include camera techniques, framing, depth of field, lighting and exposure and juxtaposition
symbolic codes, which refer to objects, setting, body language, clothing and colour
written codes in the form of headlines, captions, speech bubbles and language style.

• the media produces meaning by using conventions
• audiences produce meaning from the interaction of the conventional material in the text, and their understanding of conventions
• the conventions that the media uses have a history - they come from somewhere and
they are responsive to historical forces
• conventions are not natural but are cultural - they have cultural specificities - they are now somewhat universal - here we can probably think of advertising...

By the term 'code' we mean a communication system which contains elements which have an agreed meaning and which can be combined according to agreed rules. This could be the English language, Morse Code, a traffic policeman's hand signals, film etc.

It is a fundamental premise of Communication Studies that all communication takes place via codes:

A code is a rule-governed system of signs, whose rules and conventions are shared amongst members of a culture, and which is used to generate and circulate meanings in and for that culture.
Fiske (1987)

A code must consist of:
• a set of signs which carry meaning
• a set of agreed rules for combining those signs together

Since it is the case that the codes we use are the result of conventions arrived at by the users of those codes, then it is reasonable to suppose that the values of the users will in some way be incorporated into those codes. They will, for example, have developed signs for those things they agree to be important, they will probably have developed a whole array of signs to draw the distinctions between those things which are of particular significance in their culture. In other words, you might reasonably expect that the ideologies prevalent in those cultures will have been incorporated into the codes used:

...'reality' is always encoded, or rather the only way we can perceive and make sense of reality is by the codes of our culture. There may be an objective, empiricist reality out there, but there is no universal, objective way of perceiving and making sense of it. What passes for reality in any culture is the product of the culture's codes, so 'reality' is always already encoded, it is never 'raw'.
(Fiske 1987)

HOW TO PLAN YOUR REVISION NOTES FOR THIS EXAM ESSAY
1) AS level --> List how you used conventions from real horror films in your film opening

FOR EXAMPLE...
- The opening credits / film title
- Setting/location
- Costumes and props
- Camerawork and editing
- Title font and style
- Story and how the opening sets it up
- Genre and how the opening suggests it
- How characters are introduced
- Special effects

2) A2 --> List how you used conventions from real music videos in your own music vid

3) Consider how you adhered to or challenged conventions from these real media texts