Post 8 - Media Language

My understanding of the term 'media language:'

The way in which we construct everything, both audio and visual within our short-film, from the location, to characters, to set design, all form parts of media language - and therefore is influenced by the four other areas to consider when making a short film: Genre, narrative, representation and audience.

By carefully selecting the specific shots that we use, we are able to communicate our film to the audience in the exact way that we want to.

An example of this from the past is the Kuleshov Effect; demonstrating and indeed proving that if different shots are constructed through different choices in media language, then they construct a different meaning.

For instance, if we were to use a shot of our protagonist frowning, and then followed this with a shot of a cheerful younger child walking into the room, then this would suggest to the audience that he is a miserable, grumpy, horrible person. However, if we were to follow the frowning close-up shot with a shot of someone being bullied, then this would suggest to the audience that the protagonist doesn't agree with bullying, and therefore the audience would be more supportive towards him as a character.

How I can use this when creating my short-film:

From understanding the term 'media language' it has become much more apparent that we must be careful when not only considering the micro elements of our short-film; camera, mise-en-scene, sound and editing, but also the more detailed, such as the subtle symbolic elements in addition to the sizes and angles of shots, continuity and framing.

As described above, we must make careful choices about where we want our characters to stand in the frames and the angle of the shots, so to convey the correct amount of status, and we must ensure that when editing our footage together, there are no continuity errors, thus ensuring that the sentences that we create are the correct media language and communication to our audience.