Media Language is the ways in which meaning is created in a product. This meaning is created through narrative, genre, representation and the audience that the product is aimed at. I will look at my product that I created for the brief that asked me to create a Music Video in my A2 Year. The song that I chose to use for this task was Save The World by Swedish House Mafia, which is a song from the dance genre.
Andrew Goodwin says that a music video should have 5 key concepts, and these are: Thought Beats, Narrative and Performance, Star Image, Relation to visuals and the Technical Aspects. When creating our music video we felt that these were important values to include to make it an effective product. We used thought beats in our video, specifically at the beginning when the drums have just started and there is very little else happening. These were effective because it meant that we could create a relationship between what the audience could see on the screen and the music that they could hear. We also used the Star Image idea, as it meant that we were able to create our music video as a unique brand. We felt that this was important to our media product because otherwise the entire structure of the video may have appeared unnecessarily fragmented. To create this Star Image we introduced the character early, zooming into his face to do a meat shot and make him the centre of the frame. We then used him in all the key moments in the video and this meant that the audience could see that he was meant to be the main character.
Carole Vernallis had a similar idea to Goodwin, but said that there were 4 key concepts, and not the 5 that he said. The 4 that she said were most important were Narrative, Editing, Camera and Diegesis (The world of the music video). She said that this could include Jump Cuts and Disjointed Narrative. We used both of these in our video, with the jump cut being used on more than one occasion. We first used it in the scene were the main character, in superhero mode, was running down an alleyway to save a young woman who was being attacked. We used a jump cut here to give a slightly surreal feel and to make the time frame that it was happening in seem strange. The next time we used it was when we had slowed down the video, at the point that a young man was going to be ran over by a driver who was texting at the time. We used them here to keep the hyper-real theme, because in real life time doesn't slow down, but in the diegesis that we created, anything was possible, so the jump cuts weren't out of place. The disjointed narrative that we used was created when the shots that we were showing didn't really link up properly, as a whole, linear video. For example, it was quickly cutting from him sitting in college, to putting a costume on and then to saving someone from being attacked. Having this disjointed narrative meant that we didn't need to worry about it looking linear and helped when filming and editing them together. It also meant that we could create a more surreal story due to him seemingly being in more than one place in a matter of seconds.
Barthes said that music video and similar products have both denotations and connotations. This is to say that they have certain signs and signifiers in them, and then relate these to different ideologies and attitudes that are being expressed in the music video. An example of this is that if there was a black cat in the video, walking across someones path, then people may think that this is unlucky, and that would be the ideology behind it. In our music video we had a costume with a stereotypical superhero logo on it and this meant that when the audience seen this costume they could easily see the story of what was happening. The costume was the denotation and then the connotation would be that the main character was going to become the superhero that he had been day-dreaming about in the college. We also see a denotation when we are seeing one of the crimes and then see a shot of the superhero running. In this situation we haven't been directly told that he is going to be solving this crime, but because of our previous knowledge of this kind of character we know that he will be. Because we have already seen him wanting to be a superhero we already know that he will want to make a difference and save the person in danger.
Umberto Eco said that all texts, including music videos, will have either an open or a closed meaning encoded into them. The texts that have an open meaning will be open to the opinions of the audience that consume them, whereas those with a closed meaning will make the message/ ideology perfectly clear. Our music video was reasonably simple, and this meant that we had a closed meaning, and this was reasonably easy to understand. Our idea, and the one that we wanted our target audience to understand, was that ordinary people can be heroes, in whatever they are doing. By using a closed meaning we were able to get our message across strongly and tell them exactly what we wanted, rather than let them make up all their own ideas, and to get a meaning that we didn't really want to create.
Stuart Hall said that a media text, like a music video, would have 3 types if readings. These would be a preferred, a negotiated and an oppositional reading. If you had a preferred reading then the audience that you aimed your product at would get the message you wanted. If it was a negotiated reading then the audience may recognise some parts of the message that you were trying to create, but may have some of their own ideas, and an oppositional reading would mean that the audience you had aimed at didn't agree with the intentional reading, and chose to interpret a completely different one. In our music video we had a preferred reading, according to some of the feedback that we had, and what we as a production team thought. The meaning that we wanted to put in, believe in yourself and anything is possible, was widely thought of as the one that most people seen. This was good because things like signifiers and signs that we put in to emphasise that message were then more effective because our audiences would be able to connect with what they were for.
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