Welcome

1. Welcome • Make a list of all the images/objects used in your music magazine. • For each one, write a brief summary of what it represents or signifies.

2. Section A Question 1(b) • In this question you will be asked to apply one of the following theoretical concepts to either your AS or A2 coursework: • Representation • Audience • Narrative • Genre • Media Language For this question you choose either your AS or A2 coursework to discuss.

3. 1(b) Examiner’s Advice • Stronger answers do 3 things well: • Outline the concept for discussion with reference to relevant theorists • Apply these ideas to a range of specific elements from your coursework • Discuss how well the concept/theories relate to your product – in other words, evaluate! • Poor answers will lack reference to theory and specific answers. • Choice of text is important.

4. What is representation? • Write your own definition of this term using only 20 words.

6. What is representation? • Watch the video featuring Stuart Hall (not the currently disgraced TV Presenter!) • How does he explain what representation is? • Stuart Hall: Representation and the Media

7. Stuart Hall – Key Points • Hall emphasises the importance of visual representation – the image seems to be the prevalent sign of late modern culture. • Representation – to present/to depict. • The word suggests something was there already and has been represented by the media. • Representation as that which stands in for something else. • Representation is the way in which meaning is given to the things which are depicted that stand in for something.

8. Listen-Write • SEMIOTICS -how meaning is constructed through language and codes.

9. Roland Barthes (1913-1980) - denotation and connotation This is a theory we are all familiar with and looks at how the audience will interpret meaning from a particular media text. However, this interpretation is often influenced by society and the audience member’s own experience of the world. The denotation is an object placed within media texts, eg a poppy. It is then up to the audience to draw on their own cultural, social and historical knowledge to interpret its connotations. For example: is it just a red flower or do we think of war, violence, death, armistice. So the basic idea of denotation and connotation is what we see in a text and then what ideas we think of after or ideas we associate with that image.

10. WRITE A LIST OF ALL THE OBJECTS IN YOUR VIDEO PRODUCTION THAT HAVE CONNOTATIONS ATTACHED TO THEM. • THINK ABOUT HOW DIFFERENT AUDIENCES MIGHT RESPOND.

11. Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) - the signifier and signified Basically, this theory bears similarities to connotation and denotation, in that it suggests how there can be two levels of meaning in an object within a media text. Firstly there’s the signifier—which is what is there in front of us, what we see, the form the sign takes. Then there’s the signified—which is an idea we associate with the signifier, the concept it represents. THE SIGN OR SYMBOL WE SEE DOES NOT MAKE SENSE WITHOUT THE ACTUAL OBJECT AND THE MEANING IT CREATES. For example, if in a film the characters are talking about a bank, its up to the audience to determine which bank they mean—a grassy slope or a place to deposit your money?

12. THINK ABOUT HOW YOU HAVE CREATED MEANINGS IN YOUR PRODUCTION WORK… • CAN AUDIENCES CLEARLY MAKE SENSE OF DIFFERENT SIGNS YOU USE? • OR IS THERE ANYTHING AMBIGUOUS – SOMETHING THAT ISN’T CLEAR TO THE AUDIENCE?

13. How Do These Theories of Representation Apply to Your Work? Barthes Saussure Choose either ‘denotation and connotation’ OR ‘the signifier and the signified’ and write for 5 minutes about how this applies to either your music video or magazine.