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MEDIA
Representation
"They Live"- Sunglasses
Reality? Or Fiction.
Capitalism = Economic system where the industry and companies are privately owned with minimal supervision from the government.
Representation is the description of portrayal of someone or something in a particular way.
Media Representation is concerned with the way that people, ideas and events are presented to us by the media. This could be represented in magazines, news, soaps, films, TV game shows etc. The media rely on the audience understanding these representations and accepting them.
Watch “They Live”:
How does this video clip represent Hegemonic ideals, preferred reading and dominant ideology through Media.
=The sunglasses act like a filter, seeing through the filter to see the truth of our daily lives. All media products, money and people with power are labeled and filtered. The preferred reading and dominant ideology in the short film is that the media controls people. All the media products (magazines, advertisements, billboards etc) have a meaning they want to convey to the audience, such as “Obeying Authority”, “Convey”, “No Thought” and “Buy.” The sunglasses allow the protagonist to see the dominant ideology of the media institutions/industry and their true intentions instead of seeing the representation.
The Matrix, How does it relate to representation:
The media is controlling people’s lives. People don’t actually know what reality is. It is not possible for the media to present the world as it really is reality. This is because the media constructs meanings about the world and therefore they change or MEDIATE what is really there.
Mediate= Intervene in a dispute in order to bring about an agreement, occupying the middle ground.
Representation = Re-presentation
The media re-presents the world to the audience. The ideas are a re-presentation of the original (Reality). The institution is in control of this representation.
Who is represented? -Lifestyle, class, age, gender, ethnicity, sexuality (L- CAGES)
Identifying the lack of representation - Is one group of people, person, place or situation being represented more than another?
Deconstructing how they are represented to the audience - media language, technical and cultural codes.
“Everything you see or hear on the TV is real”
= It is false because we must remember than the programs on television is ran by a media institution, that can choose what they want to withhold from you, and what they want they want to say. They can falsify information or limit the amount of knowledge people get. An example of this is the most recent news in the USA, the Las Vegas mass shooting. Every media company is reporting on it however there was also another terror attack in france that went unreported by US media companies. This was the Marseille terror attack where two woman were stabbed to death by a knife wielding man who was muslim (ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.)
This is an example of how the media can choose things they want to report and apply filters to it so that they can present their own dominant ideology (which is not necessary the truth or other information that is irrelevant to their ideology) so that people can believe them.
Representation:
The role of film is to accurately represent real people, places and situations.
Evaluate whether you agree or disagree with this statement.
The role of film is not accurately represent real people, places or situations. A lot of the times movies do not portray them (people,places,situations) accurately. An example of this is Black Hawk Down (2001.) Black hawk down was a movie based on real life events that happened in Somalia during the 1990s. Ridley Scott, the director of BHD claims that he made the movie as accurately as possible to show/reflect the tragedy that happened there. However in the film, there were many in-accurate mistakes and fictional scenes that never happened. At one point in the film, the hostile militia begin to bombard the building the US Soldiers have taken cover in with mortars and an SPG-9 recoilless rifle. A group of US Soldiers then soon kill the gunners and then turn the weapon against the militia, killing several with one shot. This incident never happened and was made up for dramatic effect by the writers.
Another example is that is Pearl Harbor (2001). Michael Bay’s 2001 movie doesn’t accurately portray the real life attack on Pearl Harbor. The in-accuracy comes into play when it is revealed that Rafe (The main character) is not only a master aviator, but well-trained in the ancient art of Origami. Which is pretty weird because Origami was only discovered by foreign troops after the war. However this gets trumped in them movie by the moment of the film where President Roosevelt stands up on from his wheelchair to make a dramatic speech. This goes to show that a film’s role isn’t to represent real life situations, people or places, but instead to entertain the audience even if the portrayal isn’t accurate. Therefore I disagree with the statement that the role of the film is to accurately represent real people, places and situations.
Other than situations and places, people are also represented wrongly in many different films. Such as mean girls or legally blond. Both of these movies only have stereotypical types of women and men, with men being represented as alpha male personalities, pure muscle and have simple/dumb minds. Females are represented as being all blonde, white and skinny, with their world being perfect with good looking white males and everything is all “female-like” (makeup, pink/girly colors, everyone is happy and flirty)
The media institutions who creating this content aren't telling us reality, they are telling us their dominant ideology on what they think society should be like and forces us on it using media products such as movies, games, magazines and television programs. The role of film isn’t to portray people,places or situations accurately, it is to make us experience gratification from their dominant ideology.
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Mise-En-Scene
I am researching mise-en-scene in different films so that we can get ideas that we can use in our film. Mise-en-scene is a french term meaning what is put into a scene or frame. Visual information in the frame. Communicates essential information to the audience because it represents people, places and events. When I am making my film, I have to make sure that things inside the movie frame will be chosen by the production team and me. This is to make sure the film is accurately represent and help tell the story of the character and the story. (To add meaning to our short film)
5 ELEMENTS IN MIS-EN-SCENE
Location/Setting
Props
Color/Color Scheme
Facial Expression and Body Language
Costumes
Mise-en-scene is used to communicate to audience and make gain more in-depth into film/media product. An example of this is a background character reading a book in the back of the scene, book may be related to the media product. An example of this is a video game called Metro 2033 where several background characters can be found reading books called "Metro". Further-more books in the same genre can be found scattered across the map.
Each aspect of mise-en-scene has hidden meanings within a media text, that uses signs to send signals to the audience about how we (the audience) are supposed to feel at certain points (preferred reading/dominant ideology)
We can use costumes to help convey our ideas. Such as the main character wearing light colors to represent them being a happy/sociable person, while other people wear darker clothing to represent them being more hostile and unwilling to socialize. We can also use facial expressions and body language to convey our ideas, such as supporting/background characters not understanding the emotions of the main character and think he is weird.
Setting and props play an important role in manipulating an audience, the narrative, expectations and the genre of a media text. Sets are either built from scratch or located through a setting that already exists.
"Metro Redux" (2014)
This game trailer is filled with the 5 elements of mis-en-scene, location, props, color scheme, body language and costumes.
1. The location of the game is in the metro tunnels and stations of Moscow, Russia. In the years of 2033-34, after a massive nuclear war wiped out humanity.
2. The props in the game are the weapons, train stations and various objects in-game such as wrecks and debris.
3. The color scheme is white, black and grey.
4. The body language of the people in-game are panicked, fearsome and desperate.
5. The costumers are mostly scrap/makeshift armor with thick winter clothing in various dark colors such as dark orange, dark blue and black.
To show that our protagonist is alone/unpopular/isolated this scene would show the protagonist being pulled by our unknown entity when attempting to socialize with a group of people. The protagonist is both mentally and physically isolated from others. (Physically = Unknown Entity Stopping Him, Mentally = Thinking he's all alone)
An example of an unknown force pulling the main character away is "Quarantine". The main female protagonist gets pulled away when crawling towards the camera. Even though this is a horror-adventure film, we can apply it to our comedy film to show that he is an outcast.
The protagonist is unable to decide which food to select as there is so much! Example From) The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift
To show that our protagonist is alone/unpopular/isolated this scene would show the protagonist being pulled by our unknown entity when attempting to socialize with a group of people. The protagonist is both mentally and physically isolated from others. (Physically = Unknown Entity Stopping Him, Mentally = Thinking he's all alone)
MISE-EN-SCENE IN OUR FILM
Using the five important elements in mise-en-scene (Location, Props, Color Scheme, Facial Expression/Body Language and Costumes) I have researched different films and how their mise-en-scene can be used in our film to support the true meaning/story of it.