Key Assessment.

Key Assessment.

Ideology- A term used to describe  the thoughts or feelings of a person or group. 
Intertextuality- Reference to other media texts within a media text.
Positioning- The way that a media text has been laid out for the audience.
Lexis- The language used in a media text.
Diametric opposition- One thing being the complete opposite to another thing.
Paradigmatic feature- The key features that make up a media product.

Which two theoretical perspectives have we studied that can be 'credited' to Stuart Hall?

Stuart Hall can be credited for the his theories representation. He believed that our views on things in the world such as social groups, events and issues can be constructed by representation. He also said that everything has it's own meaning, such as a tree symbolising growth. Hall's second theory was that each member of a products audience will take different meaning from it and so he believed that there are several different meanings for each media text. 

Choose two of the following advertisements: Tide print advert, Wateraid audiovisual spot advert, Kiss of the Vampire theatrical poster. How do codes and conventions create meanings in these adverts? 

In the print advertisement for Tide we are shown the stereotypical role of a woman, hugging the box of Tide washing power. This gives us an idea of what women were expected to do back in the 1950's and 60's. Thanks to Richard Dyer's theory on stereotypes, which says that stereotypes are used by the audience to make fast assumptions about a character, the audience is able to quickly work out that the woman is a housewife and has been used to represent most women back in this time. Tide has done this in order to appeal to as big of an audience as possible so they can sell more products. The large and brightly coloured advert picture draws in the viewer and makes pay attention to the advert. The caption "Tide's got what women want" suggests a sense of romance to the audience, implying that the women who use the product love it so much that they want to hug it. This is backed up by the pink hearts above the woman hugging a box of Tide washing
powder. The expression of the model appears to be one of love and longing for the product.
The image of the woman hugging the washing power combined with the pink hearts further
implies to the audience that the housewives who buy this product will fall in love with Tide. The advertisement uses a Z-line to make sure that the viewer takes in all the information given in the advert, going from the bold red slogan at the top of the page to the image is a common housewife hugging the product and finally to some information about the product at the bottom. 

The Wateraid advert shows a young girl walking to get the fresh water from a pump that has been installed in her village. The charity uses a young girl rather than an adult because she will evoke a feeling of sympathy in the mainly adult audience because it will make them think of their own children or grandchildren. The charity wants the audience to realise how lucky they are to have fresh water, making them want to give this gift to others by donating money. At the start of the advertisement we only know that there is a girl singing as she walks down a dirt road. This build up has been used by the audience to create a feeling of mystery as the viewer wonders who the girl is and where she is walking to? As the advert progresses it is revealed that the girl is happy and is singing because she is able to get fresh water from the pump in her village. The charity has shown the audience that the clean water has made everyone so happy but they still need help. At the end of the advert we are shown information on how we can donate money to Wateraid and help make more people happy in the same way that the girl is. As well as this information we are shown some statistics on clean water across the world. The use of statistics conforms to the average charity advertisement and attempts to shock the viewer into donation money to the charity. on the other hand the advertisement doesn't conform to a typical charity advert because the audience has not been shown an graphic images of the people having to drink dirty water. Instead the charity has used happy images along with cheerful background music to make the audience feel proud for making a difference to those people. 

Explore how ideology is conveyed through the representation in this film poster?


This poster for the Netflix show Annihilation uses five female characters to create the main body of this advertisement. The science fiction movie doesn't conform to the stereotypes of it's genre because the only characters shown on the poster are female, suggesting that there not any leading male roles in this film. The poster has used a z-line to draw the viewers eye across the poster. the line starts at the text at the top that shows who is staring as the leading character, the line then moves our eyes down to the picture in the centre of the poster, finally the eye is drawn to the bold white text at the bottom "Annihilation" which shows the audience what the title of this film is. The caption above the title "One way in. No way out" uses hermeneutic code to give the audience a sense of thrill and mystery. This has bene cleverly used by the producer to make the viewer ask questions about the film such as, where are they going and why is there no way out? The mise-en-scene of the advert has been created to imply that there is more to this film they it first appears. We get this idea from the use of dark colours and the small details in the background that we may not have been able to notice at first glance. these details include the face of a wolf that has bene carved into a rock on the left hand side of the poster. The wold could be a symbolic code that represents something or someone chasing the woman, which could also explain why they have weapons. The primary audience for this piece would be someone who is a fan of science fiction films, however the film may also appeal to those who like horror films, this is the films secondary audience.