In this session, you will deconstruct the Super.Human promotional trailer in order to understand how it constructs meaning. This is an extremely textually rich promo, with rapid-fire editing and a range of referentiality (there's two things to talk about!), so it's best to consider very short excerpts from the text in order to consider how complex meanings are created.
CLICK HERE TO FIND THE ADVERT
Media language - textual analysis terminology
- Connotes
- Signifies
- Constructs
- Designates
- Anchors
- Constructs a myth
- Encodes
- Narrative code
- Visual code
- Technical code
- Gesture code
- Genre code
- Symbolic code
- Proairetic code
- Hermenutic code
- Cultural code
- Referential code/intertextual reference
- Mode of address (formal, informal, direct, uncomfortable etc)
- Positions
- Codes and conventions
- Font size, type of font (e.g. serif/sans serif), colour
- Mise-en-scène – colour, lighting, location, costume/dress, hair/make-up
- Graphics, logos etc.
- Elements of narrative
- Codes and conventions
- Cinematography – framing, shot types, angle, position, movement
- Editing – pace, type of edits, continuity/montage structure/narrative
- Sound – music/dialogue/voiceover/diegesis
- Mise-en-scene – colour, lighting, location, costume/dress, hair/make-up
Media language theories
Roland Barthes - the construction of meaning through codes and myths
Claude Levi-Strauss - binary oppositions construct the world
Representation theories
Stuart Hall - Representations are a reconstruction of reality
Liesbet Van Zoonen - Different genres are constructed in different ways through media language. What it means 'to be a man' for example has changed over time
bell hooks - Intersectional feminism. Feminism is for everyone, and identity is EXTREMELY COMPLEX