‘Texts’ seemed to be the main focus of this weeks lecture, which I didn’t really understand until I found out about project brief 4, and how the next few lectures will be focusing on the ‘media ideas’ for this project. This lecture seemed kind of like a “tbt” to year 12 media, which was bound to happen because well… they are both courses on media.

There was one thing Brian said in this lecture that I really took notice of, he said “Communication is a gamble”, and this means you can try and communicate themes and ideas but there is no guarantee that the audience will consume it in the way you initially intended it (again, a “tbt” to year 12 media, and yes I mean you, bullet theory). It is quite interesting when you focus not only on a media product, but on how it can be interpreted. For example, Kath and Kim’s target audience would probably be Australians, of a similar economic status (not 100% necessary but it could be if it was specific), but imagine watching some kid from the other side of the world trying to understand the humour of the show. This text would be interpreted in a completely different way than intended, because they would not be used to this “Australian” sort of humour that is commonly used.

There was a lot of talk on ‘signs’, which I still don’t really have much of a grasp on, but apparently, ‘signs’ have two parts:

The signified and the signified.

The example used for this was a dog. The signifier in this case, would be both the word ‘dog’ and a picture of a dog. Whilst the signified are mental connections that you make with the word or picture, like a memory of your childhood dog or a cute dog you saw at the park last week.

I’m sure this isn’t all that was covered this week, but these were the stand out points for me.