Month: May 2015

Institutions

What are institutions?

Our week 10 Lecture describes this as a term from sociology concerning with organising the structures of a society. In relation to its social, cultural, political and economic factors, there are principles, values and rules that underly these structures. We see a community or an organisation structured to govern the behaviour of a set of individuals like universities, hospitals and even marriages. When watching a film, say Fast and Furious, its narrative is comprised with institutions such as the drivers, gangs and polices. These are examples of institutions and we as students are part of an establishment.

Media Institutions

Broadcast television . Community Radio . Journalism . Cinema . The News . Newscorp . ABC . Public Service Broadcasting

Google

Media institutions, like any other institutions are enduring. The cinema industry would have regulations and structured activities, while developing working practices to produce its films. Furthermore, institutions are a collectivist, reaching to own’s particular goal as the community share expected values. Finally, the public is aware of its status as how google is widely recognised of its status.

Marriage as Social Institution

Marriage is not just based on love and relationship but a social structure involving a set of usually two individuals with expectations. As a widely accepted cultural rules and practice, it is legal and a community recognition that can be known as a legal framework. Often we associate marriage with religion because of its superstitions and rituals that are symbolic of religious practices. Containing moral values, these expectations may involve to be faithful in which the relationship is monogamy. When two are married, the public is aware of its status from the rings they wear. They share certain values as they develop the relationship and working on a particular goal in life through a utilised set of regulations/ compromises discussed between the two. These conventions conveyed in a marriage makes this practice a social institution.

The Style of Scorsese

Reading Log #8

I have seen The Wolf of Wall St (2014), The Age of Innocence (1993), Shutter Island (2010) and all those directed by Martin Scorsese has particular style that became the director’s signature in making film. The director often engages with gangster films, with social violence while interested with both European art cinema and Hollywood classical narrative. He is influenced, or inspired by early cinema with long takes and montage such as of Eisenstein and Hitchcock. Elliptical editing is specially a motif in which Scorsese has ritually complemented in The Age of Innocence and other films to reduce time and space.

Different filmmakers have their own individual approach in portraying their character’s mental subjectivity. In The Age of Innocence for example, the character Newland Archer (starring Daniel Day Lewis) desires to be with Ellen Olenski despite already having an engagement with May Welland. Scorsese has shown this perspective from Newland’s point of view shots following Ellen around the room and tracking away from May to dislocate her outside the frame. Montage and jump cuts are often used and became a pattern to portray hallucinations or imaginations of the characters. Similar techniques are also used in The Wolf of Wall St when the main character is under a drug, causing his instability of vision. Both movies promotes the ideologies of the rich families of New York’s high society and this portrayal itself is a motif occurring in many of Scorsese’s films.

Audiences

Audience is the primary topic of our week 9 lectorial. Wide range of community including advertisers, commercial broadcasters, individual program makers, government policy makers, psychologists, cultural theorists all care about their audience. One of the characteristics of a post-broadcast era is that there is a change in audience practices, making TV for instance, as cultural technology. I’ve thought about myself watching the New Girl show during holidays instead of actually “going out”, or my mum being glued to the telly watching episodes of CSI and Doctor Who all day and even my friends on Spotify. Many of us as audiences are affected by the digitalisation and as mass culture and audience progresses, the idea evaluates that real life is becoming indistinguishable from the movies.

I’ve also remembered my little brother undergoing the process of interpellation after watching Avengers and acting like that Captain America hero. Interpellation is, in other words when an individual is prompted by a text to recognise themselves as being a subject belonging to a role. Not one of us has not been there let’s be honest. Furthermore, binge watching (or some other kinds of reading). Been there, done that… like these two here.

Moreover, audiences have specific tastes or desires and makers may think of them as the public, social glue or an imagined community. So we did a little activity talking about our uses of texts and this is what Bianca and I came up with:

Listen to me!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Rgvyz7Yq1Y

In reading media texts, we need to listen to the sounds being produced. I found this video from You Tube by thebigtinonetwork about a little boy learning and behaving as his parents from observation and listening. Like what the kid is saying… Listen!

Sound is…

Pervasive
Multi-directional
Complexly layered
Prioritised by the ear
Intimate

As aural semiotics, it place the listener in a mediated or imagined perspective. These perspectives include figure, ground and the field. There is a difference between perspective and the system of social distance. Where social distance applies to single sounds, perspective applies to the simultaneous sounds and has relatives rather than absolute levels. Moreover, social distance creates relations of different degrees of formality between the representation and the listener.

Figure: The focus of interest

Ground: The setting or context

Field: The background or ambient space, what is heard

Soundscape

Soundscape refers to representations of a place or an environment that can be heard, rather than be seen. It is understood by individuals in different ways. Some of us can listen to music and actually understand its sounds and notes. But some does not. Some are more sensitive with particular sounds like the air whooshing when others just listen to its silence. Silence itself doesn’t exist and when I think about it, I hear every time even of the fridge whirring when nothing else seems to sound.

Man Of No Ego – Slowing Down (Web of Life)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=204&v=TwuF2mJA3Gw

How sound is complemented

Reading Log #7

Sound in the cinema is a crucial component to cinematic narration processes. They give cues in both onscreen and off-screen as audiences synchronize what is shown to the sound produced. Cues given by sounds allow audiences to anticipate and understand the intended reading of the narrative, besides according to their experiences.

As exemplified in Vivre Sa Vie, 1962 by Jean-Luc Godard, the voices of the characters are often off-screen while the character itself is not present on the screen. This use of dialogue gives cues in which the audience understands that the character on screen, who is not speaking nor moving any lips movements, is communicating with the character that is off-screen because of the use of the character’s voices.

The presence of background noises like those in the café scene is the diegetic effect as we hear the plates and cups clanking. But as there is a dialogue between the characters, this low-pitch and average-volume dialogue sound is dominant and guided our attention (or to listen) to itself whilst the low-volume noises are secondary mixing of sounds. This is followed by a background music coming in. This French musical soundtrack is the non-diegetic effect that adds timbre and harmony to the scene. As the character speaks, there are moments of silence and this is a motif shown throughout the film. The purpose of this silence is to guide the audience focus and attention on the scene/shot presented.

Textual Analysis & Semiotics

I’ve been doing this a lot in high school. Taking three portfolio subjects in year 12 have murdered me. First of all, studying visual arts required art historical studies in theory classes which made us prepare for the exam. Yes, our exam had a couple of picture of artworks where we had to write an essay on them. Then another “essay” of reflection on our practical piece. Secondly, I also took fashion; materials design subject where in my inspiration page has lots and lots of analysis on historical designs as well as influential designers. And finally media, which is all about film theories and ANALYSIS. Obviously, that’s not all. English! books, films, quotes,… just english. But I remembered one of the great things about english class is watching Fernando Meirelles’ The Constant Gardener and reading the alliteration, The Rabbits with your mate the night before the exam and I quite liked that movie.

Our week 7 lectorial explores text, which is a practice of sense-making. It is an empirical evidence of how others make sense of the world. Texts are sites where we can see social production and are vehicles for production of cultural meanings. Therefore include semiotic tradition of analysis in which refers to procedural systems of related conventions for correlating signifiers or signified in certain domains. Textual analysis requires relation of formal codes to social/ideological codes and our in class activity demonstrate the theory.

Formal codes:

Technical

Composition

Genre

Social/ideological codes:

Family

Gender

Sexuality

Race/ethnicity

Class age

Nationality

Narrative vs. Non-Narrative

As our week 8 lectorial focuses on narratives… and non-narratives, we’ve learned about the “Hero’s Journey”. This theory outline is used in most narrative forms such as in religious storytelling, popular culture, myths in books, films and etc. Narratives include a process, development or a progression of the character within the story undergoing a journey. It is exemplified in the Bible of Christianity in which Jesus was born and went on an adventure called from the Father, then faced challenges in which He had to die on the cross. These events are then followed by a revelation and transformation of how Jesus rose from the dead and return as the Christian God.

A simpler and general outline of the Hero’s Journey is presented below. We have seen comical movies like Marvel’s heroes and its narrative undergoes this process of storytelling. Similarly to the disney characters such as Cinderella or Mulan would also follow this outline. Therefore, the “hero” in this case does not mean a saviour in the story, but is any main character undergoing a process of journey.

And now to the non-narratives examples. This refers to the method of storytelling with series of unrelated events, no connection or logic… Basically, it’s nonsense if we read the text in a general matter. It has no chronological order or development of the character or subject and also has no specific clear context. Unlike the narratives, non-narrative sequences are lacking causality. We would see this in abstract, or experimental films such as “Koyaanisqatsi” and from what I’ve seen in one of my cinema studies screenings, “Ballet Mécanique”. Non-narratives often focus more on motif and rather more poetic in terms of its order of sequences. In our lectorial this week, we were shown this film.

https://vimeo.com/34459710