Monday 13 October 2014

Poster Analysis

Analysing Movie Posters

Posters occupy a space between art and advertising. They have a clear commercial purpose - to promote an event or product - but they also have artistic value. People buy them and hang them on their walls. Museums have whole galleries devoted to poster art. When analysing a poster it is important that you evaluate both how well it fulfils its purpose (ie promotion) as well as its aesthetic value.

First steps

When analysing a poster, you should consider the following broad questions before you start to focus on the details:

What are the main colors used in the poster? What do they connote?
What symbols are used in the poster? Do you need audience foreknowledge to decode the symbols?
What are the main figures/objects/background of the poster? Are they represented photographically, graphically, or illustratively?
Are the messages in the poster primarily visual, verbal, or both?
Who do you think is the intended audience for the poster?

Given that all movie posters have the same purpose - to get audiences to go see a movie - what persuasive techniques are used by the poster?

Which genre conventions are referred to?
Is a star used as a USP?
Are "expert witnesses" (ie critics) quoted?
What pleasures (gratifications) are promised by the poster?
How is attention gained (humour, shock, surprise familiar face of a star)?
How does the tagline work? (humour, pun, alliteration etc?)

Institution

The poster can also give you important information about the production context of the movie:

How much does the poster tell you about the institutional context of the movie's production?
How important is this information on the poster (think about information hierarchies)?
How important a part of the whole marketing campaign is the poster? Where is the poster placed?
How expensive was this poster to produce?

Critical Evaluation

Finally, you have to pass judgement on the poster.

Is it a good poster?
Does it communicate effectively with the audience?
Are there any alternative readings which might harm the message of the marketing campaign?
Is the poster offensive in any way? e.g. representation

No comments:

Media Terminology

Anchorage - how meaning is fixed, as in how a caption fixes the meaning of a picture

Audience – viewers, listeners and readers of a media text. A lot of media studies is concerned with how audience use texts and the effects a text may have on them. Also identified in demographic socio-economic categories.

Binary Opposites – the way opposites are used to create interest in media texts, such as good/bad, coward/hero, youth/age, black/white. By Barthes and Levi-Strauss who also noticed another important feature of these ‘binary opposites’: that one side of the binary pair is always seen by a particular society or culture as more valued over the other.

Catharsis – the idea that violent and and sexual content in media texts serves the function of releasing ‘pent up’ tension aggression/desire in audiences.

Censorship – Control over the content of a media text – sometimes by the government, but usually by a regulatory body like the British Board of Film censors.

Code – a sign or convention through which the media communicates meaning to us because we have learned to read it. Technical codes – all to do with the way a text is technically constructed – camera angles, framing, typography, lighting etc. Visual codes – codes that are decoded on a mainly connotational level – things that draw on our experience and understanding of other media texts, this includes Iconography – which is concerned with the use of visual images and how they trigger the audiences expectations of a particular genre, such as a knife in slasher horror films.

Consumer – purchaser, listener, viewer or reader of media products.

Context – time, place or mindset in which we consume media products.

Conventions – the widely recognised way of doing things in particular genre.

Denotation – the everyday or common sense meaning of a sign. Connotation – the secondary meaning that a sign carries in addition to it’s everyday meaning.

Diegetic Sound – Sound whose source is visible on the screen

Non Diegetic sound – Sound effects, music or narration which is added afterwards

Enigma – A question in a text that is not immediately answered and creates interest for the audience – a puzzle that the audience has to solve.

Feminism – the struggle by women to obtain equal rights in society

Gaze – the idea that the way we look at something, and the way somebody looks at you, is structured by the way we view the world. Feminist Laura Mulvey suggests that looking involves power, specifically the look of men at women, implying that men have power over women.

Genre – the type or category of a media text, according to its form, style and content.

Hegemony – Traditionally this describes the predominance of one social class over another, in media terms this is how the controllers of the media may on the one hand use the media to pursue their own political interest, but on the other hand the media is a place where people who are critical of the establishment can air their views.

Hypodermic Needle Theory – the idea that the media can ‘inject’ ideas and messages straight into the passive audience. This passive audience is immediately affected by these messages. Used in advertising and propoganda, led to moral panics about effect of violent video and computer games.

Ideology – A set of ideas or beliefs which are held to be acceptable by the creators of the media text, maybe in line with those of the dominant ruling social groups in society, or alternative ideologies such as feminist ideology.

Indexical sign – a sign which has a direct relationship with something it signifies, such as smoke signifies fire.

Image – a visual representation of something.

Institutions – The organisations which produce and control media texts such as the BBC, AOL Time Warner, News International.

Intertextuality – the idea that within popular culture producers borrow other texts to create interest to the audience who like to share the ‘in’ joke. Used a lot in the Simpsons.

Media language – the means by which the media communicates to us and the forms and conventions by which it does so.

Media product – a text that has been designed to be consumed by an audience. E.G a film, radio show, newspaper etc.

Media text – see above. N.B Text usually means a piece of writing

Mise en Scene – literally ‘what’s in the shot’ everything that appears on the screen in a single frame and how this helps the audience to decode what’s going on.

Mode of Address – The way a media product ‘speaks’ to it’s audience. In order to communicate, a producer of any text must make some assumptions about an intended audience; reflections of such assumptions may be discerned in the text (advertisements offer particularly clear examples of this).

Montage – putting together of visual images to form a sequence. Made famous by Russian film maker Eisenstein in his famous film Battleship Potemkin.

Moral Panic – is the intensity of feeling stirred up by the media about an issue that appears to threaten the social order, such as against Muslims after 9/11, or against immigrants, or against ‘video nasties’ following the Jamie Bulger murder.

Multi-media – computer technology that allows text, sound, graphic and video images to be combined into one programme.

Myth – a complex idea by Roland Barthes that myth is a second order signifying system ie when a sign becomes the signifier of a new sign (2^nd years only this one!)

Narrative code – The way a story is put together within a text, traditionally equilibrium- disequilibrium, new equilibrium, but some text are fractured or non liner, eg Pulp Fiction.

News values – factors that influence whether a story will be picked for coverage.

Non-verbal communication – communication between people other than by speech.

Ownership – who produces and distributes the media texts – and whose interest it is.

Patriarchy – The structural, systematic and historical domination and exploitation of women.

Popular Culture – the study of cultural artefacts of the mass media such as cinema, TV, advertising.

Post Modernism – Anything that challenges the traditional way of doing things, rejecting boundaries between high and low forms of art, rejecting rigid genre distinctions, emphasizing pastiche, parody, intertextuality, irony, and playfulness. Postmodernism favours reflexivity and self-consciousness, fragmentation and discontinuity (especially in narrative structures), ambiguity, simultaneity, and an emphasis on the destructured, decentered, dehumanized subjects! This is tricky!

Propaganda – the way ruling classes use the mass media to control or alter the attitudes of others.

Reader – a member of the audience, someone who is actively responding to the text.

Reception Theory (Hall) - Preferred Reading the interpretation of a media product that was intended by the maker or which is dictated by the ideology of the society in which it is viewed. Oppositional Reading – an interpretation of a text by a reader whose social position puts them into direct conflict with its preferred reading.Negotiated Reading – the ‘compromise’ that is reached between the preferred reading offered by a text and the reader’s own assumptions and interpretations

Regulation – bodies whose job it is to see that media texts are not seen by the wrong audience (eg British Board of Film Censors) or are fair and honest (EG Advertising Standards Association)

Representation – The way in which the media ‘re-presents’ the world around us in the form of signs and codes for audiences to read.

SFX – special effects or devices to create visual illusions.

Shot – single image taken by a camera.

Sign – a word or image that is used to represent an object or idea.

Signifier/Signified – the ‘thing’ that conveys the meaning, and the meaning conveyed. EG a red rose is a signifier, the signified is love (or the Labour Party!)

Sound Effects – additional sounds other than dialogue or music, designed to add realism or atmosphere.

Stereotype – representation of people or groups of people by a few characteristics eg hoodies, blondes

Still – static image.

Sub-genre – a genre within a genre.

Two Step Flow theory - the idea that ideas flow from mass media to opinion leaders, and from them to a wider population.

Uses and Gratifications – ideas about how people use the media and what gratification they get from it. It assumes that members of the audience are not passive but take an active role in interpreting and integrating media into their own lives.

Glossary

GLOSSARY OF CAMERA SHOTS AND MOVEMENT

C.U. Close Up: A head and shoulders shot. This takes up the whole frame. Used to give a subject more importance.

M.S. Mid Shot: a shot, which extends to just below a person’s waist. It allows for hand movements and there is sometimes enough room in the frame for a second person. (This then becomes a Two-shot)

M.C.U. Medium close-up: a shot, which usually contains the top half of a person. Commonly used to show significant details of one person.

X.C.U. Extreme Close-up: a shot where a person’s face fills most of the screen. This shot has dramatic impact and is rarely used.

L.S. Long Shot: a shot generally used to show a subject in their environment – with the standing person taking up about 2/3 of the screen.

W.S. Wide Shot: this establishing shot is often used at the beginning of a sequence to establish location.

O/S - Over-the-shoulder shot: this is often used in interviewing. A shot of a person is obtained from over the shoulder of another person. Both sides of the screen are thus framed.

P.O.V. - The point of view shot: a shot, which shows a scene or character from the point of view of another character. The camera ‘works’ as that person’s eyes.

Tracking Shot - Generally defined as movement parallel to the action or at least at a constant distance (e.g. the camera which travels alongside the race track in track & field events)

Pan - A horizontal movement of the camera (left to right or right to left), although the camera itself remains static.

Tilt - This describes a vertical movement of the camera; either tilting up or tilting down.

Zoom - Technically, not a camera move as the camera itself remains static. It is a single movement of the camera lens either IN as the lens moves in on the subject; or OUT as the lens moves away from the subject to a more wide-angle shot.

Aerial Shot - A camera shot filmed from an airplane, helicopter, balloon, kite or high building (higher than a crane).

Crane Shot - A shot in which the camera rises above the ground on a mobile support.

Overhead Shot - A shot looking down vertically on the action from above.

Reverse angle Two successive shots from equal and opposite angles, typically of characters during conversation.

TRANSITIONS:

Cut: A shift to another scene of action or different viewing angle.

Dissolve or Fade: The slow fading of one shot into another.

Jump cut: A rapid, jerky transition from one frame to the next, either disrupting the flow of time or movement within a scene or making an abrupt transition from one scene to another. (Not common).

Montage: Style of editing involving rapid cutting so that one image is juxtaposed with another or one scene quickly dissolves into the next. Angles, settings and framing are manipulated in a conspicuous way so as to convey a swift passage of time, to create some kind of visual or conceptual continuity, or to generate a distinctive rhythm. Sometimes used in a title sequence.

Production