Session 3: The Moving Image and Semiotics

Seminar

Following from last week we carried on looking into semiotics but this time connecting it to the moving image and establishing its other signs: physical and psychological.

Physical signs define what we see:

• Badge
• Rust gold colour
• Star
• Sheriff part of the Lincoln County

Psychological signs define the meaning behind what we see:

• Justice
• Law
• Power
• Control
• Wild West
• Protection

The way I’ve interpreted this during the lesson is how these signs are another way are defining denotations and connotations when analysing an image. However, I further learned they aren’t because the physical and psychological signs are linked to be known as ‘Metonymic’. When linking it to the idea of moving image the reasons these signs have come about is because they help build a character, so when looking back at the badge we know the character is of higher authority because they are the one with this item. I’ve learned film theorists call this ‘part to whole’ also known as the ‘Synecdoche’ because the character is referenced to be as iconic as its trait or feature = the sheriff is his badge, a heroine is a rose because she’s beautiful but can at the same time be easily damaged. These are factors I’ve never thought about when analysing the moving image and it was useful to think about when we re-imagined a fairy-tale later on in the lesson. 

When we decoded a film scene from ‘Get Out’ it became clear how these signs are intentional when added to films because through certain moments they are what tell the story due to its images. 

As Robert Edgar says ‘we seem to pick up these signals quite effortlessly. This is because we belong to a visual culture adept at the transmission and reception of visual information.’ (Edgar, Marland and Rawle 2015) stating the audience pick up more from what they see on the screen rather than dialogue and the scene we analysed demonstrated that for us. In ‘Get Out’ they have chosen for Chris to wear different clothing, act uncomfortable in the scene as its intentional, he needs to look different from everyone around him including the other black man at the party as this is what is driving the narrative. 

Re-Imagining a Fairytale

I felt very connected to this task because I was familiar using the Pixar Prompt technique and I recreating a story is a passion of mine. My group focused on the fairy-tale of Snow White:

The plan was to connect it to modern society while keeping the main factors of Snow White in play. Instead of having a step-mother we changed it to a father because there a lot of cases about abusive fathers and we used this to drive the story. The task was challenging as we wanted to keep the story of our fairy-tale but also make it modern leading us to come up with many angles to help drive the story. There was focus on using the semiotics signs from this lesson and our previous lesson where we used the big issue to be what makes ‘Ruby’ our character who she is due to this paper as it’s what saves her life in the end. I believe we kept the fairy-tale within our modern narrative working effectively as a team.

Looking back at last week’s tasks focusing on visual design, for our story of Snow White we should have kept some similar aspects such as the apple as this is a key factor of the fairy-tale and we could have had our character poisoned by something containing apple essence such as an alcoholic drink for example. This fits the criteria from last week because, the gestalt theory focuses on using design to promote a story/business/film and if we were to promote our story to an audience, on our poster we’d include an aspect that people would be familiar and engage with and in Snow White’s case it would be the apple. 

Out of all the tasks we have done so far, this one has been the most interesting for me because it’s made me engage into a different side of film and how narratives are created and it’s something I’d be interested in looking into further. When looking into this idea further, I’d carry the technique over to my Sound and Camera lessons when we create short films. I could be able to take a fairy-tale or story and re-shape it to create a new original story, similar to what Disney do with the Grimm Brothers fiction.

Bibliography

Edgar, R. Marland, J. Rawle, S (2015), The Language of Film, Fairchild Books, available from Bloomsbury Applied Visual Arts, accessed on 14/03/2020