Reading into media forms

When we look at the media and what it displays to an audience we take the images, words, notions very much believing what the media is telling us. This is what the ‘form’ used to put the issue across to an audience wants us to see and think. However after looking deeper and reading into the meaning of a piece it can often become apparent that this is not so much the truth as it is a biased opinion of an event, person, object that is being perceived. Take the ‘News’ for example, we quite often only see an event from one point of view. Look at yesterdays News looking at the corruption in Pakistan after the ‘fixed’ cricket match - they interview citizens, look back at the floods but don’t actually have any footage of talking to the President for his point of view on this matter and give him a chance to say why things have turned out in such a way, just everyone talking about him.

This is where reading into the media has its own tool kit and as a producer or audience member being able to cut that boundary between true and false perceptions for effect. All media forms are a mode of/for communication it is not always clear what is true or false but we can read into it to give us as idea of what is/isn’t. This is done through the use of signs, where by a signified has a signifier which suggests the signified and may be perceived by different people to be a different signified or meaning behind that. Therefore the meaning which we read into a form may not be the same as what the producer had initially wanted to portray.

Going back to Tom Hunter who I looked into quite a lot last year this is just one of his many photographs taken from a series. The name of the image is Woman Reading Possession Order which gives the viewer some idea of what the letter/paper is in the womans hand and adds an Anchorage to the image allowing the audience to study the image and decifer exactly what it is she is thinking, look at the use of colour and adapt the use of these to the title itself, giving a direction to the reading of the meaning. However by looking at this image without the title it becomes a lot harder and the train of thought as to what the image is about can be taken in any direction. Which is why a lot of the images in the media are often scrutinised into something they are not.

For my example of false portrayal look at the two images below one before the editorial process and the other after. Now this is for a magazine cover but it happens all the time, to make those idols of ours look so ‘fresh and amazing’, allowing the viewer to believe what is not in fact true. Look closely at how her face is less wrinkled, eyes wider, complexion cleaner I could go on…only to show the glamour side and not actually reality.

Above is only a small example of what I am talking about it happens in even more serious situations too, like the News as I suggested above, manipulating what is reality and putting it into a false-portrayal of reality only to show part of an image, video and putting it into the wrong context for what it was originally there for.

The media is a powerful form of persuasion and mostly forms our values and beliefs rather than adds to them gradually. Semiotics is a valuable key into looking at media forms in order to read meaning in ways to tell truth, interpret or false representation.

Doc 2

For the second part of the summer work I had to talk to someone I wouldn’t normally talk to. This was indeed a challenge but with meeting new people all the time it really shouldn’t have been. The main set back was finding someone with an interesting story or past that has changed them or molded them into who they are today.

One of the people who stood out the most was a Manager of a retaurant whilst on holiday in Rhodes. Vangelis Skopeilitis is a character and has been through a lot to get where he is today. He owns a restaurant, set of appartements and a cafe which means full time work over the summer 8am until 2am he said was his usual hours to work (with a brief siesta). After this time he moves back to the homeland Greece itself and lives a normal life either with a building job or living off the summers earnings.

If I were to turn this into a documentary I would look at how life is different on the other side, over here in England we don’t have to worry so much about tourism and peak times like what him and his family have to over there. Looking at ‘struggle’ to be able to survive the rest of the year. From a visual point of view it would be good to show the places he owns but also how he winds down…on that odd day off what he does to get away from the stresses of life.

Doc 1

Over the summer I got talking to an old family friend Debbie, to find out something that took me by surprise but then made everything make sense..

I have known Debbie for years, ever since I was a small child she would come over and look after me and my brother, take us out and treat us rotten etc but the one thing I always wondered was why she never had any children of her own because she would make a great parent. After our conversation it came about that in fact she could not have children due to her husband having Oligozoospermia - low sperm count. There are many factors which lean towards why this is the case, however in terms of rectifying this it is a lot more difficult.

Therefore if I were to make a documentary from this I would like to look at it through the life of the couple and how it has affected them through their relationship, work, friends etc. I would focus mainly on Debbie and how her dreams changed but look at this as a positive due to having a very successful job, lovely home and she is an extremely caring person. For the imagery/audio aspect to the documentary, the main interview would be at their home and show images of her playing with her God-daughter, old documents to prove the condition and perhaps a graphic to explain why this happens.

The Beginnings

Over the summer since recieving the letter for summer work I have been reading the text books and some very interesting factors I have came across……

This I will talk about in more detail in further posts relating to specific details of Media Forms and Storytelling, relating it to how it fits in with the media generally, the modules I am to take and my individual interests.

Early on during the summer I have been debating as to which module to choose for this coming term. My decisions were stuck between Documentary Production and TV Formats but after talking to ‘the person I wouldn’t normally talk to’ things have become more clear and I have begun to think about in more detail what effect different persons would have on the Documentary itself and who I would bring in to make an interesting piece. Follow my posts to see how my thoughts have developed…