Semiotics (Barthes 5 Codes)

Semiotics from brad hodson

This powerpoint explains Roland Barthes' 5 codes theory.

Film Opening Analysis: The Inbetweeners

As my film is based around youth culture, I have decided to analyse the opening of 'The Inbetweeners', which is a film based on the life of 4 teenagers going on their first holiday together. In the opening, it shows the boys travelling to the airport individually and meeting up with each other. The opening shows many conventions of youth culture, for example, the music used in the opening is conventional to todays youth, which is something I need to include in my film. They also include words used typically in youth culture, which again should be used in my film opening. Overall, I believe that this film has many ideas and conventions, including enigma codes that I can use in my film opening, as it will help me be able to get across my genre to my target audience. This film builds a collective identity of young people as being immature through different methods, such as showing them going on holiday alone, but being brought to the airport by parents which shows that they still aren't fully grown up. To me, this hints that throughout the film, the characters in this film will be immature and possibly cause trouble due to this, which comes apparent later in the film. I need to use these conventions in my opening, by setting the tone for the rest of the film by dropping subtle hints in the film opening. This works really well in the Inbetweeners, but this may be helped by the fact that it is following on from a popular TV series, so the film had a returning audience who had a long standing knowledge of the characters and their personalities. This may be a problem for me as I will be making a new film opening, therefore I would have to use more hints in the opening.

Categorising Audience

There are a few ways of categorising audience, one of them being demographics, which includes

the social class method which ranks people based on their income/employment. The benefit of using this method is that if your media text can only be afforded by a certain bracket on the social class chart, then it is easy to identify your audience. This method doesn't take personalities into account amongst other traits, meaning that it is not an accurate measurement of who your exact audience is. 





Another method that you can use is Young and Rubicam's four consumers theory, which shows that they believe that there are only 4 types of consumers.

The 4 groups of mainstreamers, aspirers, succeeders and reformers supposedly ensure that everybody in the world fits into one of these groups. A benefit of this method is that it would be easy to put one person into a group, but considerably harder to form a target audience from this theory. This means that if I use this method I should only take some parts of it due to not being able to form a full target audience from it.

The last method is the LifeMatrix, which categorises the audience into 10 different categories.

This method is easier than the previous two to get a precise target audience from, but I will still need elements from all 3 to get my target audience. When I am summarising my precise target audience, I will use bits from all 3 sections.

Industry Regulations

USP (Unique Selling Point) unfinished

This is something that is essential for my film for various different reasons. One of these reasons is that there are already many films based around youth culture, and I will need something different of my own to distinguish my film from the rest, and give it an edge on the competitors to make it more attractive to potential customers. For example, M&Ms use slogans and mascots to sell their brand.

Soundtrack

As my film will be based on youth culture, the soundtrack should use music based on the popular songs currently. This will help portray the genre further as the music will have correlations to the narrative and the genre of the film. There may be an issue with copyright with the soundtrack, as most of the popular songs will be copyrighted to the artist and the production company. This is an issue that i will have to try and work around as using copyrighted music could result in the film being taken down if I do not have the artists permission to use the song.

Preliminary Task Evaluation

In my preliminary task, I showed examples of good camera use and shot types, for example, I used shot reverse shot, match on action and the 180 degree rule, meaning that I gave evidence of the different required shot types for an effective preliminary task. Although there were some good parts of my preliminary task, there is also many sections that I need to improve upon for the final film task. One of these things that need improving on is the editing, as it seemed rather choppy at times at did not flow like it should. At one point in the task, i should have included more flowing footage, as the clip jumps from one section to another.

Conventional and Unconventional

If something is conventional, it is one of the usual things that are associated with the main topic in question. For example, if the main topic is horror, a convention of this would be death. If something is unconventional, it is something that you wouldn't expect within a certain genre. An example of this would be to include aspects of a horror film in a romance film. This can be used to create tension/suspense and shock the audience watching the film. It can also be used to create a twist in the plot of the movie, therefore making the movie less predictable and more interesting. This is something i should look into including into my film opening, as it goes against the normality of the usual films, giving mine a unique edge over the mainstream films.

preliminary task

Conventional features of youth culture

Youth culture consists of a lot of conventions, for example, slang words and young, fashionable brands of clothing shall feature in my film. This is due to the fact that my target audience will be able to pick out my film easier from the rest by locating the conventions in the trailers, movie posters, etc. This will help massively with the spreading of my film and interesting more of an audience than without the correct conventions.

preliminary script

person 1: Hi
person 2: Sit down
Person 1: how is he
Person 2: not well
Person 1: what we gonna do
Person 2: nothing we can do

This is the feedback i received for my work so far. This shows that my work so far has not been to a high standard, and therefore improvements need to be made.

Location idea

I think that a good place to film could be a recreational football pitch as it symbolises youth culture as it is a very popular place for teenagers and links in with my two film ideas of youth culture and sport.

Preliminary Work Research

Preliminary Work Research from brad hodson

Film genre ideas

As my film will include people of the ages 16/17,  I have decided that my film should be based around either youth culture or sport, mainly football. This is because i have knowledge on these subjects and will be able to plan a film opening around them. I will analyse films of these genres, such as 'The Inbetweeners', to get a better idea of what to do to make an effective and entertaining film opening.

Restrictions

As the filming and editing shall be completed in school time, there will be some restrictions on what my film opening can include. Firstly, the rating of my film can be at most a 15, as a school project will be unable to contain acts of drug taking, sexual scenes or extreme violence. This limits my creativity as i have to try to ensure that my film does not contain any of these things. The language should also stay PG as bad language is not permitted on the school site.

Preliminary Task Plan

• Filmed on Monday 10th October 
• Filmed during lesson time
• Short clip of someone walking to a chair and sitting down

Action Plan

Action Plan

• Audience
• Codes and Conventional Features
• Institution
• Stylistic Influences
• Brand/Style Development
• Organisation of Time and Equipment
• Risk Assessment
• Storyboard
• Character Profiles
• Setting/Location Plan
• Narrative/Plot
• Soundtrack
• Script
• Mise-En-Scene
• Organisation of Actors
• Tilting
• Different Videoing Techniques