Media Terminology

Equilibrium: - stability within a story. Can get disrupted and usually restored at the end of the story.

Chiaroscuro: - lighting with a high constrast between light and dark.  Used to draw/emphasise attention towards a particular part of a text or to create atmoshere.

Low key lighting: - lighting that features many shadows to create chiaroscuro mise en scene.

Convergence: - the combination of several media technologies into one medium.

Polysemy: - the way that all images can be interpretated in a variety of differnet ways. The more anchorage it is given, the less open it is to polysemy.

Synergy: - the use of one product to make another more successful. e.g. like the film? By the toothpaste!

Anchorage: - Fixing of meaning. e.g. the text anchors the meaning of an image.

Binary Opposition: - the contrast between two mutally exclusive concepts that conflict and drive the narrative forward e.g. good/evil, male/female.

Connotation: - way in which meaning is created, the deeper meaning.

Denotation: - literal or surface meaning e.g. red is the colour of a flower.

Ideology: - a set of ideas and beleifs which are held acceptable by the creators of a media text. e.g. a text may be described as having a feminist ideology meaning it promotes the idea that women are equal to men and should not be discriminated again the grounds of gender.

Protagonist: - the character who drives the narrative forward.

Signs: - a symbol that refer to something other than itself.  e.g. a sign might the that a bright red coat that someone is wearing (which singals they are dangerous)