TV and Film as Language

This week’s blog post will be continuing on from this weeks lecture discussing how TV and Film can be seen as language. In this lecture I gained an understanding of how both television and film communicate to us an audience.

My first reading is part one of a reading taken from John Ellis, in this reading the importance of sound and image in television is discussed and is compared to the sound and image used in Cinemas.  It seems that the chapter focuses on the quality of television and film, how cinema appears to have more importance than television as cinema is seen as a special occasion whereas television is of a last resort as an activity to do. However it agrees that television is frequently used more, the reason for this appears to be that less concentration is needed and the use of sound is important in this. It’s important as sound allows less concentration from the viewer as momentary lapses can happen as stereo sound lets the viewer’s hear, although it still makes you glance at the screen. The sound in a cinema has a higher quality as the sound system is higher and more concentration is focused as you are in a dark room with lack of movement, therefore less distraction.

The second reading for this week is part two from a reading taken from Ellis, this chapter discusses the narration of television and cinema and appears to agree greatly with the other chapter of sound and image. This chapter about narration discusses how television series are segment’s that follow from one and another that often might not have a connection with each other, in terms of the narration, and features repetition in the story lines.  This makes television easier to follow compared to the cinema and agrees with the previous chapter I have discussed, that it represents television as casual and is used in a domestic form. The narration is very alike to the importance as sound as I stated above as this use of narration means that the viewers can watch without intensity and without their continuity of attention.

The last reading that I will be discussing this week is taken from a book written by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith. This reading focuses more on cinema and discusses the idea of representation and how these representations are formed in film, whether these representations were meant to be or whether the audience has created these representations through their own analysis. For instance a film may show a certain representation; however this representation won’t be seen as intended. Sometimes there may not have been a meaning at all, but people want it to mean something and sometimes a film might have a personal meaning to them due to real life situations. This reading also talks about narration, how audiences are given a scene and then they analyse the scene and create a story from this scene. This reading shows the comparisons that television and cinema have as with cinema the viewer has to be concentrated and fixed to their screens, whereas with television the viewer could have on in the background whilst continuing with activities, yet still make sense of the narration.

In terms of my own academic research I would apply a semiotic methodology to undertake an analysis of a particular television show that critiques the signs that are communicated to us, for the reasons that are mentioned in this weeks readings I would research into possibly day time dramas.

References

Ellis, John (1982) Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television, Video, Routledge: London - pp. 127-159

Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (2000) ‘How films mean, or, from aesthetics to semiotics and half-way back again’ in Gledhill, C and Williams, L. (2000), Reinventing Film Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic.