MRANG Concepts - Ettie Greenwood

Media Language - This is the language used to describe the short films and their effect to the audience eg. engima, high angle, and key lighting. These key words can be split up into 4 groups: Mise En Scene, Editing, Camera Work and Sound. However there are also theories which are included in this area: Bathes's Action and Enigma codes, and Altman's Syntactic and Semantic Codes.

Representation - This is where a person is portrayed to the audience in a specific way - their representation can be negative or positive- Representations usually follow stereotypes as this is relatable and common with the spectator, but sometimes when a director chooses to break a , this can cause the audience to rethink and possibly change their views.
stereotype


Audience - People who watch the short film are the audience. Usually when creating a film, the creators have a certain audience demographic in mind - the people most likely to watch the film - so they create the film with the audience in mind so they can suit their interests and wants in a short film. The demographic usually contains information about the age, gender and social class of the audience for the film.

Narrative - This is the way the short film is presented to the audience. The short film usually has a story -this is all the events in detail in linear order- but because of the conventions of a short film being only around 5 minutes long, a plot is used for the story board. This is where flashbacks, ellipsis and other techniques are used to 'cut' out insignificant areas of the story and to create a more interesting experience for the audience. Flashbacks, parallel editing and cross cutting are also used to create a non-linear narrative structure. 

Theories that accompany Narrative include :

• Todorov's 5 stages of a plot (linear narrative only)
• Bordwell and Thompson's Plot and storty difference
• Barthes' Action and Enigma codes
• Propps' Morphology of the Folk Tale
• Levi-Strauss' Binary Oppositiond
• Volger's The Hero's Journey

Genre - A genre is a category whereby different films (or other media texts) fit in the same category- They all fit in a genre as they have similar conventions and characteristics. There are also hybrids (when a film fits 2 or more genres) and sub-genres (where many of the same hybrid films are present to create a new, smaller genre in its; own right).

A genre helps to suggest to the audience what the film might include, through the use of the same conventions in films of the same genre, therefore this may help to target the audience and to get higher sales/views.

Theories that help to explain genre include: Altman's semantic and syntactic codes, and Neale's repetition and variation.