Media Language.

Medium has its own language - they use familiar codes and conventions

Denotation - literal meaning, the signifier
Connotation - infered meaning, the signified

Barthes argud that in film connotation can be analytically distinguished from denotation
Fiske "denotation is what is filmed, connotation is how it is filmed"
Charles Sanders Pierce - "we only think in signs" Signs only represents anything when society attributes meaning to them.
Micro-Elements
How they have created meaning to inform us about genre, narrative, representations/ideology, targeting of audiences
Hall - there is a preferred meaning that the film makers want the audience to decode.
Seminotic Terminology
Mise-en-scene creates the diegetic world:

• Location
• Character
• Cinemography
• Layout/ Page Design

Camerawork:

• Shot types
• Camera composition
• Camera movement
• Camera angles

Continuity:

• Establishing/re-establishing shot
• Transitions
• 180 degree tule
• Action match
• Cross-cutting
• Cutaway
• Insert shots
• Shot-reverse shot structures
• Eyeline match

Non-continuity:

• Montage sequence
• Flash back/forward
• Ellipsis
• Graphic match

3 types of signs:

• Icon/iconic - it looks like what it is
• Index/indexical - infered sign
• Symbol/symoblic - signifier doesn't resemble the signified - arbitary or convential

Stuart Hall - texts can be encoded by producers and meaning is decoded by the audience