Codes & Conventions

Whāinga ako: Lesson Goals

To be understand how codes and conventions are used to make meaningful media productions.

Kupu matua - Keywords

Codes - Signs that may have different meanings, they add to the overall meaning

Conventions - They set way codes are used e.g. different genres of film have set ways of doing things

Symbolism - Using something that represents a deeper meaning

Accelerated LearnersSymbolism Symbolism of Animals

Mahi - Work

The Media Codes

When we looked at advertising we discussed how everything included in a pieces of media is carefully considered. All colours, clothing, all settings and so on. They all create meaning.

Media codes can be broken into four main groups:

S = ?

W = ?

A = ?

T = ?

Brainstorm as a class what these might be. Then in groups brainstorm the meaning of each of these words and how they could be linked to media codes. (Teacher there are A3 brainstorm sheets here.)

We could spend all year learning about these so we are just going to break each section down into some examples.

Symbolic: Objects

Even mundane objects can have more meaning than what exists on the surface. This can be described by using words that express a feeling like joy, anger, sadness etc. or words that are associated to the object based on an experience. An image may take a person back to a time where they experienced something in particular. When making a movie/ad etc. this is a useful tool to get the audience hooked into the story/product.

For example: what is the object below?

Yes it is a cake. But what sort of cake?

What sort of emotion could an image of a birthday cake evoke from an audience?
What words might be associated with this image? try to come up with at least 10 that could be associated with this cake.
If a movie started with this image, what might we expect to be happening?

The sorts of answers we are looking for (you may have something a little different!):

Excitement, happiness, joy
Party, singing, hyperactive, sugar rush, toddlers, family, presents, food, mess, balloons, loudness... (and many more, these will depend on you and your experiences)
The cake hasn't been eaten but the candle is lit so they might be about to sing or are singing. Kids might be running around as it is a kids cake. There might be family there and a lot of talking.

Symbolic Objects

There are more examples on this worksheet. Consider:

Gumboot
Lollipop
Knitting
Engagement ring

Written: Captions

Captions can be used on images and on video. The purpose is to clarify and give more information on what is happening in the images. This is useful to understand the piece of media fully.

Audio: Music

Music is used to set the tone and mood of a scene. You will have seen on social media different videos where someone changes the music to change the feeling of a scene.