Textual Analysis

http://www.slideshare.net/BethanyTweddell/tv-drama-15031918

Casualty

Medical

Gotham 

Crime

NCIS

Crime

The Mentalist                                                                 

Crime

The Originals

Buffy The Vampire Slayer

Eastenders

Coronation street

Suits 

Skins 

Lovejoy

Sharpe

The Professionals

















Codes and conventions (add this to the textual analysis section of the blog)

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Code: A system of signs which can be decoded to create meaning.

•

•In media texts, we look at a range of different signs that can be loosely grouped into the following:

•technical codes - all to do with the way a text is technically constructed - camera angles, framing, typography etc

•verbal codes - everything to do with language -either written or spoken

•symbolic codes - codes that can be decoded on a mainly connotational level - all the things which draw upon our experience and understanding of other media texts, our cultural frame of reference.

•codes can create feelings to the audience through effects and techniques, for example rain in a film and a woman looking upset can make the audience feel bad for the woman and be emotional.

Convention:

•Is what you would expect to see in a certain genre, for example: in a fantasy genre film you would expect to see maybe unicorns, demons, hero's/villians, strange settings, basically things that are fictional and unreal in our world.

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The codes and conventions in media can be separated into 3 groups –

•Technical (e.g camera angles, movements & shots),

•Symbolic (e.g clothing, colours)

•Written and audio (music etc).

•These three distinct groups give the text meaning and determine the response of the viewer.

TV Drama Categories/Genres

–Crime

–Period

–Comedy

–Medical

–Sci-Fi

–Soap

–etc.

    Eastenders is a soap set in east London. This stereotypically is a rough area in London with crime lords and gangs. Therefore the symbolic codes suggest that this can be violent at times. With the location being in east London they will have a cockney accent and speak in the slang of the east end. This helps set the scene of the soap with verbal codes.

Poldark is set in Cornwall and so they will have Cornish accent and so the verbal codes connotes that they are looked down upon because they are country folk. 

SKINS

Skins is a TV show set in Bristol. In this episode Freddie is skating down towards his friends Jay Jay and Cook to meet them before college. On his way down Freddie attracts the attention of a police officer who proceeds to follow him on his bike. Cook is on his third 'Breakfast pint' and is smoking Freddie's spliff when he arrives. Soon after the policeman crashes into the garbage truck and his bike remains in the road. A car then runs over the bike and into a billiard, a businessman proceeds to get
out the car and starts swearing at passers by. He then picks on an elderly lady, asking her to give him her phone number whilst calling her a 'demented bitch'. Meanwhile the businessman's daughter is staring at Freddie and Freddie is staring back. Cook takes advantage of the situation and smears ketchup on his face to illustrate that he was hit off his bike by the business man. Cook and the man then begin to argue, with the business man explaining that Cook has 'no witness'. The elderly lady, unhappy with the way she has been treated by the man, becomes Cook's witness and so the businessman tries his best to repay Cook 

In soaps you are more likely to find characters that fit a certain stereotype e.g. Dizzy blondes. You will also find exaggerated situations in soaps as this is what creates the suspense and 'drama'. This however, can get soaps into trouble as the audience can see themselves in these situations and/or characters.

Poldark is a period drama and so the Mise-En-Scene must fit the time in which the drama is set. The way the characters talk is very important as it will help exaggerate the social divide. You are also more likely to see props as they again help show the period of time. 

Textual analysis  = Establishing a methodology for analysing a media text

Textual Analysis We can analyse "deconstruct" the media using the following categories:

•text

•audience

•production

The media text is any media product we wish to examine

•book,

•poster,

•Song,

•Film

• etc.

Categories

•MEDIUM (eg print, television, radio, film, internet)

•PURPOSE (eg to inform, to entertain, to persuade, to educate, to gain profit)

•FORM (eg drama, light entertainment, above or below the line advertising, newspaper)

•GENRE (eg science fiction, soap opera, documentary, game show, broadsheet)

•TONE (eg serious, comic, ironic, formal, informal, objective, personal, scientific)

•STYLE (eg realist, expressionist, conventional, unconventional, traditional, modern)

•OTHER CATEGORIES (eg nationality, target audience, director, star, public sector)