ellipsometry
The cinema has become, perhaps after television, the most popular form of visual entertainment in the modern world. Every night, millions of people sit down to watch either a film on TV, a film on video, or else a film ellipsometry on the silver screen, at the cinema.
Cinemagoers walk away from film theatres satisfied with what they have seen, or disappointed, with some taking a sort of neutral view of the film's quality. All, however, have been in communication with the messages put forward by the film.
Unlike printed text, which uses the word, or music, which utilizes sound, the medium of film uses several different 'tracks' to reach its audience. These are image, music, dialogue, noise, and written material.
These five are mixed by the film' ellipsometrys producers to form a 'language', though this is not the language of the word, the sentence or the text, but the language of the sign. All five are projected out to the audience, and each of the five constitutes a sign, a signifier, for something else. The language of film is the language of semiotics, the language of the sign.
The term 'signifier' is used to denote the physical form of the sign. In a film, this could be a smile, a red traffic signal, dramatic music, a shout, or the words of a letter someone is reading. Each signifies something, represents something else.
A smile might signify happiness, joy or love, but it might also signify a triumph of some sort for the person smiling. Everyone knows that a red traffic light means 'STOP'.
Dramatic music could mean that something important is about to happen. A shout usually signifies danger or pain of some sort, but that might depend on the context in which the shout is heard. Finally, the words of a letter someone is reading on screen use the semantics of language, English, French, or Arabic, for example, in ways that we are familiar with. The word 'dog', for example, in the English language, represents the canine species so familiar to pet lovers, and that despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing 'dog-like' in the letters of the word D-O-G. The word is also a signifier.
These examples of signifiers and the things they signify, the signified, using real items, the referents, point to several important features of the language of the sign. For the signifiers to represent something to on an audience, they must be sufficiently universal to be fully and quickly understood by everyone watching. A green light that stops the traffic would puzzle everyone.
However, it is worth noting that film makers can use these 'universals' to some effect. If a person who has just lost a race smiles into the camera rather than frowns, the audience may be alerted to the fact that something out of the ordinary is happening; that the person intended losing the race, for a reason that might become apparent later in the film. In a letter, the word 'DOG' might turn out to be code for 'SPY', for example, and this points to yet another facet of the sign, that the context in which it appears helps determines its meaning.
A shout heard at a local football match might mean only that a goal has been scored, in a battle, that someone has been mortally injured. Within different contexts, however, a universality must apply. If it does not, that particular use of the signifier would appear either inappropriate, or misleading.
Finding meaning from apparently meaningless events is a very human trait, and the effect discovered by Lev Kuleshov in the 1920s in the former Soviet Union, and after whom it is named, is that two shots shown in quick succession in a film, one after the other, are not interpreted separately in the viewer's mind. They are interpreted as being causally related. A + B = C, in which A and B are the two shots, and C is a new value that is not originally included in the two shots.
tag : ellipsometry
The cinema has become, perhaps after television, the most popular form of visual entertainment in the modern world. Every night, millions of people sit down to watch either a film on TV, a film on video, or else a film ellipsometry on the silver screen, at the cinema.
Cinemagoers walk away from film theatres satisfied with what they have seen, or disappointed, with some taking a sort of neutral view of the film's quality. All, however, have been in communication with the messages put forward by the film.
Unlike printed text, which uses the word, or music, which utilizes sound, the medium of film uses several different 'tracks' to reach its audience. These are image, music, dialogue, noise, and written material.
These five are mixed by the film' ellipsometrys producers to form a 'language', though this is not the language of the word, the sentence or the text, but the language of the sign. All five are projected out to the audience, and each of the five constitutes a sign, a signifier, for something else. The language of film is the language of semiotics, the language of the sign.
The term 'signifier' is used to denote the physical form of the sign. In a film, this could be a smile, a red traffic signal, dramatic music, a shout, or the words of a letter someone is reading. Each signifies something, represents something else.
A smile might signify happiness, joy or love, but it might also signify a triumph of some sort for the person smiling. Everyone knows that a red traffic light means 'STOP'.
Dramatic music could mean that something important is about to happen. A shout usually signifies danger or pain of some sort, but that might depend on the context in which the shout is heard. Finally, the words of a letter someone is reading on screen use the semantics of language, English, French, or Arabic, for example, in ways that we are familiar with. The word 'dog', for example, in the English language, represents the canine species so familiar to pet lovers, and that despite the fact that there is absolutely nothing 'dog-like' in the letters of the word D-O-G. The word is also a signifier.
These examples of signifiers and the things they signify, the signified, using real items, the referents, point to several important features of the language of the sign. For the signifiers to represent something to on an audience, they must be sufficiently universal to be fully and quickly understood by everyone watching. A green light that stops the traffic would puzzle everyone.
However, it is worth noting that film makers can use these 'universals' to some effect. If a person who has just lost a race smiles into the camera rather than frowns, the audience may be alerted to the fact that something out of the ordinary is happening; that the person intended losing the race, for a reason that might become apparent later in the film. In a letter, the word 'DOG' might turn out to be code for 'SPY', for example, and this points to yet another facet of the sign, that the context in which it appears helps determines its meaning.
A shout heard at a local football match might mean only that a goal has been scored, in a battle, that someone has been mortally injured. Within different contexts, however, a universality must apply. If it does not, that particular use of the signifier would appear either inappropriate, or misleading.
Finding meaning from apparently meaningless events is a very human trait, and the effect discovered by Lev Kuleshov in the 1920s in the former Soviet Union, and after whom it is named, is that two shots shown in quick succession in a film, one after the other, are not interpreted separately in the viewer's mind. They are interpreted as being causally related. A + B = C, in which A and B are the two shots, and C is a new value that is not originally included in the two shots.
tag : ellipsometry
