Semiotics

Film Inquirey

Semiotic Analysis

The study of these signs, codes and conventions in movies is called semiotics. Semiotic analysis is a way to explain how we make meaning from codes – all meaning is encoded in that which creates the meaning. No object or word goes without a meaning – we cannot read or see something without associating it to a certain idea – the meaning. In our youths, we have all been taught how to decode what we see, read and hear, we have all learned to decode meaning.

However, what we should realize is that the decoded meaning is not our own idea, but somebody else’s. For example. If you read the word “failure”, you decode it by relating it to the value your culture adheres to the concept of failure and its antonym – success. Although it’s not said we cannot create meaning on our own, 99% percent of the time, the meaning comes from some pre-established (cultural) idea.

Signs and Codes

In semiotic analysis, the smallest units of meaning are signs. For example, the way someone dresses is a collection of signs that informs others about the person; clothing encodes the smallest of signs, e.g. a popped collar means preppy. A black band t-shirt and over-sized pants signal a music fan, but together they can create a collection of signs, a code. For example, a band shirt + baggy pants + black nail polish + dyed hair, could signal a rebel, or even a goth.

You could say meaning has two “levels”. On its most basic level, there is the sign: the denotation, which is the literal meaning. But when a sign occurs in a group, or in a particular context, it becomes a code, and it can suggest or connote extra meaning.

For instance, the colour red simply denotes a colour, but in a certain context it can connote emotion, like anger, or love. These codes are often used in media to reinforce, subtly, the way audiences should think about certain things or how they should behave. These are a culture’s dominant ideologies. For instance, a long-standing cultural ideology is that diamonds (or chocolate) symbolise love and that people should give this to your significant other as proof of their love for the other.

These codes are groups of signs that seem to fit together naturally. Together, they create meaning. To stick to the signs and codes of romance: the sign of a broken heart means lost love, and if you add the broken heart to the signs of two people, the three signs together, the code, anyone will read into it that the couple has broken off their relationship.

Filmic Code

Four types of signs and codes exist in semiotic analysis of film:

Indexical Signs

These are the most basic of signs in film. Indexical signs indirectly point to a certain meaning – they act as cues to existing knowledge. For example, smoke means fire, panting means exercise, a ringing bell means end of class. This type of signs is constantly used in (all types of) media and are very common.

Symbolic Code

Symbolic codes often denote something they have nothing to do with at first glance, but only because the code exists and because we use them society-wide. For instance, the red heart symbolises love, the white dove symbolises peace, the colour green symbolises jealousy.

Iconic Signs and Code

These are the literal signs and codes: a cop means a cop. They are meant to appear like the thing itself. However, they always represent more than just the thing itself. When we see a cop, we also associate this with our cultural ideas of “justice” or “the law”, or even masculinity or toughness. These codes also reinforce the ideas we have about these concepts in our culture, it reinforces the ideological meaning of those concepts.

Enigma Code

This is an important type of code used in film: it creates a question which the film “text” will then go on to answer. This is often used in trailers of movies as well as posters. They make people wonder. For example, “who murdered the protagonist”, or “how will they survive the apocalypse”. They pique curiosity and intrigue the viewers, with the intention of making them go see the movie.

Convention

Convention is another important concept that you’ll see discussed frequently in film analysis. It indicates the “establishment”, the established way of doing something, or understanding something, or presenting something.

They are the generally accepted norms. It’s behaviour and ideas that we see as natural; they’re so deeply embedded in culture that we’re generally not aware of them, and definitely don’t realise what their effect is, or how they affect us.

In film, conventions are used to represent certain topics, characters and events, and more. When you start to scrutinise these conventions, you’ll find that, often, they are used to shape how we think about a character or event. When it comes to characters, conventions can easily turn into stereotypes.

You’ll find that they don’t always represent reality, and can even be harmful to how audiences perceive the world. A common convention, for instance, is how Muslims are always terrorists, and to state the obvious, that’s not the case in reality. Indians don’t always have thick Indian accents, especially when they were born outside of India. Nonetheless, these are stereotypes you will find in film abundantly.

Other common conventions can be found in how women are portrayed in film. For instance, in film noir, female leads are either the helpless dame in distress, or the femme fatale – there is rarely an in-between.

Nowadays, women are still frequently portrayed as damsels in distress, though while we see more female superheroes, they are generally clad in tight outfits, and their characters are underdeveloped; they are just there to serve the male main character’s plot.

Furthermore, women in film are substantially less frequently portrayed as having a job. These are all conventions that reinforce the convention that women are helpless, frail, and need to be protected by the masculine male. There are exceptions, of course, but you’ll generally have to delve into the realm of indie film to find them.

Another common convention is how the portrayal of good and bad guys. Cops can often get away with killing bad guys without consequences. Or, even more typical, Batman and Superman (in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice) can lay waste to an entire city and kill thousands of innocents, but they’ll still be considered heroes.

Villains, however, are so villainous that they’re evil through and through. These are very black and white conventions and don’t properly represent the great variety of greys in the real world.

Moreover, genre and narrative can add to the sense of convention, like action film or romance, or film noir and superhero as discussed, but a film’s editing or certain shot types too can reinforce conventions (e.g. a close-up of the poor damsel in distress). We’ll discuss these topics in later chapters.

Lastly, I’ll say it again – culture is very important in the way we interpret signs and codes. It is important to realise that culture always determines the meaning a sign or code communicates. Your interpretation of Bollywood film, if you’re from the West, will likely be different to the interpretation of someone from that area of the world.

Practice!

As with so many things, practicing will make you better at whatever you’re doing. It’s the same for film analysis.

At first, when you’re going to watch a movie with the intention of keeping track of all the signs, codes and symbolism, you’ll be very overwhelmed. There’s so much to keep track of. Instead, why don’t you first watch a movie in its entirety, and try to study its thematic symbolism? This type of symbolism is more overarching and you’ll find the film tries to deliver a “hidden” message as a whole. What is the filmmaker trying to tell you?

As you get better at distilling a film’s overarching message, you can start looking at how they deliver the message, scene by scene. Start looking at more than just the characters -where are they? A movie that may initially be boring to you may get whole new dimensions purely because you are learning to understand it better and differently.

You can go even deeper than that and analyse a film’s semiotics shot by shot, and that leads me to what we’ll cover in the next chapter: mise-en-scène, everything that’s presented in one shot.

Source link here. 

10 Best Uses of Color of All Time

Color is one of the most effective tools in a storyteller's arsenal. From fiery red, to the coldest blue, a great filmmaker knows just what colors to paint on the screen. Move over light and shadow, lets take the color wheel for a spin! Here are the very best uses of color in a movie ever!

Fluxus, Feminism, and the 1960’s Andrea Terpenkas Simon Fraser University

Link below to read PDF document. 

http://journals.sfu.ca/wt/index.php/westerntributaries/article/viewFile/42/25

The Art of the Movie Poster: Highlights from the Mike Kaplan Collection

Poised at the frontier between high art and popular culture, movie posters are emblematic of modernity itself. On the one hand, they often deployed the most avant-garde formal and typographic trends of a given period, demonstrating true compositional innovation. On the other, they were advertisements, intended to stand out in the visual cacophony of the modern city and to attract the broadest possible audiences. Many people received an education in modern art and design history from movie posters, which are an essential link between fine-art practices and their distillation in everyday life.

According to Mike Kaplan, whose collection is founded on design, an ideal movie poster "captures graphically the creativity and emotion of the film-going experience" in a single image, while at the same time standing alone as a work of art and a souvenir of that experience. A designer, art director, and producer (The Whales of August, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead) Kaplan has first-hand experience in crafting campaigns and posters, the most famous among them A Clockwork Orange(1971) and "The Ultimate Trip/StarChild" campaign for the re-launch of 2001: A Space Odysseyin 1970. David Hockney, Don Bachardy, Allen Jones, John Van Hamersveld, Andre Carillho, and British airbrush maven Philip Castle are among the artists and illustrators with whom he has collaborated. He is also a connoisseur of poster design history, gravitating toward exceptional illustrators, motifs, studio periods, national styles, stars, directors, and film genres.

Link to source to see and read more. 

Source is LACMA

A History of Graphic Design, Guity Novin

I have to analyze the problem. What is the movie about? What is the story about? What is it trying to say? Whatever is the style of the movie? What kind of audiences I want to appeal to -- so that they get some sort of inkling about what the film is gonna represent. We try not to dissuade them from the realism of what the story is, and yet, we don't want to tell them too much.
Usually, we started by getting people in the department to do some logos, designs of what the lettering should look like. I usually read the scripts or I'll go to see the footage of the movie. I'll try to decide what would be the most marketable thing to say about the movie, and how to project it into a piece of art. Most of these things we did by hand and do the lettering and positioning and pasted all together and if we had to make a change we had to reap it apart and start over, With a computer you just almost press button and move things into place.

Bill Gold, Art Director and Graphic Designer

Link below to read the article. 

http://guity-novin.blogspot.com/2011/09/chapter-46-history-of-american-movie.html

1910

Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

The Ransom Center's movie poster collection consists of an estimated 10,000 posters and spans the entire history of film from the silent era to the present day. All sizes of American film posters are represented: Window Cards (14" x 22"), Inserts (14" x 36"), Half Sheets (22" x 28"), One Sheets (27" x 41"), Three Sheets (41" x 81"), Six Sheets (81" x81"), and 24 Sheets (i.e.: billboards, 9' x 20.5').

The largest part of the collection comes from the Interstate Theater Circuit. At one time, the Interstate Theater chain consisted of almost every movie theater in Texas, and the posters, film stills, lobby cards, and press books form the foundation of the Ransom Center's film publicity collection. The Interstate posters cover the 1940's through the 1970's with a particular strength in the films of the 1950's and 60's, including musicals, epics, westerns, sword and sandal, horror, and counter culture films. The second major collection of Ransom Center posters is the Sills collection. Philip Sills was a poster dealer who donated his collection of B-movie posters to the Center in the 1960s. The third major collection was donated to the center by W.H. (Deacon) Crain, who for many years, served as the Center's curator of Performing Arts.

Digitization of these posters is an ongoing project, and this digital collection will continue to grow as the project progresses. Read more about the project on the Ransom Center's blog.

Read more about the Ransom Center's Film Collections

Link below to view collection. 

https://hrc.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/p15878coll84

50 Beautiful Movie Posters

A few examples below. 

Link to Smashing Magazine to see more. 
https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/10/50-beautiful-movie-posters/

Vertigo, 1958

The Thing, 1982

Walk The Line, 2005

Man With One Red Shoe, 1985

Christian Ard, Student Work

Satellite

Balsa Wood, Wood Glue, Masking Tape

4" x 9" x 3"

Student Work

Nendo, Designers

chocolate-pencils

• for Hironobu Tsujiguchi

Chocolate-pencils is a collaboration with patissier Tsujiguchi Hironobu, the mastermind behind popular dessert shops like Mont St. Claire and Le Chocolat de H. Tsujiguchi created a new dessert based on his impression of nendo after conversations with us, and we designed new tableware for them. 

We wanted our plates to show off the beauty of meals and desserts like a painting on a canvas. Based on this idea, our “chocolate pencils” come in a number of cocoa blends that vary in intensity, and chocophiles can use the special “pencil sharpener” that comes with our plate to grate chocolate onto their dessert. Pencil filings are usually the unwanted remains of sharpening a pencil, but in this case, they’re the star!

Student Blogs, Fall 2018

9:00 Class
Gaby Adorno
Kate Barker
Blake Cotton
Justin Cottrell
Jesse Esteves
Alyssa Kneeland
Mary Lewis
Leonore Maliszewski
Channing Mulholland
Korey Nelson
Taylor Pettine
Lily Ramirez
Abby Richardson
Rich Savidge
Jen Vojt
Amelia Weber


1:00 Class
Bianca Bongiorno
Reagan Caron
Noah Cook
Allison Davis
Annie Fox
Chayce Gunderson
Rachel Lee
Alexa Lisanti
Jordan McCrea
Timaree McKenny
Leila Morales
Danielle Rohter
Ashley Sellers
Bailey Shuler
Molly Vogel

Various Artists, Fluxkit Objects

More to see on the Museum of Modern Art. Link below.

https://www.moma.org/collection/?classifications=19&include_uncataloged_works=1&locale=en&page=15&direction=

Christo
Package
1965

Mieko Shiomi
Water Music from Fluxkit
1965

Alison Knowles
Bean Rolls from Fluxkit
1965

Hi Red Center
Canned Mystery
1964

Meiko Shiomi
Spatial Poem No. 1
1965

Mieko Shiomi
Endless Box from Fluxkit
1963-65

Yoko Ono
Night Air July 13 1964
1964

Yoko Ono: Future Now

Go to the link below to read about Yoko Ono's work. Ono was a participant in the Fluxus group during the 1960's and 70's. The article discusses Ono's work with Fluxus and her current work. Written by Rachel Kent for Museum of Contemporary Art Australia.

https://www.mca.com.au/stories-and-ideas/publications/future-now-curatorial-essay/

George, Film by Jeffrey Perkins

"...this film will, no doubt, now heavily influence the ongoing decades-old parameters of a discussion about whether Maciunas was, indeed, “one of” the Fluxus founders or The Founder and whether Fluxus is, was, or will be actually a “movement” or even “art,” at all."   -Mark Bloch for the Brooklyn Rail

Go to link below to read full article.

https://brooklynrail.org/2018/04/artseen/JEFFREY-PERKINS-George

3D Printing and Paper Cutting

3D Printing

source link

https://3dprint.com/81751/german-artists-glitches/

Idea

A small box that contains a paper cut design. 

Source not known. Please email lmongiovi.flagler.edu. 

7 Objects/69

Various Artists: David Bradshaw, Eva Hesse, Stephen Kaltenbach, Bruce Nauman, Alan Saret, 

Richard Serra, Keith Sonnier

1969

Source is Museum of Modern Art. Link here. 

ACT UP Art Box

ACT UP Art Box

Various Artists: Nancy Spero, Ross Bleckner, Mike Kelley, Simon Leung, Louise Bourgeois, 

Kiki Smith, Lorna Simpson

1993 - 1994

Source: Museum of Modern Art. Link here. 

Gabriel Orozco, Artist

PENSKE WORK PROJECT: BLACK AND WHITE GAME

1998

CARDBOARD BOX; PLASTICENE

2 ½ X 16 ¼ X 13 IN. ( 6.4 X 41.3 X 33 CM )

Fluxus Boxes

Fluxkit, 1964/65. Fluxus edition, assembled by George Maciunas (American, 1931-1978). Mixed media (vinyl attaché case), printed matter. 

Add caption

Gift Box for John Cage: Spell Your Name with These Objects, 1972.  George Maciunas.Leather- covered, red velvet-lined box containing fifteen objects (acorn, egg, glass stopper, plastic boxes of seeds, etc.).

Flux Year Box 2, 1967. Eric Andersen, George Brecht, John Cale, John Cavanaugh, Willem de Ridder, Albert Fine, Ken Friedman, Fred Lieberman, George Maciunas, Yoko Ono, Ben Patterson, James Riddle, Paul Sharits, Bob Sheff, Stanley Vanderbeek, Ben Vautier, Robert Watts. Mixed Media, Multiples, Other.

A signature Fluxus production, is a boxed anthology of works by 17 artists that was edited and assembled by Fluxus “chairman” George Maciunas. The second in a planned annual series, this piece was conceived as a “game box” that would hold small objects, flip books, cards, and films, including a handheld viewer for looking at the 8mm film loops. Fluxus artists valued a do-it-yourself aesthetic, using whatever materials were on hand and choosing simplicity over complexity. Like all Fluxus editions, the contents of each box vary depending on what Maciunas had available at the time.

Geoffrey Hendricks
Sky Box
1960's

Gift Box for Jerold Ordover: Spell Your Name with These Objects, ca. 1970. George Maciunas. Assorted objects in leatherette and velvet-lined box.

Joseph Bueys, Artist

Joseph Beuys was a leading German Conceptual and performance artist. Known for his highly original and controversial themes, his practice of “social sculpture” attempted to make art more democratic by collapsing the space between life and art. His work I Like America and America Likes Me (1974) remains a seminal piece of performance art. In the work, Beuys, over the course of three days, locked himself in a room with a live coyote, armed only with layers of felt and a cane. “Every human being is an artist, a freedom being, called to participate in transforming and reshaping the conditions, thinking and structures that shape and inform our lives,” he once mused. Born on May 12, 1921 in Krefield, Germany, Beuys fought in World War II and was injured in a plane crash in 1943, an experience that would feature heavily in his future artistic practice. He enrolled in the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf in 1947, and after being appointed professor of monumental sculpture at the school in 1961, he joined the Fluxus group along with Nam June Paik and George Maciunas, only to leave the movement four years later. He performed in his first documenta exhibition in the early 1960s, and was dismissed from his teaching appointment in 1972 after accepting students who were previously rejected from the Akademie. Beuys died January 23, 1986 in Düsseldorf, Germany at the age of 64. Today, the artist’s works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, the Hamburger Banhof in Berlin, and the Kunstmuseum Basel, among others.source is artnet. link here. 

George Brecht, Artist

Name kit, 1965

    Transparent plastic box with seven 

    compartments containing small objects 

    and printed card, 9.2 x 12 x 2.3 cm

George Brecht, (George MacDiarmid), American conceptual artist and sculptor (born Aug. 27, 1926, New York, N.Y.—died Dec. 5, 2008, Cologne, Ger.), created art from an approach that valued fluid boundaries between artistic disciplines and playful engagement with the viewer. Brecht attended (1946–50) the Philadelphia College of Pharmacy and Science and took a job as a research chemist but soon became inspired by the works of avant-garde composer John Cage. Although Brecht’s own attempts at composition were short-lived, he retained from Cage both an interest in chance and a focus on multimedia “events” as defining elements of his work, and by the early 1960s he was affiliated with the Fluxus movement, a like-minded group of conceptual artists. Brecht was especially known for his sculptural installations of everyday objects and for his use of written instructions, which he called “event scores,” in the creation of art.

1964

Essentially, while a group of artists who were all considered Fluxus existed, they did not all agree to the same ideals and each viewed Fluxus in a different way. As filmmaker George Brecht put it, "In Fluxus there has never been any attempt to agree on aims or methods; individuals with something unnamable in common have simply coalesced to publish and perform their work." Source is The Art Story. Link here.