Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Semiotics of Cinema
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Semiotics of Cinema
Many people who grew up in 1960s and 70s with watching the Japanese animated television series by Tatsuo Yoshida would be very familiar with Speed Racer by Andy and Larry Wachowski in 2008 (American Film Institute Catalog, 2008). As a big hit in the summer of 2008, Speed Racer was considered as a box office bomb because it failed to break even at the box office and received generally negative reviews from film critics such as A.O. Scott and Jim Emerson. The Wachowski brothers were criticized in the conventional sense of cinema; however, it did succeed in its technological innovation and digital novelty (Emerson, 2008). As the rise of subculture in the American popular culture, Speed Racer did appear to satisfy and entertain the certain group of people who enthusiastic about the film including fans of Wachowski and gamers. Therefore, this refers to the reading of a film. Different approaches to read a film will result in different perceptions and conclusions. The French New Wave director Francois Truffaut argued that the authorship should be presented in the works of the best filmmakers. Nonetheless, this essay will focus on why the semiotic approach to read a film offers a better way to understand the American popular culture than the auteur theory even the semiotic theory may contain bias sometimes.
According to the semiotic theory, everything in a cinematic image is also a sign which meaning can be generated by different reading of it. Due to the components of the signifier and the signified as a sign, they all work together sufficiently to function in encoding the information in order to let the spectators to decode the carried meaning. The semiotic approach can help us to better understand Speed Racer in the American popular...
... middle of paper ...
...resolver.scholarsportal.info.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/resolve/15272087/v48i0003/122_ccvat
Corliss, Richard. “Speed Racer: The Future of Movies.” Time, May 08 2008.
Denby, David. “Anything Goes.” The New Yorker, 27 June 2011. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/cinema/2011/06/27/110627crci_cinema_denby
Eisenberg, Anne. “Animated or Real, Both Are Believable.” New York Times, August 27 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/28/business/technology-blurs-the-line-between-the-animated-and-the-real.html
Emerson, Jim. “Review of Speed Racer.” Variety, May 07 2008.
Gilchrist, Todd. “Speed Racer Review” IGN Entertainment. May 7 2008.
Speed Racer. Directed by Andy and Larry Wachowski. Warner Bros. Pictures. American Film Institute Catalog, 2008.
http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?ctx_ver=Z39.88-2003&xri:pqil:res_ver=0.2&res_id=xri:fii-us&rft_id=xri:fii:film:00832243
In his essay, “It’s Just a Movie: A Teaching Essay for Introductory Media Classes”, Greg M. Smith argues that analyzing a film does not ruin, but enhances a movie-viewing experience; he supports his argument with supporting evidence. He addresses the careful planning required for movies. Messages are not meant to be telegrams. Audiences read into movies to understand basic plotlines. Viewers should examine works rather than society’s explanations. Each piece contributes to Smith’s argument, movies are worth scrutinizing.
Setting: This book starts out in this kids house his name is crash. Then they go to the arcade. That is where they spend most of the story. Then close to the end they go to the riverside.
The postmodern cinema emerged in the 80s and 90s as a powerfully creative force in Hollywood film-making, helping to form the historic convergence of technology, media culture and consumerism. Departing from the modernist cultural tradition grounded in the faith in historical progress, the norms of industrial society and the Enlightenment, the postmodern film is defined by its disjointed narratives, images of chaos, random violence, a dark view of the human state, death of the hero and the emphasis on technique over content. The postmodernist film accomplishes that by acquiring forms and styles from the traditional methods and mixing them together or decorating them. Thus, the postmodern film challenges the “modern” and the modernist cinema along with its inclinations. It also attempts to transform the mainstream conventions of characterization, narrative and suppresses the audience suspension of disbelief. The postmodern cinema often rejects modernist conventions by manipulating and maneuvering with conventions such as space, time and story-telling. Furthermore, it rejects the traditional “grand-narratives” and totalizing forms such as war, history, love and utopian visions of reality. Instead, it is heavily aimed to create constructed fictions and subjective idealisms.
The power of film is immense in modern American culture. The symbols and identity’s created in these films has proven to possess a lasting impact shaping in new cultures. Film has not failed to accomplish this using the motorcycle. Although a controversial image the motorcycle possesses a strong identity of freedom and brotherhood creating an individual counterculture. The freedom represented by the motorcycle contradicts previous connotations and transforms our definition of freedom. The motorcycle also provides a cultural identity of rebellion and brotherhood. Film has contributed greatly to creation of the motorcycle identity and has not failed to capitalize on the power symbolism the motorcycle represents. In many cases film created the motorcycle image we think of today.
Introduction," from Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall, eds. Film Theory and Criticism 5th. ed. (New York : Oxford University Press,1999)
This novel tells the story of a sixteen-year-old named Blake. One day, when Blake went to Six Flags with his two friends, Maggie (with whom Blake is in love with) and her boyfriend, Russ, and his brother, Quinn, Blake received an invitation to a carnival from a strange, gorgeous girl, Cassandra. Blake thought that the idea of going to the carnival is stupid, until he realized his brother stole the invitation. Blake convinced his two friends to tag along with him, so they could go find Quinn. As the characters entered the carnival, they learned that they have to survive seven deadly rides by dawn.
In this essay the following will be discussed; the change from the age of classical Hollywood film making to the new Hollywood era, the influence of European film making in American films from Martin Scorsese and how the film Taxi Driver shows the innovative and fresh techniques of this ‘New Hollywood Cinema’.
The obvious similarity between motion graphics and non-moving graphics is they both seek attention through demanding imagery. Throughout this essay I will discuss which type of graphic does this most successfully. Where motion graphics excels in narrative and story telling, non moving graphics are able to engage audiences through a powerful single image. However both types of graphics have their limitations, where one fails the other exceeds.
Stanley, Robert H. The Movie Idiom: Film as a Popular Art Form. Illinois: Waveland Press, Inc. 2011. Print
Barsam, R. M., Monahan, D., & Gocsik, K. M. (2012). Looking at movies: an introduction to film (4th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton & Co..
The cover of this magazine can be analyzed using different theories, including the semiotics of symbolic theory, Performance as Political Action idea and postmodern theories within cultural studies. The first theory used to analyze this magazine is the semiotic theory, developed by C.S. Peirce. This theory is used to find the meaning in signs and claims it is all in the meaning of the signs used.
The novel The Maze Runner by James Dashner begins with a teenage boy waking up in an elevator who has no memory of the past, only that his name is Thomas. When the doors of the elevator open up he is pulled into a humongous square surrounding, called the Glade, by a group of teenage boys. The boys in the Glade refer to themselves as the ‘Gladers’. Thomas learns that the Gladers have lived in there for two years and that the Glade is located in the center of a maze which contains a labyrinth of high walls that move during the night and deadly creatures called grievers. The Glade is led by two boys, Alby and Newt; they both maintain order in the Glade by enforcing strict rules and jobs that keep the Gladers busy. A day after Thomas’ arrival an unknown girl arrives in the Glade. This shocks everyone because the Gladers only receive a new person every month, never within the same week. This also shocks everyone because she was the only girl in a maze full of boys. The girl also gives a message that everything is going to change and that she is the last one ever. Right after her message she immediately falls into a coma. The arrival of the girl causes many things to go chaotic including the sun seizing to rise, the Gladers stop receiving supplies from the creators of the maze, and the doors of the Glade that protect the Gladers from the grievers at night stop closing. When the girl, Teresa wakes up she informs Thomas that they both knew each other in the past and that the maze was a code. Thomas and the people who run around the maze to map out the labyrinth, the runners, look through the archives of the maps and find out the code. Then the leader of the runners, Minho, figures out that the cliff they thought was just a cliff was actua...
The film Pulp Fiction was an immediate box office success when it was released in 1994 and it was also well received by the critics, and celebrated for the way it appeared to capture exactly a certain pre-millennial angst and dislocation in Western capitalist societies. The term post-modernist, often used to refer to art and architecture, was applied to this film. The pulp fiction refers to popular novels which are bought in large numbers by less well educated people and enjoyed for their entertainment value. The implication is that the film concerns topics of interest to this low culture, but as this essay will show, in fact, the title is ironic and the film is a very intellectual presentation of issues at the heart of contemporary western culture and philosophy.
Semiotics is a language system in film that exemplifies qualities of the film. The theory of semiotic highlights the mise-en-scene of a film in terms of relation between film themes, characters on screen, and associated objects. The concepts of semiotic can be shown in different levels in movies. It could be a language signs or objects of justification for audiences to make sense of the movie. Semiotic approach in film does not only emphasize what is explicitly stated on screen, but it also shows signs of underlying message and meaning behind objects of justification. In this essay, I will discuss about semiotic signs that are embodied in different objects of justification in the films, Citizen Kane and Thelma and Louise. Each object demonstrate language-like phenomenon, which construct essential meanings to the characters and the plot in the film.
Semiotics, known as the science of signification, was first originated by Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Sanders Peirce. This paper will implement the semiotics analysis and introduce the theory of semiotics and review the history generally. Semiotics is the interpretation of meaning, based on the Saussure’s approach of semiology; he was mainly focused on the structure on linguistics, while Peirce was more concentrate on the logical dimensions of the science. In general, semiotic is a study of signs.