Codes And Conventions In Our Opening Two Minutes

 Codes and Conventions

Codes and conventions are used in all films to help subvert/conform to stereotypes and give understanding to the audience. They are important in films because they combine together to form a recognisable device for analysis. They provide the audience with specific rules which are followed across each separate genre, allowing the audience to assign a common reading or meaning, helping them understand. The purpose of most films is for the audience to understand and enjoy the plot, so the codes and conventions are typically are usually easy to decode. Some codes and conventions need to be learnt to gain the maximum understanding, however over time the audience find these devices useful and recognisable. 

Codes -  signs which create meaning for the audience. These codes can be divided into sub-groups of: Technical Codes,  Audio Codes, Written Codes and Symbolic Codes. These all supply the audience with connotations and denotations which conform and subvert to stereotypes.

 

Conventions - the accepted ways of doing something, there can be general conventions of a medium, however most importantly they are genre specific and show what the audience expect to see in a film. 

 

Technical Codes - these are the ways of which equipment is used to tell the story, linking to the technical elements of the film: camera shots, camera angles, lighting, framing, layout, perspective and camera movement.

Audio Codes - this refers to the sounds which the audience hear in the film: dialogue, music and sound effects.

Written Codes - this links to any written words which are present in the film: headings, subheadings, logos, labels, font and size, placement of the writing and signs.

Symbolic Codes - these codes are anything which has a symbolic meaning and shows what is beneath the surface of what is displayed to the audience: juxtaposition of characters/objects, lighting, use of colour, feelings/emotion, equality and stereotypes.

In our film, we aim to provide the audience with a range of all of the codes and conventions for our chosen genres - thriller, action and crime. We want the audience to gain maximum enjoyment and understanding, as well as making the film as professional and realistic as possible. To do this, we are going to focus on specific features of the technical codes, such as camera angles and shots as well as the movement of the camera. We believe the technical codes will play the largest role in our opening two minutes as to gain both realism and professionalism; we must include numerous different shot types without breaking continuity, which means we must give specific attention to the movement of the camera. So far, we have enlisted in a tripod with the aim to produce stability and we are currently discussing how to achieve movement in the best way.

For our specific film, there is little audio in the form of dialogue, which means we will need to give specific attention to both the diegetic and non-diegetic sounds of the film, as well as the music. Music will play a large role due to the lack of dialogue, meaning we must do some in-depth investigation into the music we use to achieve a successful effect. From filming the very beginning of our film, we have learnt that many things do not go according to plan. One of these is that the diegetic and non-diegetic sounds of the background are hard to hear, or out of time, meaning we may need to find an alternative way of recording the sound, and the edit it together with the visual - something we had not even taken into consideration before.