Some Key Concepts of Film Language
by Lukas Agelastos
How does film manage to communicate meaning?
While we can instinctively recognise meanings that are conveyed through film, the study of semiotics can help us analyse them further.
In his book "How To Read A Film" (2009), James Monaco refers to certain key concepts that are important to the study of the language of film.
I have tried to condense these concepts and find some illuminating examples for them in order to understand them better myself.
the signifier - the form which the sign takes; and
the signified - the concept it represents.
Example: the word 'Open' (when it is meaningful to someone who encounters it on a shop door) is a sign consisting of:
a signifier: the word open;
a signified concept: that the shop is open for business (Chandler 2014).
In still photography and in film, the signifier and the signified are nearly identical. A picture of a book is conceptually much closer than the word "book" is (Monaco 2009).
What we as the audience see and hear is denotative, it is what it is and we can easily recognise it. The Film gives us such a precise information of physical reality that it can transfer an exact knowledge that verbal or written language can't.
At the same time film has its own unique connotative ability: a filmmaker can choose to film from certain angles, using certain camera movements, light, sound and colours etc in order to convey a certain feeling to the viewer (Monaco 2009).
For a filmmaker, these two sets of choices are very important:
After s/he has decided what to shoot, s/he needs to decide how to shoot it (what choices to make: the paradigmatic) and how to present the shot (how to edit it: the syntagmatic).The syntagmatic category is probably the most "cinematic" and different from other arts (Monaco 2009).
The icon (also called likeness and semblance) is a pattern that physically resembles what it `stands for'. It is a sign that indicates its object by virtue of a quality which is shared by them but which the icon has irrespective of the object.
Examples:
A picture of your face is an icon of you.
The small square with a picture of a printer on your laptop's screen is an icon for the print function (Port 2000).
The index is more difficult to define. It measures a quality not because it its identical to it but because it has an innate relationship to it.
Examples:
Clocks and sundials are indexes of time.
Medical symptoms are indexes of health.
Dark clouds in the East are an index of impending rain.
Sweat on a person's clothing is an index of heat (Monaco 2009, Port 2000).
Symbols are easier to define. They are arbitrary signs in which the signifier has neither an indexical nor a direct relationship to the signified, but is represented through convention rather than resemblance.
These word-word relationships are critical for anchoring the meaning of a word without depending on a correlation in space and time between the sound of the word and its meaning. They are easily removable from their context, and are closely associated with large sets of other words.
[Thus children in the tropics learn words like ICE and SNOW. How? They do know: COLD, WHITE, HARD, CLEAR, SOFT, WATER, FLUFFY, MELT, SLIPPERY, etc.] (Port 2000).
These categories are not mutually exclusive.
A thing is itself even if it is also an index or a symbol.
The icon is the sign that is so characteristic of cinema; the symbol is the sign of verbal and written language.
The index is the most interesting cinematically as a sign with which a film can convey meaning as it has the potential to show us representations or measurements of ideas.
For example, to show the idea of hotness in a film, the filmmaker could use hot colours or shimmering atmospheric waves. Similarly, to show the idea of kitchen smells, s/he could deploy images of steam. Associated details refer to an abstract idea (Monaco 2009).
In a "metonomy", an associated detail is used to represent a subject or invoke an idea. We can speak of the queen as "the crown" or a police officer as "the law" for instance.
In a "synecdoche" a part stands for a greater whole, or the whole for the part. A car can be described as a "motor" for example.
Examples in film:
- Falling calendar pages, driving wheels of train engine (metonymic)
- Close shots of marching feet to represent an army (synecdochic) (Monaco 2009).
Juliet Berto in Godard's La Chinoise (1967), an example of both metonymy (little red books are associated details rather than whole ideology) and synecdoche (books stand for Maoist ideology)
by Lukas Agelastos
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| Casablanca (1942) |
Film is difficult to explain because it is easy to understand. The semiotics of film is easy to explain because it is difficult to understand(Monaco 2009).
How does film manage to communicate meaning?
While we can instinctively recognise meanings that are conveyed through film, the study of semiotics can help us analyse them further.
I have tried to condense these concepts and find some illuminating examples for them in order to understand them better myself.
Signs
The Swiss linguist and semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure defined a sign as being composed of:
the signified - the concept it represents.
Example: the word 'Open' (when it is meaningful to someone who encounters it on a shop door) is a sign consisting of:
a signifier: the word open;
a signified concept: that the shop is open for business (Chandler 2014).
In still photography and in film, the signifier and the signified are nearly identical. A picture of a book is conceptually much closer than the word "book" is (Monaco 2009).
Denotation and Connotation
At the same time film has its own unique connotative ability: a filmmaker can choose to film from certain angles, using certain camera movements, light, sound and colours etc in order to convey a certain feeling to the viewer (Monaco 2009).
Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic Connotations
Paradigmatic connotations exist when our sense of the connotation of a certain shot derives from it having been chosen from a range of other possible shots. For instance, a low angle shot of a rose conveys a sense that the flower might be dominant because we unconsciously compare it with an overhead shot of a rose which diminishes its importance. Syntagmatic connotation would not compare the rose shot to other potential shots but rather to actual shots that precede or follow it. The meaning attaches to it because we compare it to other shots we actually see.For a filmmaker, these two sets of choices are very important:
After s/he has decided what to shoot, s/he needs to decide how to shoot it (what choices to make: the paradigmatic) and how to present the shot (how to edit it: the syntagmatic).The syntagmatic category is probably the most "cinematic" and different from other arts (Monaco 2009).
Icon, Index, Symbol
The further differentiation of various modes of denotation and connotation in the influential book by Peter Wollen Signs and Meaning in the Cinema (1969) are based on the works of philosopher C.S. Pierce.The icon (also called likeness and semblance) is a pattern that physically resembles what it `stands for'. It is a sign that indicates its object by virtue of a quality which is shared by them but which the icon has irrespective of the object.
Examples:
A picture of your face is an icon of you.
 |
| Drawing by Jen Pearce (2013) |
The index is more difficult to define. It measures a quality not because it its identical to it but because it has an innate relationship to it.
Examples:
Clocks and sundials are indexes of time.
Medical symptoms are indexes of health.
Dark clouds in the East are an index of impending rain.
Sweat on a person's clothing is an index of heat (Monaco 2009, Port 2000).
Symbols are easier to define. They are arbitrary signs in which the signifier has neither an indexical nor a direct relationship to the signified, but is represented through convention rather than resemblance.
These word-word relationships are critical for anchoring the meaning of a word without depending on a correlation in space and time between the sound of the word and its meaning. They are easily removable from their context, and are closely associated with large sets of other words.
[Thus children in the tropics learn words like ICE and SNOW. How? They do know: COLD, WHITE, HARD, CLEAR, SOFT, WATER, FLUFFY, MELT, SLIPPERY, etc.] (Port 2000).
These categories are not mutually exclusive.
A thing is itself even if it is also an index or a symbol.
The icon is the sign that is so characteristic of cinema; the symbol is the sign of verbal and written language.
The index is the most interesting cinematically as a sign with which a film can convey meaning as it has the potential to show us representations or measurements of ideas.
For example, to show the idea of hotness in a film, the filmmaker could use hot colours or shimmering atmospheric waves. Similarly, to show the idea of kitchen smells, s/he could deploy images of steam. Associated details refer to an abstract idea (Monaco 2009).
Metonomy & Synecdoche
There are two terms from literary studies that help describe the way film conveys connotative meaning.In a "metonomy", an associated detail is used to represent a subject or invoke an idea. We can speak of the queen as "the crown" or a police officer as "the law" for instance.
In a "synecdoche" a part stands for a greater whole, or the whole for the part. A car can be described as a "motor" for example.
Examples in film:
- Falling calendar pages, driving wheels of train engine (metonymic)
- Close shots of marching feet to represent an army (synecdochic) (Monaco 2009).
Juliet Berto in Godard's La Chinoise (1967), an example of both metonymy (little red books are associated details rather than whole ideology) and synecdoche (books stand for Maoist ideology)
Tropes
A trope is a conceptual figure of speech, a storytelling shorthand for a concept that the viewer will recognise and understand instantly.It can be a plot trick, a setup, a character type, a narrative structure, a linguistic idiom (TV Tropes 2016).
A logical twist that gives the signifier and the signified of a sign a new relationship to each other. It is the connector between denotation and connotation (Monaco 2009).
References:
- Daniel Chandler. 2014. Semiotics for Beginners. [ONLINE] Available at: http://visual-memory.co.uk/daniel/Documents/S4B/. [Accessed 06 December 2016]
- James Monaco, 2009. How to Read a Film: Movies, Media, and Beyond. 4th Edition. Oxford University Press.
- R.Port. 2000. Icon, Index and Symbol: Types of Signs. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.cs.indiana.edu/~port/teach/103/sign.symbol.short.html. [Accessed 06 December 2016].
- TV Tropes. 2016. Trope - TV Tropes. [ONLINE] Available at: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Trope. [Accessed 06 December 2016].
Images:
https://jenpearce.wordpress.com/2010/03/08/original-icon-index-symbol/
https://www.emaze.com/@ACZWIFLQ/BCM110-Semiotics
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMOkQyN9i21-6N3-gm-Wg_H_RGkAC9rCuKg57_-eunszfrV9zux6LqlKjvpBJVhOTnwyCQ-Przaf3CEWHyyy7-0yWw4evwP5KxPBdN-WPBsLdf-JP8b6u8qg9fMjEcu4wQelOMvLcM7OWv/s1600/alternative+poster+sem.jpg
https://gr.pinterest.com/pin/575475658612781345/
Great stuff. I had said little red book by the way, from Chairman Mao, around that time!
ReplyDeleteGood job Lukas, lots of useful stuff in here...
ReplyDelete