WEEK 3 : Is Film/TV a Language?

This week we learnt about the reasoning of why film and TV could be viewed as a language, in the sense of it being an art form that people understand in a certain way. The lecture content spoke about the fact that many people tend to consume film and TV without thinking of the content, and by studying this it allows us to understand it a lot more because it is written in a certain way, making it its own language.

The first set reading, by John Ellis, mainly spoke about the difference in image between Television and film, his main reasoning for this was because TV was and is lower quality than cinema. Ellis then goes on to say that because ‘TV is placed in domestic surroundings’[1] (John Ellis 1982) it makes the experience a lot different to cinema, I feel this may because it is then a more informal setting and leaves room for conversation between the people who are also watching Television. Ellis also makes a point that ‘Movement from event to event is slower [on tv] than in the cinema’.[2] (John Ellis 1982) his main reasoning may be because generally a television show has more content as a series is longer than a film, so they have more space for their story and therefore elongate it, cinema has to fit their narrative in to 90 minutes. In my own reading that I found, James Monaco states that ‘At the end of the 1970’s people saw movies in theatres’[3] (James Monaco 2000:524), showing us that although it may only be a fairly new concept that you go to the cinema to watch a film it is still the preferred way to do so to this day.

The second set reading is by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith, he focuses on film and begins to speak about the change in film over the 1970’s, which is mainly due to the change in society, however he goes on to talk about the fact that ‘films mean more because people want them to mean’[4]. (Nowell-Smith 2000) What I believe he is trying to say is that people make sense of films to allow themselves to enjoy and understand the narrative a lot more. A second point that Nowell-Smith makes is that ‘the relevant parts of information is delivered by the film-maker and picked up by the spectator in the form of cues’[5] (Nowell-Smith 2000) meaning that the film maker deliberately places information in certain places to allow the audience to get the best understanding of the film.

[1] Ellis, John (1982) Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television, Video, Routledge: London - pp. 127-159

[2] Ellis, John (1982) Visible Fictions: Cinema, Television, Video, Routledge: London - pp. 127-159

[3] Monaco, James. Multimedia : The Digital Revolution. How to Read a Film: The World of Movies, Media, and Multimedia : Language, History, Theory. 2000. Pg 524.

[4] Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (2000) ‘How films mean, or, from aesthetics to semiotics and half-way back again’ in Gledhill, C and Williams, L. (2000), Reinventing Film Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

[5] Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (2000) ‘How films mean, or, from aesthetics to semiotics and half-way back again’ in Gledhill, C and Williams, L. (2000), Reinventing Film Studies. London: Bloomsbury Academic.