Codes & Conventions & Characteristics of Media

Media Codes
Technical, written and symbolic tools used to construct or suggest meaning in media forms and products. Media codes include the use of camera, acting, setting, mise en scene, editing, lighting, sound, special effects, typography, colour, visual composition, text and graphics.

Media Conventions
Rules or generally accepted ways of constructing form and informing meaning in media products including story principles, form and structure, generic structures, character and story arcs, cause and effect, point of view, the structuring of time, elements of page layout, paper stock for print, titles and credits sequences, hyperlinking and mounting and framing of images.

CHARACTERISTICS OF MEDIA

Characteristics could be interpreted as the features or qualities of a media narrative in a specific media form that have a particular impact on how audiences interpret, read, engage with the media narrative.

Characteristics can differ from code and conventions but can also include them. For example; A characteristic of a moving image can be Lighting or Character Development and it can also be Genre.

A characteristic of the Genre Comedy could be Casting and Dialogue.

A characteristic of a print production can be Composition and Layout but can also be Genre.

Code & Conventions Booklet

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