Preliminary Exercise 2: Barthes’ Semiotics Theory of Denotative and Connotative Signs Analysis

         Roland Gerard Barthes was a French literary theorist and semiotician. Barthes is best known for his study of semiotics and while doing so he created a theory of semiotics himself. That being the method of myths that he saw in media according to Barthes he claims that "anything in culture can be a sign and send specific message." He also saw that signs have two meanings denotative- meaning non-literal and connotative- the actual meaning. His theory was beneficial for planning film to really make a scene and the film more powerful and give a message more clearly. I have watched a video clip on Youtube from Mockingjay part 2 where the main characters are going through an interview in front of a crowd of people. I have selected 4 types of code, three visual codes which are costume, setting and acting, also one audio which is sound. The codes in the clip really suggest and support's what the director was trying to do with the plot of the movie and its characters. For more info look below at the table me and my teammate worked on.

        Reflection

    I have created a presentation for a better understanding of what Barthes theory of semiotics was for and how it works. How I created this presentation was on my laptop in powerpoint. I mainly used tools powerpoint provided like the tables and I had gotten the images from the video clip itself and from goggle images. Also, my skill level for using these tools are intermediate. As, for the content of the presentation the theorist is Roland Barthes who created a theory about semiotics which is "anything in culture can be a sign and send specific message." Also, that signs have two meanings denotative- meaning non-literal and connotative- the actual meaning. The people who worked on this presentation are myself and my teammate; I did the first two and my teammate did the other two. What I learned doing this exercise was Barthes theory and how it worked and how it was a beneficial to the film making industry.

Work Cited

Roland Barthes (no date) Monoskop. Available at: https://monoskop.org/Roland_Barthes (Accessed: 07 November 2023).