Codes and Conventions: The Language of Film, Video and Sound

Remember from Grade 9

In Grade 9 you learned shot sizes (extreme long shot to close-up), camera angles (high, low, eye level), lighting, colour, music, editing pace and typography, and you wrote technique + evidence + effect sentences. In Grade 10 you'll organize techniques into codes, add new tools (camera movement, continuity editing, diegetic sound, mise-en-scène) and explain how they convey meaning and influence audiences.

Hook: same face, different feelings

Around a hundred years ago, the Soviet filmmaker Lev Kuleshov ran a famous editing experiment. He took the same shot of an actor's calm, neutral face and placed it after different images, such as a bowl of soup. According to accounts by Kuleshov and his student Vsevolod Pudovkin, audiences saw different emotions in the actor's face, such as hunger after the soup, even though the face shot was identical every time. (The original film is lost, and later researchers have re-tested the effect with mixed but generally supportive results.)

This is the Kuleshov effect: meaning comes not only from each shot, but from how shots are put together. Media have a language, and editing is part of its grammar.

Three kinds of codes

Media scholars often sort media language into codes:

• Technical codes: the tools of production: camera (shot size, angle, movement), lighting, editing and sound.
• Symbolic codes: what things mean beyond themselves: colour, costume, objects, setting, body language and facial expression. A character in a crisp suit at a glass desk signals power.
• Written codes: words on screen or page: titles, captions, headlines, labels, typography.

When these codes are used in expected ways in a form or genre, they become conventions.

New technical tools

Camera movement

• Pan: the camera turns side to side, revealing a scene or following action.
• Tilt: the camera tilts up or down, for example up a tall building to show its size.
• Tracking (dolly) shot: the camera moves along with a subject, pulling viewers into the action.
• Zoom: the lens changes focal length to move closer or farther without moving the camera.
• Handheld: shaky, personal, urgent; common in documentaries and action scenes.

Mise-en-scène (say it meez-on-SEN): everything placed in the frame: setting, props, costume, lighting, and where actors stand. Directors use it to tell you about characters before anyone speaks.

Editing

• Continuity editing hides the cuts so the story flows; the 180-degree rule and shot/reverse shot keep conversations clear.
• Cross-cutting switches between two places to build suspense or comparison.
• Montage compresses time (a training sequence) or links ideas.
• Match cut: cuts between two shots with similar shapes or movements to connect them.

Sound

• Diegetic sound exists in the story world (dialogue, footsteps, a radio playing).
• Non-diegetic sound is added for the audience (the score, a narrator).
• A sound bridge carries sound from one scene into the next to link them.
• Foley is everyday sound recorded in a studio to match the action, like footsteps and rustling coats.

Genre conventions, and breaking them

Genres combine codes into recognizable patterns:

• Horror: low-key lighting (strong shadows), discordant music, slow tracking shots down hallways, sudden silence before a scare.
• Romantic comedy: bright high-key lighting, a "meet-cute," upbeat music, a final scene that brings the couple together.
• Documentary: interviews, B-roll (extra footage that illustrates what's being said), archival images, voice-over, on-screen names and titles.
• Sports broadcast: multiple camera angles, slow-motion replays, on-screen scores, commentators.

Creators follow conventions to meet expectations and break them to surprise or to make a point. A horror film set in bright daylight unsettles because it breaks the dark-hallway convention.