LIIAR

For textual analysis of film trailers, I will need to observe and relate the aspects of LIIAR to the media texts


Language:
The media language would, of course, consist of the basic language of moving images and films, such as the micro elements of Cinematography, Sound, Editing, Mise-En-Scene and Performance. The Macro-Elements of a film, such as the narrative will also be important, as a trailer's purpose, as well as to advertise the film, is to give a sense of the narrative, because if a particular story interests an audience, they will be more likely to see it. There will also be some forms of editing and other language used which are not seen in films and the more common moving image media texts, such as title/text slides and even some trailers use voice overs which would be more common in texts such as documentaries.

Institution:
The company involved in the making of the text. In the context of film trailers, it would usually be the director or production company of the film, as they created the original text which is being advertised, however, as seen in my research into the history of film trailers, there have been production companies created with the purpose of making film trailers.

Ideology:
This is what the media text is trying to communicate. It often involves utilizing the beliefs/views/representations supported by the institution, and also what the institution believe the audience want to see. Genre conventions are an example of ideology relating to my project, as there are certain conventions in horror films which the institutions use to create fear, for example, and which the audience know and expect to see in the film.

Audience:
This is the target audience to whom the media text is aimed. When considering a text like a film trailer, the audience will largely be dictated by the genre of the text, as certain genres attract certain audiences, for example, a trailer for an action film would mainly automatically attract a male audience, so to attract a female audience they would display narrative features with a romantic subplot featuring a well-known actress, for example, or, have a female lead role (examples include Elektra and the more recent Resident Evil films).

Representation:
Who and what the media text is trying to represent. There are normally many reasons why something has been utilised in a media text (whether a stylistic feature or a part of the narrative) and we have to try to understand what it symbolises or why it has been used in that specific way. Certain aspects of the ideology of the institution, audiences, people and different groups can be represented in different ways in texts. For example, Night of The Living Dead (Romero, 1968) represented women in a negative way (the main female was catatonic throughout the film, and none of the women were very useful characters throughout the film,) but in Dawn of The Dead (Romero, 1978) the main female lead ultimately takes charge of the situation and is more useful and a better role model for women. This shows how different representations can change with time and society's attitudes.