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Nov 2025

Media Magazine December 2013: Gothic, Issue 46

The Influence of Gothic Art in Film

This article talks about the evolution of Gothic literature within history, and explains how the genre of the Gothic influenced films. Goth seems to focus on a deeper meaning within its art, and dates back to mid-12th century from the Romanesque tradition in Northern-France. The style of Goth was first seen in film during the German Expressionist Cinema during the 1920s, including the films Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang), and The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1919, Robert Wiene).

I learnt about how Gothic films tend to focus on the lighting, and how they do so, which could come in handy if I do a music video for my NEA. I could use some of the knowledge about lighting in the music video, especially because I enjoy making darker themed and slightly more Gothic creations.

Advert Making Practise

My friend Max M and I decided to work together to practise our skills and create an advert together. We created a fictional anti-ai campaign as a basis for this advert (#SpeakAgainstAI - name is still a work in progress). 

Drawn Plan for the advert(s)

Shelter Video Analysis

I watched through a video of Shelter's youtube channel in order to gain some context of the type of things Shelter does, why they do it, and who they target as an audience. This is the video I looked at in more detail:

A child's Christmas list in temporary accommodation | Shelter

I chose this video because I feel that it sums up the tactics that Shelter (and other charitable organisations) use in order to ensure that their audience takes action and responds to their advertising. This tactic involves making the audience feel certain emotions- most noticeably empathy, responsibility, and guilt. A combination of these emotions ensures that audiences will help financially support the charity, or at least take action rather than do nothing. Because of the nature of these advertisements, they have to be able to give an immediate effect to their audiences, so the video is very short, lasting only 56 seconds. 

This video makes audiences feel empathy in many ways, such as the melancholy music in the background, or the grim mise en scene. The letter of the child near the end, with the very polite and modest tone within the writing, and shaky drawing of a snowman, creates sympathy for the child, since he is being presented as innocent and undeserving of living in a household crisis. The paralanguage and hesitant speech of the characters within the video sets the emotional tone- the audience will feel sad and therefore empathetic for everybody who is currently in a difficult housing situation. The first line is important- "I remember being 11. And I could not imagine having to write that." This video clearly focuses on children who live in temporary accommodation (anchored by the title of the video). Children are conventionally seen as innocent, and vulnerable, which emphasises their pain and makes the audience more inclined to feel sympathy for them.

The video also makes audiences feel responsible for these children with the end scene specifically. "Donate today" implies that audiences can help these children get out of their situation, and the desperation of the children reinforces the feeling of responsibility. This reflects altruism, because the advert is attempting to promote pro-social behaviour, or in other words, promote their audience to donate to their charity. Donation is presented as positive behaviour, and so the audience feel more inclined to partake in donating to charity.

Media Theory for A Level, The Essential Revision Guide - Mark Dixon

I read through a chapter of Mark Dixon's book on theorists, in order to gain more insight for Roland Barthes Semiology Theory. 

Dixon explains Barthes' Semiology Theory as having two key concepts; the concept that media creates meaning "through a process of denotation and connotation", and that media creates an ideological effect on its audience. I was having trouble understanding the second concept, so reading through this chapter helped me understand what Barthes meant when talking about 'myths' in the media, and that myths have the ability to influence society's behaviours and actions. 

I found the examples of how Roland Barthes' Semiology Theory could be applied to media texts especially interesting. The text used was an "I, Daniel Blake" poster. 

Dixon not only talked about the breaking of the fourth wall and direct mode of address, which can be seen in the film poster, but how this differentiates to an off-screen gaze. I was not aware that the direction of an off screen gaze could suggest adventure or optimist (looking to the right), or nostalgia or regret (left screen gaze), and this made me think about how this idea came about. It made me think how society, through repetition, created the idea (or myth) that something as simple as the direction of right creates a positive and futuristic representation, whereas the direction of left creates a negative and past tense oriented view. This made me realise just how many myths, ideologies, and hidden or deeper meanings there are to the mise en scene and language of media. 

To follow up, I looked at the Jaws film poster in an attempt to apply these new ideas.

The Jaws poster uses subject positioning to create meaning. This is done with the central placing of the antagonist or villain- the shark, the teeth connoting danger. The denotations of the colour blue connote that the shark is under water. The character is swimming to the right, connoting adventure, and this character is in the centre, since she is a dominant figure.