More detail into 'Signs' + Anchorage.

In class we wound into conversation the portrayal of tattoos on women and their connotations, which lead into a discussion about feminism etc. This is a good example of a signifier as we found out it conveys a variety of thoughts to different people. Some signs, like tattoos on women have an array of different reactions and provokes many different thoughts, however some signifiers are less (although not completely) contested, such as the appearance of a gun in a Film-Noir style film, it has a strongly presented image of power, masculinity and danger. Although it is important to note that that the context of a signifier can drastically change its connotations, for example a gun in a blockbuster hollywood movie has less impact than that of a Film-Noir piece.
  Every sign, denotation and connotation all come together to create the Anchorage of a piece of media, essentially summing up its meaning mode of adress.

Semiotics, Semiology.

Today we looked into semiotics and semiology, a way of approaching a piece of media, we looked at a series of portrait images, separated into male and female, we annotated the images with any words we could think of relating to the pictures. As a group we then talked about why we thought the words were related to the images which brought us to talk about signs and signifiers, the basis of semiotics; a sign is something within a picture, film or nearly any piece of media which portrays a certain image, provokes a certain thought or emotion or has a meaning beyond its denotations. Denotations are observations about a piece of media, e.g. 'The picture contains a woman', whereas Connotations are the ideas, meanings, feelings or deeper insights into a piece of media, e.g. 'The woman looks distressed'.
Here is a very simple and basic example of connoting and denoting an image.

The type of 'signs' which would be looked for in a piece of media are; colours and the contrast of colours, characters, background, framing, use of editing and enhancing etc. Often the most obvious and striking sign is the overall colour of the piece of media, it can change and control the media and its overall feel, for example if an image is predominantly red then it signifies anger, passion, lover, romance or danger, whereas a white image symbolises purity, peace, calm, empty, clear.