Key Concepts: Denotation and Connotation

Dennotation and connotation are concepts to reading images.

Dennotation is noting down precisely the physical attributes of what is in a drawing/photograph; literally writing down what you see. The process of denotation is very objective or 'scientific'. To dennotate is to basically write what the things infront of you are. For example:

To dennotate this film poster, I can say there is a shark in the water, swimming towards a woman swimming. At the top of the page is bold, red letters is the word 'JAWS'. No one can argue with this dennotation, its fact.

If a film poster features a tagline, institution, cast members names etc, these can also be mentioned to dennotate a text, aslong as they are present on the text.

The process of connotation is more subjective and looks at the unspoken, in depth meaning. The connotation is where the reader interprets the meaning of the text with their own ideas and  metraphorical thoughts.
So in regards to the film poster of Jaws, the arrangement of its features makes us feel that the shark is about to attack the lady who is oblivious to its presence. The red used in the title connotes to us that she shark attack is brutal involving blood.

Colours used in products may also connote.
Blue: cold, high, loyal
Brown: natural, dirty
Red: passion, danger, anger
Pink: love, happiness, girly, swett, youth
Green: nature, military, toxic, summer
Purple: loyal, royalty, midnight
White: snow, winter, peace, freedon, pure
Black: dark, evil, mystery, lonliness
You may feel differently about what the colours connote depending on what the image portrays.


We analysed this film poster, My Little Eye,  and used our knowledge of denotation and connotation.

 

Denotations - 

The only image on the post is the large, clear eye. The eyelashes are enhanced by the closeup of the image. The brown pupil is looking up. The light in the eye is white and bright. 

The title 'My Little Eye' is in large, long and thin font. The tagline is 'Fear is not knowing, terror is finding out', this is wrote in a smaller font in comparison to the title. The tage line is presented in two short sentances.

The background has red with some fuzzy black shadows. The names of the cast can be found at the bottom of the poster in a smaller font. Below this, is a website adress in even smaller text. 

Connotations - 

The eye appears to be looking up in what appears to bein fear or  terror (like the tag line states). The whitness of this eye stands out, its connotes the feeling of purity and innoncence, leading us to think that this person is definately the victim in the story. As the surrounding back ground is red, this can be interpretted as the danger they are in.

In the pupil, 6 white lights can be seen reflectively. It looks asif these lights come from the sky/ a spaceship, and thus it could be so that this film involves the supernatural/aliens.

As the title is long, thin and pointed, this may be to represent weapons such as knives.

There is a clear link between the title and the image, it could be to indicate that someone is watching.

We feel we can adapt what we have learnt of the concepts dennotation and connotation and apply it to our film poster in order to give the audience something to think about when they view it and thus make it more interesting for them. Its important that we are aware of the relationship between our media text and the audience.

During the process of creating our film poster, we will use images and text which will have only one literal interpretation. However, we will arrange the elements in a way which if the audience applies a little bit of thought to it there is a more metraphorical meaning to the poster. As we are creating just a trailer there is limited amount of the storyline given away, but its possible we can reveal some possibilities of what else may occur in the film through this arrangement. We wish not to overcrowd the poster and prefer to keep it more simple. We think it we try to place too much on it, any connotations will be lost and everything will just be took as it is.

The colour scheme we are going to use throughout the project as a whole will be grey, black, brown and some red. This is to promote that the film is of the genre of horror. The aim of the genre of horror is to scare the audience, these colours create shadows and mystery and will keep the audience guessing of what is lurking in those shadows.