Research into Representation.

Representation in the Media.

Media representations are the ways in which the media portrays particular groups, communities, experiences, ideas, or topics from a particular ideological or value perspective.

Stuart Hall.

• Stuart Hall describes the representation as an act of re-presenting a meaning that already exists. Hall concludes that representation is the way in which meaning is given to decipt images from words which stand for something else.

• Similarly, he also concludes that 'representation has no fixed meaning until it has been represented.'.

• The meaning of representation changes as its form changes, therefore, meaning cannot exist until it has be represented, the meaning exists within its representation.

• Hall also questions where these meaning have come from and how they are constructed through representation, especially images seen through the media.

• Stuart Hall also theorised about the reception theory in which the terminology of preferred, negotiated and oppositional readings, encoded and decoded message play a key role in what we know is included within what the media document is trying to get across.

• Representation is more difficult than it appears. Hall concentrates on visual representation, but what Hall points out is applicable to all representation. Visual media are the privileged sign of late modern culture. Visual media are the saturating medium of world culture.

• Hall will try to subvert this old notion: Representation as a Reflection/Distortion of Reality.

Linking this to our genre of a psychological thriller these ideals and theories that Stuart Hall has addressed we can see that he has addressed that representation can be a reflection or distortion of reality. Due to psychological genred films being ones which show a distortion between reality and fantasy in the characters' minds. We can draw upon Halls' theories as we can include very realistic elements in our trailer and also ones which are not to show the difference between the two in the character's mind and also show it to be blurred or distorted as well to get across the psychologically troubled state of their mind and life.

Simulacra.

• This theory was developed by Jean Baudrillard.

• They stated that representation is problematic and they can be simulations of realisties which don't exist.

• Hyper-reality: 'a condition in which what is real and what is fiction are blended together so there is no clear distinction between where one ends and the other begins.' There is no distinction between reality and representation, only the simulacra.

• Baudrillard researched hyper-reality, noting how humans accepted simulation as reality. They realised that many people now couldn't identify the line between reality and altered representation.

Linking this to our genre of a psychological thriller theses ideals link into the genre connotation that the characters' minds within these types of films have problems separating reality and not reality apart, creating a blurred vision between the two of them.