PhD Ch7 - Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts more

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Contents 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts 7.1 Case Study 1: Use of the VCU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.1 The ‘sympathetic’ VCU . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.2 ‘Suspicious’ VCUs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.3 VCUs that aren’t . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.1.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2 Case Study 2: Interpretation of Vertical Camera Angles . . . . . 7.2.1 Vertical Camera Angle and ‘power’ . . . . . . . . . . . . . Low-angle shots and the ‘empowerment’ of the portrayed Low-angle shots and non-human images . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.2 High-angle shots: visual access . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.2.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3 Case Study 3: A functional view of camera movements . . . . . . 7.3.1 Pans and directionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.2 A functional classiﬁcation of pans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.3.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7.4 Chapter Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 4 4 9 11 12 13 13 14 18 20 23 23 24 25 30 31 32 1 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts The argument I forward in this chapter is that an approach to television news images which takes those images to be in a sense ‘pure’ expression, that is, the unconstrained product of a creative consciousness and thus a window into that consciousness, is liable to overstate its conclusions. Recall that the types of image features used in social semiotic theory of visual grammar developed by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) emerged largely from the worlds of art history and ﬁlm studies, both areas where the text is generally seen as having a speciﬁc author, the painter, sculptor or director, and whose methods and objectives are seldom those of television news. Misinterpretation may be avoided, or at least reduced, if the very real contexts of the process of production, not only the mental processes but those connected with technological necessities of television production and those inherent in the nature of the physical world, are taken fully into account. This chapter demonstrates the importance of taking into account the broad context of production and illustrates how a failure to do so might lead to, if not ‘faulty’, at least over-interpretation. The case studies which follow are oﬀered not as examples of ‘correct’ interpretations of (possibly) semiotic features of televisual texts but as instances of possible corrective steps that can assist in reducing the scope for error. From text to data There is a fundamental ontological contradiction between the ‘data’ which makes the statistical analyses presented in the preceding chapter possible and the ‘data’ of the original news stories. The former is highly selective and reﬂects a tiny portion of the possible available information contained within the latter, it is digital as opposed to analogue, and represents a static snapshot rather than an unbroken dynamic ﬂow. It can thus oﬀer only approximations. However, these approximations are a vital initial step if textual analysis is to be based on anything other than a personal reading justiﬁed by the unique biography of the interpreter. However practised the analyst, the possibility of removing the self during the complex process of encountering the texts, necessarily a subjective encounter, seems remote. This 1 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts must especially be the case when a large number of texts is to be analysed. Yet, the repetitive, fractional and highly stylised technique of reducing visual texts to a number of theoretically signiﬁcant variables and a limited number of possible values for each of those, serves not only to provide a set of data amenable to statistical interpretation, but also to whittle away, coding decision by coding decision, at the analyst’s self; it reduces the complexity of ‘watching television’ to a series of micro-encounters which involve judgements far less complex than those undertaken, often less than consciously, whilst immersed in the television ﬂow. These micro-encounters leave little space for personality and the resulting data set is invaluable in drawing out the contrast between the common and the uncommon and highlighting aspects of the texts that might oﬀer fruitful ground for further investigation. While this approach is open to the criticism that it nulliﬁes certain of the skills human observers rely on when reading images, for example, near-immediate perception of the image as a gestalt, ability to distinguish saliency and foreground from background, and thus leads to more losses than gains, I would argue that approach I have taken, and which can be seen as embodied in the methodology presented in the previous chapter, can act as a useful restraint on a reliance on these purely subjective perceptions. The data outlined in the previous chapter thus provides a description of what the visual semiotic features of televisual images actually are, how often they occur and where. Although it is lacking in colour, this description provides a ground against which the less common, analytically more intriguing, images can be identiﬁed. Marked and Unmarked Images Ron and Suzanne Scollon (2001:36–41) draw attention to how certain types of discourse tend to co-occur with certain types of interactional ‘tone’, what they refer to as the ‘key’ of the communication. They give the example of the common co-occurrence of ‘jokes’, which often have a very particular generic form requiring the prior understanding of all the interlocutors (e.g. the ‘knock, knock’-joke in English), and the ‘humorous’ key. However, the same phrases that comprise the joke could also be related by an individual aﬀronted by the joke. Such a predictable co-occurrence as a joke in a humorous key would be called unmarked whereas a joke told in an aﬀronted way would be considered to be marked. All that this means is that the unmarked conﬁguration would be be thought to be quite unremarkable. [. . . ] On the other hand something which was marked would be surprising or unexpected. This does not mean that it does not happen; it just means that when marked events or collocations of these components occur, we notice that something is diﬀerent and that we have to pay particular attention to interpret them correctly. (Scollon and Scollon 2001:41) The capacity to spot the ‘marked’ from the mass of ‘unmarked’ manifestations of human interaction is dependent on our knowledge of what is normal in a given situation. 2 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Thus before we can focus on what might be in need of particular attention as an instance of marked interaction we need a comprehensive description, whether it is the informal mental picture of ‘how the world is’ we carry in our heads or the formal treatment of reality oﬀered by science, of normality.1 Once such a description becomes available it becomes possible to home in on violations of normal practise and consider why the violations occur. The preceding chapter described televisual news ‘normality’, this chapter concentrates on the abnormal. The three features chosen for the case studies in this chapter are all, I would argue, to some extent, violations, or at least perturbations, of the hypothetical ‘typical news image’. Choice of case studies The three sections which follow look at the three diﬀerent image features which have received the closest theoretical attention, (1) image framing and social distance, (2) the uses of camera movement (I focus on the pan) and (3) camera angles and depictions of power and solidarity. I take diﬀerent approaches to each of these features; (1) section 7.1 looks at how instances of the VCU framing found in the corpus are interpretable in the light of Hall’s theory of social distance and argues that, given the ambiguities built into this theory, meaningful readings must take account of surrounding informational contexts. (2) section 7.2 highlights the gap between theorisations of camera angles as semiotic resources which emphasise the communicative intent of the image-producer, and a view of variations in camera angles which sees them as motivated less by the desire to communicate a certain meaning and more the result of the material circumstances of message production. (3) section 7.3 discusses a possible typology of camera movements based on functional rather than a formal considerations. It is intended to oﬀer a possible ﬁrst step in the development of categories for use in a visual functional grammar and also as a contribution to the development of an answer to the question ‘what is this image an image of ?’ The three case studies then address (1) the possible eﬀects on interpretation of the informational context in which image features occur, (2) the possible inﬂuence of the surrounding physical world and, as a somewhat speculative foray into the redeﬁnition of the analytical categories appropriate to the study of televisual images (3) how a strengthened functional perspective might contribute to progress in the development of a useful visual grammar. 1 Scollon’s use of the terms marked/unmarked are somewhat inconsistent with uses derived from classical markedness theory. In general these posit a asymmetrical binary relation between pairs of entities diﬀering in certain consistent logical ways (Moravcsik and Wirth 1986:1–12). Scollon’s use has more in common with theories of linguistic naturalness which see some parts or features or uses of language as more ‘core’, to adopt the Chomskyan terminology, and others as ‘peripheral’ (Thomas 2003). The two usages are consistent though in designating the more widely distributed entity ‘unmarked’ and the less frequent complement ‘marked’ (ibid.:3). 3 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts 7.1 Case Study 1: Use of the VCU Section ?? in the previous chapter oﬀered a general overview of the distribution of framing sizes in the stories in the corpus. In the following section I go into further the detail of usage of one particular frame size, the ‘very close-up’ (VCU) and oﬀer an analysis of possible motivating factors, drawn from the informational context in which this feature is encountered, behind its use. To brieﬂy recapitulate the general conclusion outlined in chapter 6, the typical image of a social actor found in news in Japan will be framed in the CU to MS range, the closing of physical distance implied by the use of the VCU signiﬁes a decision to step over the borderline that marks the limit of approach in ‘normal interaction’. Sussman and Rosenfeld(1982:70) suggest that a typical inter-personal distance for Japanese-speaking dyads engaged in casual conversation is in the region of 1m. The social distance implied by the VCU, in the region of 0.5m, is much closer than this. The portrayal of social actors in VCU can be seen therefore as ‘unusual’, or ‘marked’, both in terms of the typical social distance adopted for communicational interaction and in terms of its actual occurrence in the corpus. What are the possible situations which might motivate a crossing of this boundary? What factors are in play in the process of the image-maker’s decision to draw on this particular semiotic resource? Answers to these questions also shed light on the discrepancy between the proportion of male and female social actors portrayed at VCU mentioned in section ??. A large proportion of the images in the montage of VCUs (ﬁg.7.1) can be seen as informed by two emotions: sympathy and suspicion. There is nothing in the formal aspect of the images themselves that allows us to assess which interpretation we should be making and we, as viewers, must rely on the contextual knowledge we have of the individual portrayed, gained through participation in the society to which we belong and through the speciﬁc information provided in the rest of the story. 7.1.1 The ‘sympathetic’ VCU The sequence of images shown in table 7.1 is taken from a story shown on NHK’s morning news programme, Ohay¯ Nippon, on 23 July 2007. It covers one week in the life of the o Shimizu family who have lost their house in the Niigata Earthquake (16 July 2007) and are living in the facilities set up by the local government to house and feed those who have been left homeless. The segment shown in table 7.1 deals with the decision the family and the council must take regarding the future of their home. The family are representative of the ‘victims’ of the destruction caused by the quake, throughout the story a caption reading ‘A week in the life of a disaster victim’ (hisaisha no issh¯kan u ) is visible in the upper-right hand corner of the screen. 4 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Figure 7.1: Random selection of VCUs: 24 of total 51 shown. The motivations behind these images are as various as the images themselves but can be seen as informed by two main emotions: sympathy and suspicion. What we know about the family from the information presented is fairly limited2 , the house was occupied by ﬁve family members though we are not told who, we assume they include Mr and Mrs Shimizu but apart from them it is unclear who was resident 2 In the absence of information to the contrary I make the assumption that the Shimizu family members occupy ‘traditional’ family roles, father as ‘breadwinner’, mother as ‘home-maker’. 5 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts 1 Mr Shimizu stands in front of his ruined house with an employee of the local council; they are (we are given to assume) considering the future of the Shimizu family’s home, destroyed by the recent earthquake. Here we see one of the results of this process of consideration; the property has been labelled ‘dangerous’ (kiken ) by council surveyors and a decision as to when it can be safely pulled down must be taken before it is brought down by aftershocks. Next we move inside, to a sign board, which reads ‘Tax Section’ (zeimuka ), the subsequent tilt down reveals the extent of the oﬀice; this is the Town Hall. At a booth in the foreground we see the back of a man in a white shirt talking to a council oﬀicial over the desk. VCU of Mr Shimizu talking to a council employee. We hear neither his words nor those of the council worker. The narration tells us that at this meeting Mr Shimizu is trying to ﬁnd out how when he might be able to have his house safely pulled down and try to rescue what he can of the family’s possessions. Reverse shot showing the back of the council oﬀicial and Mr Shimizu’s face. This shot clariﬁes the spatial relationship between the two participants in the interaction. 2 3 4 5 Table 7.1: Sequence of ﬁve images leading to the use of a ‘sympathetic’ VCU of a victim of circumstance. Source: ‘Quake Family Week’, NHK Ohay¯ Nippon, 23 July 07 o at the time of the quake. We do know that they have two daughters, one of whom lives in Kanagawa and, we can assume from their presence in the same refuge centre, another who lives locally and has three young children. Given this lack of information and the absence of any visual cues which would allow a relatively ﬁrm judgement, the individuals portrayed in this story were left uncoded for status. However, while it is impossible to include them accurately in the framework of the coding system used, it is possible to classify them broadly as non-elite; they live(d) in a medium-sized house in Kashiwazaki City (pop. apx. 94,0003 ) in predominantly rural central Niigata Prefecture. 3 Source: Kashiwazaki City webpage: www.city.kashiwazaki.niigata.jp/webapps/common/about_ kashiwazaki.jsp - 12 May 09 6 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Local employment is largely in small-scale engineering and agriculture. As far as I have been able to ascertain, neither Mr nor Mrs Shimizu have ever been local councillors. All of which seems to suggest that they do not belong to any of the occupational categories, either at local or national level, that would assign them to the elite group. The VCU (image 4 of the sequence shown in table 7.1) is accompanied by the commentary: ‘Mr Shimizu, hopes to have his house pulled down and to retrieve his household goods as soon as possible’.4 This image brings us close to an individual in the process of deciding the future of his family’s home, this family are victims of an earthquake, they are about to lose their home through no fault of their own and Mr Shimizu must take a signiﬁcant part of the responsibility of ensuring they are cared for in this situation. The depiction here is motivated by the question ‘What is going on inside this man? What could his emotional state be?’ and, I would suggest, the hope of reading answers to those question from the close-up depiction of his facial expression, especially his eyes.5 In this instance this concern is motivated by sympathy, the image says, ‘Look at this man, imagine his state of mind, imagine what you would do in his position’. The relationship the image-makers are proposing between portrayed and viewer by means of this image is one of closeness through shared adversity, real on the part of the Shimizu family, and readily imaginable (given the destruction we have witnessed in the earlier part of the story) on the part of the viewer. The Shimizu family’s status as ‘earthquake victims’ could also be argued to have a special resonance in so seismically active a country as Japan. The majority of the Japanese population is resident in urban areas where potential damage from earthquakes is greatest, a survey of inhabitants of Tokyo and surroundings found that over three-quarters of respondents were either very or somewhat worried6 about the possibility of a large-scale urban earthquake similar to the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji event (Hirota et al. 1996:233). Use of this frame size here is a function of Mr Shimizu’s narrative role, as the ‘victim of natural disaster’ the makers of portray him to be, in the developing story though it is his traditional social role, as eldest male and ‘head of the family’, that puts him in the position he ﬁnds himself in. It should also be noted that the particular situation with which our sympathy is demanded is that which deals with the disposal of the material assets of the family, their home and its contents, and not, the more general emotional trauma of being made homeless by natural disaster: while the ‘disaster’ of the loss of material possessions might be seen as impinging more on the family’s breadwinner — he may well (though we do not know) have devoted his life to earning the money with which the house has been built and equipped, the shock of being made homeless is surely shared equally by all members of the family, and perhaps more acutely by those member of the family who spend more time in and around the home rather than at the workplace. 4 5 Original: Yuki et al (2007:309) suggest that Japanese may place a greater weighting on emotional cues in the eyes than North Americans, who pay more attention to the mouth region. 6 Original: or 7 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts 1 Food and Fisheries vice-minister Yamamoto Taku (pictured right) had been tape-recorded stating that his previous boss Matsuoka Toshikatsu (left), who committed suicide in May 2007 after becoming suspected of involvement in misuse of oﬀice expenses and rigging of bids for government contracts, also spent his oﬀice expenses on ‘ﬂowers’(hanadai ). A professional entertainer, pictured from behind talking to the programme’s female presenter, explains what ‘ﬂowers’ means in this particular context (the term hanadai, while the literal translation is ‘payment for ﬂowers’ is a fairly standard, if euphemistic, term for the money paid to a geisha). The vice-minister responds to press questions in what seems to be fairly informal surroundings, he is wearing no tie and does not appear to be in his oﬀice. Sound-bite: “A lie ? I don’t remember having lied but what I said, in itself, was inappropriate, it was open to misinterpretation, and I’d like to, if I might, be allowed to withdraw that statement”. The vice-minister’s wife is Takaichi Sanae, ‘Minister of State for Special Missions’ (Minister without Portfolio) and she has previously taken a hard line toward ministers and bureaucrats who have ‘spoken inappropriately’. They are pictured here together at their wedding. 2 3 4 5 Table 7.2: Sequence of ﬁve images including the use of a ‘suspicious’ VCU (No.4). Source: ‘Akagi Oﬀice Expenses’, NTV News Realtime, 23 July 07 This type of VCU can be seen in images 01, 02, 11, 12, 13, 15, 16 and 27 of ﬁg.7.1. The social actors portrayed in these images are all victims and are portrayed as exemplars of the vicissitudes of modern life in Japan. Mr Shimizu (image 01) has lost his home to an earthquake, Mr Yamada (02) may lose his state pension due to mistakes in the records civil servants have kept of his national insurance payments, similarly Ms Inagaki (15). Mr Okami (16) has lost his three children in a road accident. Other victims of natural circumstance, the discomfort, shared by the majority of viewers, accompanying the intense heat of summer in Japan, can be seen in images 11,12,13 and 27. On the basis of the type of data gathered in this study it is no possible to distinguish between these, what I have called ‘sympathetic’ uses of the VCU and those which I deal with in the next section. 8 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts 7.1.2 ‘Suspicious’ VCUs Alongside ‘victims’, another group of social actors subject to the VCU are those who have committed crimes or are suspected of committing crimes (as evidenced by their arrest or questioning by state organs connected with law enforcement) or of not being entirely forthright in their dealings (the suspicion here is on the part of the broadcaster). Griﬀiths, who employs the term XCU where I have preferred VCU, suggests, in his instructional work Videojournalism (1998:95); ‘[i]f your intention is to make somebody appear shifty and untrustworthy then by all means take an XCU’. The objects of suspicion in the two examples here are both politicians suspected of ﬁnancial impropriety, the commentaries that run alongside the images show the immediate informational context in which each of the images appears. The VCU in table 7.2 (image 4) coincides with vice-minister Yamamoto’s denial of having lied and with his use of the actual word ‘lie’ (uso), this denial comes across as rather tepid, and the implication seems to be that his statement is not to be taken at face value. The use of the VCU suggests that we need to look under the surface, beyond ‘face value’; if we could penetrate the outer appearance of the vice-minister, listen in on his inner thoughts rather than just to his words, then we might discover something diﬀerent, possibly ‘the truth’ of the matter. Image 4 of the sequence illustrated in ﬁg.7.3 shows another situation where the sincerity of the portrayed, in this case Environment Minister Kamoshita Ichir¯, is in doubt. The o image follows a sound-bite in which the minister explains how the ‘mistake’ which led to an eight million yen discrepancy between his personal and political accounts might have occurred — the underlying, and unstated, assumption throughout the story is that this ‘mistake’ may have been deliberate. This VCU again oﬀers a close-up view of his eyes and mouth, wherein, the implication seems to be, we may read the truth for ourselves. The close social distance implied by the VCU is the distance of ‘love-making and wrestling’ (Hall 1966:117), it contains the possibility of both intimate and aggressive physical contact. However we are not dealing here with interpersonal interaction but with mediated interaction of a very special type. The images of news can oﬀer the viewer an experience of a certain social distance from a portrayed which they would ordinarily not experience, however, there is a limit to how close television will let us get and to how often it oﬀers this sort of experience. The VCU seems to mark the boundary of what is knowable through the images and sound of television, together they the viewer as close as possible to the subject without seeming to come into physical contact. The VCU is most often of the subject’s eyes and mouth, it is by means of information drawn from observation of these two areas that we draw conclusions about the emotional state of other individuals. The VCU puts the viewer in a position where television leaves behind its ‘objective’ identity — this can only report ‘facts’ and if a government minister states in public that they have not lied, then, without calling him or her a liar, the fact of that statement remains — and, tacitly, says, ‘Look! Judge for yourself. The only information we can oﬀer what you can read 9 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts 1 Environment Minister Kamoshita Ichir¯, amidst mounting o criticism, emerges to speak to the press again after the explanation he gave in the morning of what seem to be rather suspect ﬁnancial dealings was deemed inadequate. This highangle shot allows the image-maker to show the large numbers of press, it was probably taken from the portable step-ladder many camera crews carry. This shot sets the scene for those that follow. Kamoshita explains a certain 8,000,000 yen discrepancy in his personal ﬁnancial dealings with the body that manages his political fund-raising as an ‘administrative slip’ and expresses his wish to be allowed to correct the necessary documents. As the camera closes in on him, Kamoshita explains that this discrepancy seems to be due to a book-keeping mistake. “It isn’t clear how the mistake occurred but it’s clearly down to administrative error.” Narration: “His conclusion was that it was down to an error ﬁlling in the form, explaining it as simply a slip of the pen”.( .) As Kamoshita waits to take another question from the assembled reporters, the shot widens to include his questioners. 2 3 4 5 Table 7.3: Sequence of ﬁve images including the use of a ‘suspicious’ VCU (No.4). Source: ‘Minister Kamoshita’, NTV News Zero, 5 Sept 2007 from this person’s face — you know as much as we do’. The VCU is therefore a location where the responsibility for the truth judgements made about ‘facts’ usually held by the news producers and news’ objectivity breaks down, there are no ‘facts’ to judge here, and the responsibility for making these judgements is handed to the viewer, emotion takes over. The audience placed in this position is left to rely on information, in the very broadest sense, it has from other sources, the experience of everyday life, other news stories, rumours and gossip, and common sense expectations of ‘how the world is’. Both of the aggressive VCUs shown here are of politicians who may have been ‘economical with the truth’ though also often portrayed in VCU are suspects in criminal cases and other suspected of being somehow involved in iniquitous activities. What seems to unite them is their ambivalent, actual or potential, relationship with ‘truth’; this ambivalent position is created by the individuals themselves, by politicians merely by being politicians (see 10 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts following paragraph) and by ‘suspects’ by becoming involved in a process, the legal process, which by its placing of participants under oath7 and through a speciﬁc sanction on perjury implies a rather more closely speciﬁed relationship between truth and the individuals involved than that found or expected in everyday interaction. Public trust in politics and politicians is traditionally low in Japan, a survey carried out by Asahi Shimbun in March 20098 asked respondents how much trust they placed in their politicians, 57 per cent answered ‘not much’ ( ) and 21 per cent ‘not at all’ ( ). Pharr suggests that although the exercise of power in a democracy is ‘inherently suspect’, suspicion may be even greater in countries with recent histories of ‘massive abuses of authority, like Japan, Germany and Italy’(Pharr 2002:847-8). But, while public trust for politicians is low, the need to be able to trust them is high. The power to aﬀect the everyday lives of viewers is not evenly distributed throughout society in Japan, or indeed any other country. There are the powerful and the powerless and all shades in-between. As has already been mentioned, television news is primarily concerned with the actions and behaviour of the powerful, and it is from these individuals, whose decisions at least have the potential to aﬀect the lives of every member of society, from whom we have the right to expect the same, if not a greater, degree of truthfulness than we would expect from those who surround us in our everyday dealings. It is far more important for viewers, as participants in the national political system, to be able to believe what, for example, the Minister of Finance, says on the matter of the state of the national economy, than it is for them to believe participants in neighbourhood gossip. 7.1.3 VCUs that aren’t Of the images presented in ﬁgure 7.1, there are two which illustrate the diﬀiculties already referred to (see section ??) of ﬁnding a consistent way to use the commonly accepted, anthropocentric framing terminology adopted in this study. Image 12 seems to show the side of a man’s face and includes part of his ear, mouth, chin and neck. What is not obvious from this still image is the ﬁlm of perspiration that covers all of the above. What is the ‘portrayed’ of this image? How is this ‘portrayed’ framed? The answer to the ﬁrst question dictates possible answers to the second. If we consider the portrayed in this case to be the human individual, part of whose perspiring person we are shown, then the image can be coded VCU. However, if we consider this an image of ‘perspiration’ then we would have to concede that actually it does not aﬀord us particularly close-up view and this is actually something akin to maybe a LS. 7 Rules of Civil Procedure. Article 112. Witnesses swear to ‘tell the truth according to the dictates of conscience, without hiding anything or adding anything’. Online: www.japaneselawtranslation.go.jp/law/detail_main?re=02&vm=&id=1846#en_ pt2ch3sc2at7 - 18 Aug 09 8 Online: http://www.asahi.com/special/08003/TKY200903170270.html - 16 Aug 09 11 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Similarly, we might question whether image 28 shows politician Akagi Norihiko in VCU, or an MS of the plaster which covers the mystery facial dekimono9 that caused such media speculation at the time. It was, in part, Akagi’s inability to deal appropriately with the media attention paid to this growth and with media questioning regarding his plaster that led to his resignation as minister on 1 August 2007.10 This latter case is somewhat involved and this particular image might be open to any of the interpretations I have mentioned. 1. Minister Akagi was a politician suspected of irregular ﬁnancial dealings and by that token a candidate for the ‘suspicious’ VCU. 2. He was also an obvious victim of illness due a share of sympathy. 3. The image-makers intention in capturing this image was neither to cast Akagi as the ‘shifty’ politician, nor as the ‘victim of illness’ but to obtain a clear image not of the man himself but of his much commented upon facial bandage. The co-occurrence of all three possible motivations for the use of a VCU seem to make it the ideal depiction in this case. In the two stories that covered Minister Akagi, four (16%) portrayals were in VCU, this is a high ratio when compared with the proportion of VCUs in the corpus as a whole (3%). 7.1.4 Summary Both the sympathetic and aggressive readings of the VCU are more or less in line with those derived from the notion that framing sizes act as a sort of proxy for social distance, however, an eﬀective assessment of the particular meaning of individual realisations of the VCU cannot be based solely on this formal characteristic. Without the injection of what contextual knowledge we have regarding the portrayed we, the viewers, cannot know whether the portrayal oﬀered us by television news is intended to be sympathetic or aggressive. What the VCU does seem to do consistently though is act as an oﬀer of, or prompt towards, a direct relationship between viewer and object. This is a relation based on an emotional response conditioned by contextual knowledge rather than factual knowledge of the circumstances of the particular story. The decision to make this oﬀer is made by the image-maker and not the viewer, the image-maker must therefore be accountable for its implications. And it might well be argued that this judgement is based, not on the facts with which the news media claim to deal but on assumptions on the part of the broadcaster, and their agents the camera-operators and video editors; the personnel of the television company which produced and broadcast these images have, at the time of broadcast, no ﬁrm evidence to back up their readings of these situations, all they have is ‘common-sense’ and experience. 9 10 A general term for some sort of unidentiﬁed growth, tumour, boil, abscess, ulcer, rash or pimple. Resignation Statement on Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries website: www.kanbou.maff. go.jp/kouhou/daijin/070801daijin.htm - 29 Jun 09 12 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts In a case such as that of Minister Kamoshita, in his portrayal on News Zero on 5th Sept 2007, television image producers, can, I think legitimately, be accused of blurring the boundary between objective reporting of the facts (coverage of Kamoshita’s press conference and relay of his words) and comment on those facts (the decision to cast doubt on his statements by means of the VCU). At the time the image is captured, the news producers have no evidence regarding the truth of either the allegations or of the minister’s response to them, all they know is that the allegations have been made and that the minister has oﬀered an explanation. However, the decision to portray him in VCU as he oﬀers his explanation seems to be based on the fact that he is a politician and all politician’s are potentially corrupt and untrustworthy. But, given the ‘venal, opportunistic and self-serving’(Stockwin 2005:62) politicians Japan is typically blessed with, this state of immediate suspicion seems to be a natural response. It should also be noted that the images here perhaps do what the words and questions of the reporters cannot. They imply distrust, seeming to say, ‘We don’t believe you, we think you’re hiding something’ — I suspect that, given the nature of the relationship between journalist in source in Japan (see sections ?? and ??), for such a blunt statement to issue from the mouth of a reporter would be seen as akin to an attempt at professional suicide, whereas, the far less direct ‘visual comment’, perhaps in many cases perceived only ﬂeetingly, can pass safely. 7.2 Case Study 2: Interpretation of Vertical Camera Angles This study, through the coding process, has resulted in a collection of images which can be viewed, if we accept the notion that image features are semiotic resources, as realisations on the material plane of the meanings intended by the producers. However we have also seen that in interpreting texts we must acknowledge the fact that they are the result of what social semiotics calls ‘regimes of production’ which take into account the real processes and circumstances of the creation of the text. So, to what degree can we interpret images as the realisations of semiotic resources by communication-oriented individuals or bodies and what is the extent of the inﬂuence of the physical circumstances and process of creation? The following section looks brieﬂy at all the images found in the texts of the corpus which made use of the very-low vertical camera angle. As can be seen from the bottom row of images of ﬁg.7.2 I have included here images which do not portray human social actors, these are mentioned speciﬁcally in section 7.2.1. 7.2.1 Vertical Camera Angle and ‘power’ As outlined in chapters 2 and 3, literature on the implications of camera angles has tended to suggest a fairly straightforward connection with the use of the low-angle shot with a desire on the part of the image-maker to portray the object as, in some sense, imbued with ‘power’. But, as ﬁlm theorist David Bordwell points out, it is far from being the case that ‘framing from a low angle “says” that a character is powerful and 13 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Figure 7.2: The 25 cuts which used a very low camera angle. that framing from a high angle presents him or her as dwarfed and defeated’(Bordwell and Thompson 1993:213) as an absolute rule. Nevertheless, these two types of framing are still generally considered, if we look at the evidence of works with an instructional bent, produced for image-makers and image-consumers, to be semiotic resources suitable for expression of these ideas.11 Low-angle shots and the ‘empowerment’ of the portrayed The images shown in ﬁg.7.2 illustrate the diversity of images found in the corpus and hint at the diversity of motivations behind the camera operators decision to portray the subject from the chosen angle. These images can be divided into three broad groups based on a consideration of various aspects of the actual circumstances within which the image was created; Positional Motivation Images of objects or people where the camera operator is unable, because of the limitations of time and physical surroundings, to be on the same 11 Section ?? reviewed theory on this matter. 14 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts level as the object. For example, image 1 in ﬁg.7.2 which shows a swimming pool lifeguard in an elevated chair, or images 11–13 which show a young girl, deeply worried by the recent earthquake, at the top of the stairs of the family home after getting out of bed to seek reassurance from her mother. Image 7 shows the leader of the Komeito political party, Ota Hiroaki, addressing a crowd of supporters from the top of a campaign bus. As is often the case in Japanese political campaigning, the vehicle used is fairly small and there would be little room for a camera operator as well as the candidate even if permission to shoot from the roof of the bus could be gained from the Komeito organisers, thus the pictures are from ground-level.12 Relational Motivation These images attempt to illustrate not the objects or social actors portrayed but concentrate on the relationship between them. Thus we have several shots (2, 3, 15 & 19) which show ‘people under the sun’, that is ordinary people suﬀering the eﬀects of very hot summer weather. In these images it is not the sky or the sun that is the object of interest, nor is it the passers-by as individual, it is the shared condition of being human in temperatures of 40 degrees and more. A related image is number 18, this shows the relationship between a group of tourists, waiting in the sweltering summer heat in the town hall of Miyazaki Prefecture in the south of Japan to catch a glimpse of celebrity mayor Higashikokubaru Hideo, with the small fan placed on the ﬂoor in the foyer of the building. The fan is signiﬁcant in this instance as it symbolises the money-saving activities of Higashikokubaru’s administration who have decided to turn oﬀ the building’s airconditioning despite the high temperatures. Image 5 shows (or purports to show) the moment electricity is restored to a family home after being cut oﬀ in the wake of an earthquake. The return of power is illustrated by the family gathering in the the home’s main room for mother to switch the light, on the ceiling, on. The important elements here can be seen to be the family, including the children and the illuminated electric light ﬁtting. Perhaps if the home had been lit by table-lamps the image producer would have portrayed the scene diﬀerently. Technical Motivation Image 23 shows the exterior sign-board of a post-oﬀice. The signboard is considerably taller than it is broad and very diﬀerent in shape to the 4:3 camera frame. The image producer here has found a way of reconciling the two shapes by means of foreshortening. Placing the camera lens near the base of the sign allows the camera-operator to create a framing which includes the whole of the sign. However, it should be noted that in this case alternatives exist; 12 Of course, not knowing the details of the shoot we cannot know whether there was a conscious decision to prefer a ground-level view to an available alternative or whether this position was the only one accessible. 15 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts 1. the image-maker could have chosen a tilt (a vertical camera move) that took in all of the signboard, or 2. the image-maker could have moved away from the sign-board allowing it to ﬁt within the frame of a stationary shot. The decision to prefer the low-angle shot was taken by the camera operator and only he/she can know why it was made. It seems not unreasonable to apportion a degree of inﬂuence to the attitude of the story in which it appears. This story is critical of the Japanese Post Oﬀice for spending tax-money on internal publications which, the story argues, no-one reads and are thus a waste of resources. The Post Oﬀice is portrayed as a threatening presence gobbling up tax-yen for its own private purposes, it may have been a desire to hint at this sense of threat that motivated the camera-operator to prefer this way of shooting the sign to the alternatives. Most of the low-angle shots we come across in news are in some part under the inﬂuence one or more of the motivations above, but there are some examples in the corpus (including possible the image of the Post Oﬀice signboard just mentioned) where the conventional association of low-camera angle with subject empowerment might be posited as being a factor. However, these images are in the minority. Image 6 shows a senior politician, Ota Akihiro of the Komeito (Clean Government Party) shaking hands with supporters at an outdoor rally. Why has the camera operator chosen to capture this particular image? We might put it down to the fact that the individual portrayed is a powerful politician and the image-maker is choosing, through the choice to mobilise the semiotic resource of the low camera angle, to make him seem more imposing. However, looking at the whole 3.9 seconds duration of the image, it seems more likely that this was an attempt to foreground the hand-shaking between Ota and the crowd, putting the camera below the level of the outstretched hands to include them in the image along with Ota.13 Nevertheless, we are left with the fact that the image, whatever the motivation which led to its creation in this particular form, was chosen for use in the ﬁnal broadcast version of the story. That it was not rejected because of its potential semiotic content — the implication of a relationship of power-subordination between powerful portrayed (politician) and subjected viewer (voter) — can be seen as either indicating an insensitivity to, or lack of understanding of this potential meaning of the image, or, a collective acknowledgement that this image, with all its semiotic implications, is appropriate in this context. This story consists of 28 cuts, 21 of these cuts portray Mr Ota who is on screen for 3:12 of the total 3:52 duration of the story. Such prominence given to a single individual, along with the fact that we are told he is leader of a political party, would seem to make the relatively weak visual communication of one image shot from a low-angle 13 One of the camera operators interviewed in Tuchman (1973:8) criticises what sounds from the description to be a similar low-angle shot of US politician Adlai Stevenson as the camera operator has emphasised the hand-shaking at the expense a clear view of the individual’s face. 16 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts almost superﬂuous. During the course of the story he is portrayed from a high or very high angle six times and from a low or very low angle three times. If we attribute to these cuts their conventional semiotic reading we should conclude that Ota is portrayed overall as being in a rather less powerful position as regards the viewer. As a politician, a ‘public servant’ we could indeed argue that this is an accurate reﬂection of his actual position, however the mere fact of the duration of his exposure seems to argue in the other direction. It can be seen that the various portrayals shown in the story, if given their traditional semiotic interpretations, do not add up to a consistent statement about the individual portrayed, and it is diﬀicult to conclude that the images ‘tell’ us anything about him. Image 8 which shows a young woman handing out promotional packs of tissues. The event she is promoting is the sale of tickets for the yearly ‘Summer Jumbo’ lottery. Similar motivations to those mentioned above, the foregrounding of the action of the hands, the association of the lottery with the sunny skies and high temperatures of summer, seem to be behind this image. This is more an image which attempts an economical depiction of an action, the handing out of packs of tissues, in a situational context meaningful to the audience, than a portrayal of a unique social actor. We are then left with images 14, a doctor wearing a blue uniform, and 20, sumowrestler Asashoryu walking through an airport. The doctor, who is interviewed during the course of the story, is portrayed in typical interview shot (MCU, camera at eye-level, half-proﬁle), it is only this cut, over which the narrator introduces him as a doctor with ‘twenty years experience in emergency medicine’ in order to validate the conjectures he is about to be shown making. Perhaps the camera operator intended to contribute to this validation of the portrayed individual as an ‘authority’ by creating this image. If this is the case then we might be able to point to this image as an example of the use of the low angle shot as an indicator of authority; there is, in this case, to be no other particular motivation for the choice of this angle, there seems to be no particular merit in including more of the ceiling of the consultation room in the shot, the doctor’s immobile hands are of no particular interest in this shot, the camera operator is not trying calling out attention to a particular spatial relationship, the low angle does not aﬀord a better view of the doctor’s face and he is seated at the same level as the camera operator and reporter. Even if the motivation was mere playfulness on the part of the camera operator or the desire to capture a ‘diﬀerent’ image to those which typically make up the standard interview, we must acknowledge the fact that he or she chose a low angle over any other type of shot and that this was again chosen (in preference to what we do not know, not having the original camera recording available) by the editor as a suitable image to go with the narration. It would be going too far to say that the camera operator and editor pro-actively chose to mobilise the semiotic resource of the low angle ‘empowering’ shot to portray the doctor (who is also deputy section-chief (fuku-bucho ) at a medical school and thus has considerable social status), but the image’s appearance in the story as broadcast indicates that it was allowed to pass through the various gatekeepers who ﬁlter news content and was deemed at every stage appropriate, or at least, not inappropriate. 17 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Figure 7.3: House and apartment doors connected with crime Low-angle shots and non-human images In this short section I look brieﬂy at two uses of low angle shots regularly used in the portrayal of certain inanimate objects. This is admittedly a departure from my focus on the portrayals of human social actors but, as I will show, these sorts of images begin to approach a repeatable form that can be identiﬁed as a typical feature of stories of a particular type. ‘Crime Doors’ A speciﬁc and consistent use of the very low angle portrayals is as an indicator of some connection of a home or other building with crime or behaviour which has or may have violated law or social mores. The three images in ﬁgure 7.3 are taken from stories which deal with (1) a multiple murder, (2) child abuse and shoplifting and (3) another murder. The doors portrayed are the family homes of those involved in the various crimes, either those of the victims or of the alleged perpetrator, or in the case of the ﬁrst story which covered the arrest of a mother suspected of involvement in the suspicious deaths of three of her own children, both. As can be seen they all choose to portray the door in question from a low angle, giving a very diﬀerent view to the one an adult observer would be used to. The regular depiction of doors in this way, they are almost a visual clich´, might be e attributable to two very diﬀerent factors. First we take into account the shape that doors take, they tend to be the correct shape for an adult human to pass through standing up, that is, tall and thin, or for the double doors common in Japan, roughly square. A television screen on the other hand is, relatively speaking, short and broad. The lowangle shot may be an attempt to include as much of the door in one shot by making use of the visual foreshortening that occurs when we view an object from near one of its extremities. However, a look at the images presented in ﬁgure 7.3 suggests that this is not the reason: if the camera operator had wanted an image of the whole door, why not take a few steps back? why not move to the side? An interpretation in line with the conventional wisdom of semiotic theory seems to be valid in the case of ‘crime doors’. The viewer is placed in a position of powerlessness, with regards to not just this crime, but to the social fact of crime. However, whether the decision to create such images is the result of speciﬁc training, of an unconscious mimicking of previous images of crime-scene doors, a conscious desire on the part of the image-maker to create an image of ‘fear’, or the desire to emphasise danger and heighten 18 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Figure 7.4: Oﬀicial buildings’ windows as proxy actors the frisson in coming close to it, it is impossible to say from the data this study has access to. Doors act simultaneously as both a defence against the unknown contained within and as a possible connection with that unknown. Were the door to be opened we would catch a glimpse of what we might suspect, but do not know, has happened, but we would also prefer the crime the room has (or may have) contained to remain safely within. Jobes (1961:463), whose interpretations are derived from art historical tradition rather than empirical study, suggests that the door is used as a symbol of defence, protection and revelation, also as a barrier and marker of secrets and separation.14 ‘Oﬀicial Windows’ Oﬀicial statements, actions and decisions reported by news media may be attributed not to individual speakers but more generally to the bodies or organisations which issue them. For example, a story about the overseas trial of a Briton might be attributed to ‘the Foreign Oﬀice’, the announcement of a possible change in policy might be preﬁxed by the words ‘ ministry sources revealed’. Where the source of information is a body rather than an individual it is not uncommon for images of the oﬀicial seat of that body to be used as a visual proxy for the individual bureaucrat, spokesperson or press-oﬀicer who may actually have been the source of the information. This practise is certainly familiar to viewers of television in the UK as well and is not particularly noteworthy in itself. However, what interest me here is the low angle depiction chosen by the image-makers in a number of the instances of this kind of image found in the corpus (ﬁg.7.4). Each of the buildings depicted here has windows on its ground ﬂoor, images of which would have been still have been adequate images of the windows of the building in question. Instead, the choice has been made to prefer images of windows higher up the building, thus increasing the amount of looking up we, as viewers, have to do. This also has the eﬀect of increasing the feeling of physical separation between viewer, stuck on the ground, and those who occupy the spaces hinted at by the windows. I would argue this may contribute to an exaggerated impression of the loftiness of oﬀicialdom, whether we attribute this to a media critical of the power of the bureaucracy who therefore create images which place the viewer in a position similar to the one they adopt, or a desire to reﬂect accurately the considerable inﬂuence of bureaucrats in Japanese society. 14 Similar interpretations can be found in de Vries (1974) and Leach (1972). 19 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts 7.2.2 High-angle shots: visual access The primary motivation behind the use of high-angle shots, rather than to express any relationship of power or subjection seems to be the fact that a higher viewpoint gives a broader view of an area. As can be seen in the images shown in ﬁgure7.5, the primary subject matter is ‘crowds’ and ‘groups’. These images show; 1. a group of trawler workers loading a catch 2. a crowd of rescue workers and onlookers attempting to rescue an earthquake victim 3. a team of demolition workers pulling down the remains of a quake-damaged property 4. Komeito leader Ota Akihiro surrounded by helpers and voters 5. a group of policemen searching for evidence near the scene of a murder (taken from a helicopter) 6. a retired man discussing his pension with local government adviser 7. members of a committee dealing with pension record problems entering a meeting hall 8. shoppers inside a large hall 9. a temp-agency ‘whistle-blower’ The angle chosen by the image-maker in these scenes (ﬁg.7.5) has very little to do with the desire to show the portrayed actors as being somehow powerless or in a position of subordination and everything to do with getting a good ‘overview’ of a scene which plays out on the ﬂat, providing an adequate and economical visual description of the physical space within which the portrayed events or actions are taking place. This view is supported by framing data drawn from the corpus, 70 per cent of the very high-angle images are also in VLS (very long shot) or LS (long shot), for eye-level depictions the proportion is much lower at just 16 per cent (see ﬁg.7.6). While counts for very highangle shots (n=10) are too low to allow categorical statements on the matter, the corpus data does oﬀer some support for the argument that the very high angle shot, which is, as often as not, a wide or very wide shot, is used primarily as a way of conveniently capturing and depicting the scale of events occurring on a fairly wide stage rather than as a semiotic resource expressing, or putting forward, the image-maker’s view of the power relationship which should obtain between the portrayed and the image-maker or audience. This can be seen as an attempt on the part of the image-maker to avoid dissonance between image and narration. Such dissonance can have an eﬀect on audience understanding(Grimes 1991). If, for example, the news report is of a political rally which, accurately or not the commentary tells us, that ten thousand people attended and the image-maker brings back a selection of images from the rally shot from in front of the crowd and thus showing just the front ‘layer’ of participants, this would lead us to question the accuracy of the reported ﬁgures. If ten thousand people attended why not 20 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Figure 7.5: Nine of the ten very high-angle shots found in the corpus. show them? Why show just 150? The most convincing shot the image-maker could bring back, that shot most consonant with the claims of the commentary, would be that which showed, in an instant, every one of the ten thousand reported attendees; such an image cannot be taken from eye level unless the event takes place in an amphitheatre or other space speciﬁcally designed to create an eye-line between a given point and a large number of viewers/objects. The simplest strategy in the absence of the above is for the image-maker to seek some raised vantage point from which such a view can be obtained. Some distinction must be made between high-angle wide shots, which can be considered semiotically innocuous in the sense that they are, I would argue, not the result of an intention to depict power relations but to depict scale, and high-angle shots at tighter framing sizes, which may well have a diﬀerent intent. If we accept the coincidence of high camera angle with the need to produce an image of broad visual scope, then, of the images presented in ﬁg.7.5, only images 6 and 9 seem to be in need of further consideration. Image 6 shows an elderly man in conversation with a local government pension adviser, between them on the desk can be seen a small paper sign which tells us the exact role of the adviser on the right of the image. The shot in its entirety is a zoom-out which 21 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts 100 80 60 % 40 20 v.low low high eye-level v.high 0 MS+MLS VCU+CU+MCU LS+VLS Figure 7.6: Distribution of framing sizes by vertical camera angle starts on a close-up of this sign and rapidly widens to show the scene depicted here. The motivation for this shot therefore seems to be rather the wish to make the image as informative as possible by including the written information of the sign, possibly only clearly visible to the camera from this unusual angle. Image 9 is unusual in that its intention is to prove the existence of the individual portrayed without identifying them. This image is taken from a 3:22 story concerning the activities of the Goodwill temp agency. In Japan, these agencies are limited in which types of employment they can oﬀer to those who register with them, prohibited areas of work include ‘security’(g¯doman) and construction. In 2006 Goodwill were discovered to a have provided people for this type of work and were found to have engaged in the illegal practise of ‘double dispatch’ where temporary workers are sent to a subcontracting temp agency which then dispatches them on. Goodwill Group’s labour and staﬀing agency arm ceased to exist in July 2008 after its business licence was revoked by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.15 The individual portrayed throughout this story is a Goodwill employee, we are shown part of his business card (meishi ) and the camera focuses on his company badge repeatedly, speaking about Goodwill’s illegal activities in the branch oﬀices he manages. The shot shown in ﬁg.7.5(Image 9) looks downward, into his lap where his hands rest, from over his left shoulder. It may seem facile to suggest this but I would argue that the most likely reason for the particular from this image takes is that the camera operator had run out of other options and was trying to keep the interview visually interesting. This cut occurs toward the end of the piece at a point where the more natural shots have already been taken. In the ‘normal’ interview where the speaker is shown speaking, the camera operator has little choice but to maintain a fairly steady shot of the speaker’s face; in this situation, this is exactly what is prohibited and some alternative yet meaningful 15 The Japan Times, ‘Goodwill pulls plug on temp agency’, 1 Aug 2008. Online: search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20080801a5.html - 4 Jul 2009 22 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts image must be created. A man seated in a semi-darkened room wearing a dark suit and white shirt presents little in the way of grist for the creative mill and this particular image creator seems to have chosen to vary the position and angle of the camera as a surrogate for what we normally expect to see, the changing expressions and attitude of the speaker. 7.2.3 Summary In very few of the very high or low angle images found in the corpus does an interpretation based solely on the supposedly ‘subordinating’ or ‘empowering’ nature of these shots seem appropriate, given what we know of the circumstances of production. The images which make use of these ‘semiotic resources’ would be, in the majority of cases, diﬀicult to account for in terms of any intention on the part of the image-maker to communicate the meaning which can be inferred. For the purposes of this study the evidence we have to draw on is the texts themselves and conclusions cannot be based on what may have been going through the mind of the image-maker or how a viewer might read the image, the only way forward is to survey the images as used, identify consistencies and suggest explanations for the patterns of use identiﬁed. Variations in vertical camera angle can be seen to be more connected to the image-makers desire to provide a succinct depiction of a given object or relationship of a certain size or scope, whether this a politician on a ‘meet and greet’ or a crowd of demonstrators. If the ﬂow of images of television news is to be viewed as a form of communication then it must also be admitted that this stream of information is heavily motivated by ideational considerations and a need for parsimony of realisation. Any interpersonal meanings, any assessments or evaluations of relationship between the portrayed and the viewer seem to be very secondary. 7.3 Case Study 3: A functional view of camera movements As chapter 6 (section ??) made clear, the televisual image, in this study taken as equivalent with the cut, is in many cases not a single, stable image but a dynamic depiction which can continually alter the view an audience member has of the object portrayed. The most common dynamic image is the ‘zoom’ which, rather than being an adjustment of the spatial relationship between the camera and the object is actually a reconﬁguration of optical elements within the camera lens which magniﬁes a portion of the ﬁeld of view, giving the impression of drawing nearer. Almost as common was the pan, a rotation of the camera around the vertical axis. The zoom is often of minimal scope and is used to make ﬁne adjustments to the framing of an image rendering it an ‘acceptable’ or ‘comfortable’ size — avoiding the kinds of virtual dismemberment mentioned in chapter 3 (section ??) — as much as it is to draw attention to details of the portrayed scene by enlarging them. These sort of adjustment zooms can be easily accomplished, merely requiring the camera operator to apply pressure to the control mounted on the camera lens. The pan however can generally seen to be more purposeful and premeditated, it 23 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts requires the camera operator, in many cases, to identify a situation in which a pan can be taken and to set up equipment appropriately, it may take several attempts before a smooth motion starting and ending in exactly the desired positions can be achieved. Pans are therefore both common and the result of a conscious decision making process on the part of the image-maker. They thus oﬀer a useful opportunity to consider alternative categorisations of the dynamic image informed by a functional perspective rather than the purely formal understanding typical in nearly all studies of visuals, including this one. Instead of asking ‘what is this an image of?’, as many traditional content analyses of television images do, or ‘what are the pictorial features of this image?’ as I have asked here, one could also usefully ask ‘what is this image for? what does it do?’ Answers to this last question could prove invaluable in analysing images, like those of television news, which are industrial products and whose function as communication is in doubt. If, as has been suggested, television visuals can be seen as merely ‘wallpaper’(Crigler et al. 1994), then arriving at an answer to the question ‘what are they there for?’ becomes critical in according them any place in a system of visual communication. Unless we can advance a strong argument in support of the communicative function of the television image then the enterprise embodied in the notion of ‘visual grammar’ will have to admit that some of the most widely consumed images in the world, those of television news, are beyond its ambit. 7.3.1 Pans and directionality Before moving on to my proposed functional classiﬁcation of pans I would like to deal with them in reference to my discussion of directionality (section ??, p.??). The data provides further support for my argument that care must be exercised when considering the left/right-ness of image composition as a semiotic feature. Perhaps surprisingly, there was an imbalance in the direction of pans. Of the 283 cuts coded as pans, right-ward motion was found in 58 per cent and left-ward in just 42 per cent. Given that the creation of a panning shot has to be, in the overwhelming majority of cases, a conscious action, this would seem to imply a preference amongst image-makers for right-ward over left-ward motion. This short section attempts to account for this and makes brief suggestions for further research. There are a number of possible reasons for this phenomena; 1. Physical / Technological The camera and its operator are habitually arranged in a asymmetric manner; while the operator is, in general and allowing for handedness, largely symmetrical, the camera is not. ENG cameras, and the peripheral equipment that goes with them, tripods etc., are mass-produced apparatuses designed with the right-handed operator in mind. In order to achieve the smooth and stable motion desirable for a pan, camera operators generally make use of a tripod when shooting a pan. When the camera is mounted on the tripod, as opposed to being carried on the shoulder, the operator will typically use the right hand to grasp the tripod’s pan bar and will move hand, arm and body in a coordinated manner to produce the panning motion. 24 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Does this asymmetry of operation result in the asymmetry we see in these results? A comparison could be made between pans which are obviously tripod mounted and those which are not. However, while eliminating the inﬂuence of the tripod technology it would not be able account for the asymmetry in the actual camera itself. 2. Object-driven There may be something about the portrayed object, scene or actions that necessitates a motion in a certain direction. Some objects, books and other documents, certain spaces across which individuals transit, for example roads, may possess an inherent directionality which the image producer is, in some degree and if wishing to be ‘understood’ and not produce strange or ‘unnatural’ images, bound to partake of. 3. Semantic As mentioned in section ?? it is possible to argue for a theoretical distinction between leftward and rightward motions which goes beyond simple leftand right-ness. If we, for the time being, accept the proposal that the semantic implications of left and right are linked to reading direction and to progression in time, we might argue that a predominance of rightward over leftward motion is equivalent to the predominance of progression in time over regression. That news images, so intimately entwined with the presentation of ‘reality’ should prefer the ‘natural’ ﬂow of time from past to future, from left to right, should come as little surprise. However, as I have argued, the notion of this equivalence does not seem to hold up in an entirely consistent way in Japan. A study of the inbuilt directionality of cultural objects is beyond the scope of this study but if account is to be made of the tendency to prefer right-pans in the corpus, the possibility has to be admitted and noted. A comparison of the directionality of pans in television news in Japan and another country may have been useful here as it would have allowed us to control for the inﬂuence of the material forms of television technology which is more or less standardised across the globe, the majority of television news ENG equipment is the product of one of four Japanese companies, Sony, Panasonic, Ikegami or Hitachi(Abramson 2003). If directionality is to be treated as a signiﬁcant features in the process of visual semiosis, then the kinds of inﬂuences I have suggested in (1) and (2) above have to be controlled for in order to arrive at a position where comment on (3) is possible. A study which fails to do so risks conﬂating inbuilt ‘passive’ biases in technology with purposeful ‘active’ human meaning-making activity. 7.3.2 A functional classiﬁcation of pans This study, following other similar work in this ﬁeld, made the decision to code the objective aspects of news images largely according to their most obvious and accessible ‘physical’ (for want of a better term) traits. In retrospect a coding system which allowed 25 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts a ﬁner and more nuanced recording of not just these physical traits but also their possible expressive or communicative functions may have been more fruitful. Merely recording the presence of a certain physical type of camera move is insuﬀicient and a typology of motions (based on the assumption that the design features of an expressive system reﬂect the uses it is put to (Thompson 2004:7)) is necessary if we are to close the gap between the form which embodies that which is expressed and what is meant, between what social semiotics refers to as the mimetic and semiotic planes(Hodge and Kress 1988:262). If we assume that the visuals aspect of television news is a communicative system and is intended to not merely provide vaguely relevant illustrations of what the narration talks about but is also capable of engaging in semiosis, then we should ask what do the forms that have evolved in this system look like, a description of elements of the system, but also, given that they have taken on the forms they have in order to perform some role within the system, what is that role? Images in this study have been viewed as elements on the mimetic plane to be described, what follows is a somewhat speculative and regrettably minimal ﬁrst step toward a proposal for a categorisation of images on the basis of their function within the communicative system of television news. An example of how this might work is the following typology of ‘pans’ based on this functional perspective.16 The element of the system we identify with the term ‘pan’, a term which describes its mimetic form, is employed in a number of diﬀering functions. They can be usefully classiﬁed thus; Maintaining The movement of the maintaining pan takes place in an attempt to keep its object within the ﬁeld of vision. It is thus concerned, rather than with change, with the maintenance of an initial state of aﬀair in the face of changing circumstances. Expanding Moves in order to expand the scope of the image to include more of the object. Relational Employs movement in order to show the spatial relationship between two or more separate objects. What is generally being depicted here is not the objects themselves, though they do have to be recognisable, but the relationship between them and the space they deﬁne. Animating Movement here is ‘added’ by the image-maker to compensate for what might otherwise be a ‘boring’ image, often of an inanimate object. Individual manifestations of the pan can perform more than one function simultaneously. 16 The impetus for this section came initially from a reading of Halliday’s work on clause complexes (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004:Ch7) 26 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Figure 7.7: An example of a maintaining pan. The movement of the camera, here right to left, is the result of the camera operators attempt to keep the object of interest, in this case sumo wrestler Asashoryu as he passes through an airport. Maintaining The ‘maintaining pan’ is functionally opposed to its material expression; its function being to maintain in the ﬁeld of vision, preferably carefully framed and centred, the object of interest; it is the motion of this latter that necessitates the camera move, thus its motivation lies with the object rather than with the image producer. Nevertheless the image producer has a degree of input through their decision to not allow the object to move out of frame and be lost to sight. Thus while the image producer is responsible for identifying, picking out and deciding to follow the object, the actual motion we see is a result of the motion of the object itself. (See ﬁg.7.7) Expanding The term pan is an abbreviation of ‘panorama’, derived from Greek words for ‘all’ or ‘complete’ (pan) and ‘view’ (horama). It was coined in the late 18th century by painter Robert Barker (1739-1806) to refer to his large scale ‘panoramic’ works, painted on the interior wall of a rotunda which surrounded the viewer and gave an impression, when viewed from the centre of the room, of actually being immersed in the portrayed landscape.17 The panorama was originally intended for landscapes too grand to be taken in by the single rectangular canvas. Similarly, the ‘expanding pan’ is ultimately a result of the same technical limitation on image production and reproduction. Some ‘things’ are too big to ﬁt in a single stationary shot, landscapes being the obvious example. The ‘expanding pan’ is one attempt at a solution to this problem, instead of showing the whole ‘thing’, we start with a view of a portion of it, then, the extents of our knowledge of the object is then expanded by the camera showing us more of it until we have a full picture. In this type of pan the object must be identiﬁed by the image producer and the starting and ending points of the shot made to align with these extents. (See ﬁg.7.8 for an example) 17 The University of Edinburgh’s website includes a virtual reproduction of one of Barker’s panoramic works; www.objectlessons.lib.ed.ac.uk/barker.htm-14 Oct 08 27 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Figure 7.8: An example of an expanding pan. The movement of the camera, in this case from right to left, expands what we can see of the landscape presented. The movement of the expanding pan is thus motivated by the scale of the object and a desire on the part of the image-maker to show the viewer more of it than will ﬁt one frame. The object itself ‘does’ nothing (apart from existing) to inﬂuence the motion that ends up on screen, a landscape has no particular preference for being panned over from left to right or vice-versa, this decision is the image-maker’s. Relational The ‘relational pan’ is concerned as much with the objects its identiﬁes as the relationship between them, the latter is the motivation for such a pan. Figure7.9 shows a sequence of 15 frames from a 2-second ‘relational pan’ taken from a story about the department-store sale occasioned by the victory of the Yomiuri Giants baseball team in the 2006 season. In the ﬁrst frame (top-left) the reporter gestures to the Isetan department store in the distance, then the camera circles around him to reveal that he is standing near the entrance of a Mitsukoshi department store. An understanding of the presented story is essential to understanding the import of this cut. Department stores in Japan traditionally have held celebratory sales when baseball teams to which they have allegiances have won major competitions. The question of which stores were to celebrate which team’s victories was complicated by realignments in the department store sector in Japan which started in the early years of the twenty-ﬁrst century and in 2006 had included the announcement that Mitsukoshi and Isetan were to integrate operations, eﬀectively merge, in Spring 2007. From 2007 the two stores would cease to 28 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Figure 7.9: An example of a relational pan. What is important in this series of images is not the objects that are portrayed but the illustration if their physical proximity. be competitors and become part of the same group though their actual stores would retain separate identities. This led to the question of what to do in cases where stores were in close proximity to each other and situations where a victory sale at one outlet might take business away from another close by. This story is about how the newly realigned department stores intended to deal with the problem. Thus the ‘relational pan’ is utilised here not to show a Mitsukoshi store or an Isetan store but to illustrate the spatial relationship between their positions on this particular high street. The panning motion here functions to relate two, or more, objects in space, the relationship between which has been identiﬁed as signiﬁcant by the creators of the story. Animating There are also cases very similar to the expanding pan where a motion, intended to gradually reveal the entirety of an object, is not dictated solely by the scale of the object. Occasionally an image-maker may pan across an object, which could easily ﬁt within a single stable shot, simply to add motion. Figure 7.10 shows one image from a cut during which the camera pans slowly over a digital recorder the audio from which we hear as part of the story narration. The recorder is very small and could easily have been shown in a non-moving shot but the camera-operator Figure 7.10: The ﬁrst frame of has chosen, in this image and the zoom-in which precedes a cut which pans slowly over it, to create dynamic images. However, it is also entirely the extent of a stationary diginanimate and oﬀers little to satisfy television’s appetite ital recorder. for movement. 29 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts Still photographs used in news broadcasts are often treated in this way. The corpus contains a number uses of still images such as family snapshots, police photo-ﬁts, and courtroom sketches which have been dynamicised in this way. The expanding and relational pans are similar in terms of where the motivation for the camera movement originates, in both cases the decision to create a pan and the direction of the motion are decided by the image-maker, however, the intent is diﬀerent: the former are used to show scale or extent – are in some sense equivalent to an verbal exclamation such as ‘Look how much!’ or ‘Look how many!’ —and the latter to show spatial relationships between objects. If we consider the images we see on television to be the product of a broadcasting organisations engagement with the real world and the depictions relayed to us to be inﬂuenced by the factors typically assumed to be in play during the production of news (see chapter 5) then the maintaining pan is better considered a standard, non-dynamic image. Movement is imposed on the picture by circumstances, rather than chosen and created by the image-maker, and is a fallback when a steady image of the object is impossible to capture, usually because the object will not remain still. The camera motion is in a sense involuntary. As pointed out previously, these types cannot be considered exclusive and there are instances which combine any number of them: for instance, when a reporter moves across a landscape or background scene while talking to the camera, the image can be seen to be both maintaining, keeping the reporter in view, and expanding (or relational), illustrating the scope of whatever the reporter is standing in front of or the relationship between the various objects of the image. 7.3.3 Summary The question ‘what is this image an image of?’ is unanswerable in any objective way, what we perceive in an image, what we attach importance to and choose to pick out in a verbal description is dependent on who we are. No two recodings of a complex, realistic image into words will be the same and neither will be exhaustive. However, a ‘visual grammar’ such as that proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) and upon whose categories those adopted in this study are based, is not only concerned with problems of visual referentiality, but also in the relationships that pertain between elements in the visual communicative system. If we identify these elements as formal features of an image then our aim must be to identify patterns in the occurrence of these elements.18 This is akin to adopting the transformational-generative grammar outlook, which concentrates on sentence/clause form, and may, if pursued, be capable of producing similarly exhaustive rules by means of which ‘grammatically correct’ visual expressions can be constructed. On the other hand, if we identify the elements of a visual grammar as thefunctions the various images perform when put to use in visual expressions such as that of television 18 See chapter 8 for details of this study;s attempts do this. 30 7 Case Studies: Visual semiotics and televisual texts news, we may be able to draw nearer to developing an understanding of how these images ‘mean’. Such an attitude would seem to be more in line with Kress and van Leeuwen’s work emerging as it does from Halliday’s functionalism. If a description of functional visual categories can be developed then Halliday’s might provide further insights into how visuals communicate. 7.4 Chapter Summary Case studies one and two dealt with interpretation of two images feature, the VCU and extreme vertical camera angles. I hoped, by means of these, to illustrate the necessity for various types of peripheral information to be taken into account when attempting a visual semiotic analysis of televisual texts. The perspective of visual semiotics is one which, while it claims to be sensitive to contexts of production, does not give them suﬀicient weight when considering resource-intensive, industrial products such as television news. It would beneﬁt from a clariﬁcation of the scope of its applicability or the development of sub-theories speciﬁcally attuned to these sorts of special cases. The third case study was intended as a more optimistic counterpoint to its rather more critical predecessors. The fundamental assumptions of visuals semiotics are, I believe, sound; images do communicate, systematic features of this communication can be identiﬁed, the design of these features is inﬂuenced by the functions to which the system is put. This study has made legitimate use of some of the image features identiﬁed by current theory and has failed to identify any sort of consistent, systematic correlation either between them and their real-world referents or across sequences of occurrences. 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