Signification the process by which messages are conveyed to a spectator Bazin’s belief that the world could speak directly to us through its appearance in cinema is denied by a semiologist. Every meaning in film is mediated by a code that allows us to make sense of it.Signification does not exist in perception itself but in the sign of values which perception delivers to us.

Code is a logical relationship that allows a message to be understood in films.
They are the rules which allow the messages in a film.
Most film discussions deal with what the film conveys—semiotics try to uncover the laws that make those messages possible.

Codes and Subcodes

Example:
There is a code created in cinema by the concealment of the apparatus
This code created a system where the spectator is put in the position of the voyeur.
This code system is very different in television. Television is a medium that allows for an announcer to speak directly into the camera. There is immediacy created in television created by that code system.
When that code system is violated in film it creates an unnerving feeling(or funny) that you have been caught watching a private moment.

A subcode is a code created within the already existing system.

In terms of narrative code we could go back to this idea of genre. If Woody Allen took out a gun and shot Annie Hall that would be a violation of the code system of the romantic comedy. Its sometimes a weird movie, but its never really alienating.
Another simple example of cinemas code system:

Example:
Montage of shot and shot b
The shots get shorter and shorter
Shot a and shot b are converging on each other either spatially or dramatically

Non specific cultural codes—if a kid in a movie picks up a can of spray paint what sort of culture is being brought up how is that different from the 70’s has tagging permeated culture a little more.

"Over the Edge" vandalism vs inner city

Some codes non specific to the medium

Chiaroscuro lighting not specific to the medium—but has been used in german expressionist films like Nasfuratu—the film that shadow of the vampire was based on

Flashbacks appear in literature—but the visual signs of flashbacks located in films are cinema specific

Pan can describe a landscape follow a moving car or imitate the ho-hum flow of a boring dialogue

There is an early 80’s movie “An Officer and a Gentlemen” that depicts an independent young woman who gives up her life for a Marine. It’s totally insulting, but when you watch the film you are crying. There is something about the pacing and the representation of desire and that Cinematic Pleasure that Barthes talks about. You know that the film will end and there will be a resolution, but the question is when? Cinema has its own discourse that exists outside of the story itself. The reality that is depicted on scene

DW Griffith’s Birth of a Nation will have you cheering for the KKK by the end of the film.
Where you place that release of tension is part of a communication that goes deeper than the narrative language itself—what we mean by that is the denotative vs the connotative meaning—when you denote you signify such as a picture of a cat signifies cat—a connotation refers to the subtext---if you place a cat in a precarious position on the screen you will have a different connotation.
These codes are cultural
Take for example the zebra. If we see a zebras shape and the cues of stripes are somehow obscured then we will not see a zebra—but a horse or a donkey. If we can see the stripes the signifier is a donkey.
However there is a community in Africa where the only known quadrupeds are the zebra and the hyena. Therefore if they saw a zebra whose stripes were obscured they would see the signifier: zebra. Also in drawing a zebra you would have to emphasize the shape of its muzzle to distinguish it from the hyena that is also striped.We have our signs
Signifiers
Signified(signs)
Referents:
Specific to culture and the means of producing signs we have code.
A code in semiotics is considered a field of communications. Within this field the variations of the signifier correspond to different variation of the signified
A code designates a system of either compliance or violation—dress code
A code in linguistics a language system as a structure that is internal to language
Sociology: a code designates systems of behaviors (manners)
A code is associative it is not law, but it is an underlying symbolic organization which underlies a text.
Codes specific to cinema are rhythm between shots and anything relating to the movement of images----there are other codes that are not specific to cinema(verbal language, sound, etc) of course the combination of sound and image is specific to cinema.
A picture of a man laughing can’t be modulated like the words:
Laugh laughter laughing laughed laughable
Countless gradations of sense
There isn’t even internally in cinema a way to give these images tense
Color for present
Black and white for past
This is a sophisticated answer to a problem that language has an indigenous answer to
There could never be a dictionary of cinematic expressions
A gun
Here is a gun
Many different angles of a house are pictures of the same referent
Film works like symphonies or like novels then like verbal language
In cinema there is no basic usage, because we don’t communicate with movies
Every use must be poetic or inventive
Films don’t work like a computer—the denotative is spit out in facts and figures
Poets torture sounds and images of languates until this denotation carries out a second level the connotative
We see the denotative at the same time as we get a sense of the filmmakers attitude toward it
Like Bazin in this sense Metz sees film less as a system of communication with concrete meanings but ad hoc and expressive
He releases a flow of expression that comes as much from the natural world as it does from himself
But underneath all of this theory metz seems fascinated with the rules and regulations that make cinematic communication possible
He deconstructed cinema to reconstruct it in his own way

The TV, the most important and defining medium of the present, is worshipped by the `popular-culture lecturer' Murray: ``[Murray:] «Waves and Radiation, [...] I've come to understand that the medium is a primal force in the American home. Sealed-off, timeless, self-contained, self-referring. lt's like a myth being born right there in our living room, like sornething we know in a dreamlike and preconscious way. I'm very enthused, Jack.» [...1«How do you know so much?» Babette sald. «I'm from New York.»'' (51)
The term ``Waves and Radiation'', also the heading of the first 20 chapters of White Noise and leitmotif of the novel, summarizes the phenomenon of mass-communication: ,,Waves" are the carrier of information, (radio-)waves etc. ''Radiation" is the contrary, the entropic emission of heat, ionizing rays etc. But if waves arc emitted and received like radiation, constantly and chaotic, the difference becomes less obvious. It is highlevel radiation and a matter of rating to understand and single out and understand. Random unlimited information simply is chaos. TV establishes a position beyond the distinction between waves and radiation. However, without ,,code-awareness" the regenerative waves go unnoticed (cmp. Maltby, 1996:261). The TV's defining role in culture, society and family is stressed. Murray gives the theoretical background for the Gladney's; they are nearest to each other when they watch TV together. The central ``airborne toxic event'' is the media's name for the chemical catastrophe. It evolved: from the ``feathery plume''(111) to ``black billowing cloud''( 113), until finally ``airborne toxic event''. The Gladneys are strongly dependent on media's secondary information and classification. They take over their words directly from the media (King, 1993: 73-74).
Murray's `eruption' floats between belief and cynism, between serenity and irony. The description of a ``dreamlike'' premonition evoked by TV's discourse establishes a televisional reality independent of real reality. The discourse is indescribable, the understanding is metaphysical and mythical. This notion Paul Maltby refers to as ``romantic metaphysics''. At last the absurd ground given for Murray's `knowledge' makes one important point dear: any reason for knowledge (for him) is just as absurd as another; authorities for knowledge are arbitrary (Maltby, 1996:261).