Barthes Narrative Codes.

Roland Barthes invented 5 narrative codes: This is when the audience will 'presume' the next logical step of the actor. For e.g. Packing a suitcase- the next logical step would be to see them leave to go on a trip/holiday/leave to somewhere else. Mystery code/Enigma code- This is where the audience is meant to think if they carry on watching they will be shown the answer to something, for e.g. seeing body parts of a 'killer' throughout the film and at the end revealing their full faces etc. The semic code-This is where things have symbols for things for e.g. garlic hanging from the walls would represent a vampire being around or near their house This is used to make sense of the cultural/social side of the character. In James Bond films there would be Aston Martins and Martini's showing his wealth etc. This is Binary Opposites, black v white, hot v cold, male v female etc. In our preliminary task we used 3 of these codes: Code of opposites, action codes, cultural code. Code of opposites was used when me and Rachael were talking on the stairs, I was in a dark blue colour whereas Rachael was in a light pink showing the contrast of good and evil. Action Code when Rachael walked up to the door implying that she was going to walk through, with that being the 'next logical step Cultural code, it was cloudy showing the typical weather in England, we are white showing our ethnicity. We spoke with a British accent, we wore stereotypical western clothes,hinting we were English.