What is being represented?
What themes and issues are being explored?
What are we made to feel?
What meaning is being created?
And how?

 

Micro to Macro

Micro - the micro element of a film text are its technical and symbolic features
Technical elements can include camera, sound, mise-en-scene and editing
They function is various ways, independently and in combination, to stimulate emotional and intellectual in the viewer
They may be 'encoded' to create meaning
Sound may have one range of possible effects, editing another
Aspects of mise-e-scene often function as signs - icons, indexes and symbols - which communicates key information to the viewer
 
Macro - Technical elements such as camera, sound, mise-en-scene and editing are encoded to create specific representations of social types, groups, events or places 
These representations are explored by the film maker and interpreted - "decoded" - by the viewer in relation to key theme and issues
This is the macro level of the text
Cultural meaning is established where the representations created articulate specific messages, and values which have social significance
When technical elements combine in such a way they add up to an overall representational 'world' that makes sense and is believable
In social realism and other realist forms of drama, we call this plausible macro sum of the micro parts verisimilitude.