Sign and Signifiers Task

Sign and Signifiers Task

We were aiming to represent young people because we are young people ourselves and know about and can relate to the kinds of things that they do. To achieve this we brought objects from home that represent young people, we then found a place that is a stereotypical place for young people to hang around and what they do there, which was an underpass near the college. After this we took a photograph of the props that we had brought in and then returned to college to edit it, using photoshop, to make it suited the theme more, we cropped the picture and then changed the saturation to make the colours of the image more dull and increased the contrast to sharpen it. We called the TV programme 'Wasted' because wasted is slang for drunk or high. We then added an E4 sign and banner which is a channel that plays a lot of TV programmes representing young people. We were influenced by a few of these TV programmes such as: Misfits, Skins, Shameless, Glue, etc.

The things that are included in our image are alcohol cans, a condom box, a packet of tobacco, pills (paracetamol), cocaine (sherbet) and a lighter.  The alcohol cans signify drinking and getting drunk as it is common for young people to do. The condom box represents young people having sex and avoiding underage pregnancy mostly which is a common thing for them to do also. The cocaine, pills, the lighter and the tobacco represent drug use by young people which is normal for younger people to do as they tend to be curious and feel the need to try new things like this growing up, or also very commonly get peer pressured into it.

This is an example of a TV programme poster that influenced our photo, except we weren't allowed to photograph people in ours so we photographed the things that people do: