Paper 1 Lit techniques

Demand gaze

• Subject looks directly into the lens

• Forces a social connection

• Demands sympathy or action action from viewer

Offer gaze

• Subject looks away

• Makes them subject an object of study

• Allowing viewer to observe their emotion without being confronted

High angle

• Looking down = sense of vulnerability/ weakness/ insignificance

Low angle

• Looking up = grants subject power, authority, “heroic status”

Negative space

• Large empty space around focal point

• Creates a sense of isolation, loneliness, cleanliness

• Could be loss or emptiness

Display typography

• Modern fonts i.e Modern Sans Serif

  • Clean, Implies innovation, modern

• Traditional Serif i.e Times New Roman

  • Reliability, academic seriousness

Anchorage

• A guide that prevents viewer from interpreting in too many different ways

• Directing toward a preferred reading

• Used in ambiguous texts

Color symbolisim - Chiaroscuro

• Strong contrast between light and dark

• Dramatic tension or suggest hidden truth

• Highlights moral conflict or sense of “good vs evil”

Saturated vs desaturated hue

• Intensity of color

• High saturation

  • Bright, vivid = Energy, optimism or artificiality

• Low saturation

  • Washed out, grayish

  • Nostalgia, sadness or gritty “realism”

Emanata

• Icons or symbols flowing from a character (sweat drops, lightbulbs, pain lines)

• Non-verbal way to communicate a character’s internal psychological state to reader

Gutter space

• Space between panels

• Requires closure

  • Readers must “fill in the blanks” of what happened between panels

  • Creates a sense of time passing or builds suspense