Creative Components of Film as Social Mechanisms of Meaning Production in Mass Communication

Abstract

The article analyzes the creative components of film as social mechanisms for producing meanings in mass communication. Cinema is considered not only as an art form but also as a media text that encodes and transmits cultural and social meanings through a system of artistic and technical means. The author proposes an analytical framework that highlights the key creative components of a film – screenplay, directing, cinematography, editing, sound, and acting – and explores their roles in shaping communicative and social influence. It is emphasized that each of these elements functions as a code structuring the narrative, emotional accents, and social hierarchies. The theoretical and methodological basis of the study includes Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding theory, Jean Baudrillard’s concept of simulacra, Marshall McLuhan’s ideas, and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann’s concept of the social construction of reality. It is argued that the creative components of a film interact as a single polyphonic system that not only reflects social reality but also models it, shaping collective representations, norms, and values. Cinema is viewed as an institutionalized mechanism that shapes social perceptions, values, and ideological beliefs through the synthesis of aesthetic and technical tools. The screenplay is defined as the primary structure of meaning that sets the narrative logic, directing and cinematography are considered as components forming the visual representation of social reality, editing and sound as those organizing the temporal and affective structure, and finally, acting as the embodiment of social archetypes. The analysis is complemented by examples from contemporary filmmakers, illustrating the importance of both form and content in meaning-making. The conclusions emphasize that cinema functions not only as a cultural artifact but also as a tool of social communication and reality construction. Prospects for further research are identified, particularly the study of the impact of digital technologies and streaming platforms on the transformation of mechanisms of meaning encoding and decoding in cinema.