Super Powers

This American Life

Link to my response

Hero/Villain

My Hero

My Partner's Villain

7: Written Reflection on the Video Joke

               I compared my group’s video to Andrew Sewell’s video.  Both begin with an establishing shot of the building in which they take place.  There is an affinity between the two videos, in that both cut to someone sitting at a table or desk.  In my video, a little boy plays with a train on the coffee table in his living room.  In Andrew’s video, there is a man going through papers at his desk.  However, there is a contrast between the emotions of the characters.  The kid seems quite relaxed and content to focus on his toy train, while the man is clearly stressed out by the large amount of work surrounding him and being shoved into his face by his coworkers.  In both videos, depth cues provide a sense of space.  The shot of the wife in the kitchen and the husband sitting at the dining table, as well as the over the shoulder shot of the mother watching the kid in our video, provide visuals to let the audience know where characters are in relation to each other.

              While the characters for the most part remain stationary in the videos, the movement of the camera is used both to emphasize dialogue and to tell the story.   When the little kid yells that any upset passengers should talk to “the bitch in the kitchen,” the camera cuts to a close up of him pointing.  The camera also cuts to a close up of the mother’s feet as she taps them, waiting for her child to get in the car.  This helps to reveal how she is feeling and emphasizes her impatience.  In Andrew’s video, the camera’s placement hides the fact that his coworkers have been listening to him rant about how awful they all are, until the husband takes off the blindfold and sees them himself. 

            This also creates tension, as the audience begins to suspect that there might be something the husband is missing.  The tension is released when the camera turns to reveal his coworkers.  In my video, tension is created when the kid starts playing with the train after coming downstairs.  The audience wonders whether he will start swearing again.  At first it seems that he might have learned his lesson, however, his dialogue at the end shows that he quite clearly has not.

Joke Video

My video for joke #9 can be seen here.

6A: How to be Creative

"How to be Creative" by Hugh MacLeod

My response on youtube.

6B: Audio Critique of Video Game Imagery

Mario Kart - Rainbow Road

5B: Audio Critique

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f46imHEl2kc

Reimagining Visual Framing

I like Salvador Dali.  His work is always very interesting.  I was originally drawn to this piece because I liked the use of space.  The sparse usage of line and shape evokes a feeling of loneliness and emptiness. The color scheme of drab blues, grays, and browns enhances this tone. The eye is clearly much larger than a normal eyeball, it seems small in the vast emptiness of the landscape.  The eye, which seems to be searching for something, is gazing down upon the most obvious lines in the painting, the eight lines coming toward the viewer from the horizon.  These lines create movement within the painting, as the eye appears to be following them toward the viewer.  The dark line of clouds in the background seems ominous and stands out in a painting with an otherwise light color scheme.  The stark lines coming toward the viewer are markedly different from the rest of the painting, which is filled with more organic and natural shapes. The lines on the ground and the mountains in the background provide depth cues, giving the viewer an idea of the distance between them, the eye, and the horizon.  These elements all work to make the viewer subconsciously uneasy. 

After reframing the painting, the eye and lines dominate the space.  It no longer looks so bleak and desolate.  Instead of being cut into thirds, the horizon cuts the painting in half.  There is a contrast between the top of the painting and the bottom.  There is affinity between the color of the eye and the background.  If not for the darker pupil, it would almost blend in with the cloudy sky.  While the giant hovering eye is still eerie, the feeling of loneliness is taken away along with the vast, empty landscape.  The tone of the painting seems less hopeless when it is cropped.   If the reframed version is something from a dream, the original is a scene from a nightmare.