Category: classnotes

Week 7 Blog Post

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Caleb

Hey everyone,

The challenge for this week is to try and find moments of visual storytelling from the film Devil’s Playground. Keeping in mind the theme of Amish vs. English, I found that most of the visual storytelling came from the physical expressions of the people involved in the story. And this makes sense, as the story pertains to the people and their transition from the Amish style of living to modern English living. This proves to be an effective form of storytelling as the audience can follow the teenagers’ thoughts and feelings about this immensely important decision that affects the rest of their lives.

The first screenshot I found was the same one we used for the module thumbnail in this course and is also the poster for this movie on IMDB. I’d argue and assume this was the reasoning for it being the thumbnail, that this shot perfectly depicts the theme Amish vs. English. An Amish-dressed individual smoking a cigarette, two worlds colliding at one distinct moment. It also uses the person to tell the story and how they interact with their environment.

Velda Bontrager talks about and shows her Amish wedding dress. As we’ve discussed in class, the storytelling isn’t the dress itself or when Velda puts on the dress. The storytelling comes from Velda’s facial expressions, the way she looks at the dress as if in admiration of its beauty, but she later admits that she would never get married or go back to being Amish because of what the dress represents. The audience gathers the story from her expressions in this shot.

Next, we have a scene that isn’t facial expression but also one that I’m unsure if it’s real or not as I’ve seen documentary style films before that include incriminating evidence of narcotic use and distribution. This is a heavy contradiction to the earlier scenes of typical Amish living, with shots of farmsteads and families driving their horse carts. The storytelling here does show itself through the environment and the inclusion of Faron’s hands in the scene adds to the impact of what’s happening in the story. We’ve seen Faron tempted by the English way of living for a while and can see a trend of more and more dangerous substance abuse from drinking to smoking. Seeing his hands packaging “crank” tells the audience that his story has taken a dark dip on his journey in English living. Not quite as effective as seeing facial expressions, since we can’t see Faron’s face as he’s doing this, but we know as the audience he’s participating regardless.

Here we return to human expression as visual storytelling. After Faron gets off the phone leaving his dad a message in Dutch over the car accident he got in, the camera stays on Faron. We see his immediate reaction to the message. Looking down, fidgeting with his clothes, sitting still, all signs that Faron is experiencing emotion. The audience isn’t told exactly what Faron’s thinking, but can infer that he’s thinking about his life, his family, his accident, and ultimately leading the audience back to the theme of Amish vs. English.

Thanks for reading!

 

 

Week 4 Blog Post

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Caleb

Hello class,

Frantic, electric, and cluttered are some of the words this opening scene of Shamelessexpresses in my mind. Continuity carries this scene from shot to shot. A range of frames are used to convey the emotions of the characters and establish the setting for this show. Faces, shoulder-up, moving hands, following-shots, full-body, and jump cuts help to convey the scene’s energetic flow. Visually we can see the cluttered state of the house as the characters move, the camera following the woman for most of the beginning. The camera stays focused on the characters’ movements in this packed setting which adds the feeling of franticness for the audience.

The quick pace of the camera and characters also aids in the sense of energy. We see when the woman calls out for the bill, the camera pans to each kid as they reply with “electric”, which the word play also adds to the feelings previously mentioned. We as the audience follow these shots along with the dialogue to understand how this family works. On top of this, the quick cuts and transitions act like mini jumps in time. There are no pauses really, giving the sense to the audience that this scene is happening all at one time, one thing after another, when the cuts by the camera quicken the time between shots. Had this all been one single shot, we see no cuts to characters, the audience wouldn’t have felt the same.

The quick movements are held in place by the characters themselves and certain actions they do. The woman filling the jug of water, a break from chaos. The woman placing the shirt inside out and backwards on the boy, the boy tossing the phone to the woman, and the woman placing the chair in the washer/dryer to help it work. These scenes outside of the characters still include the frantic movements but take a moment out of dialogue and physical expressions to let the audience catch up with the action.

Thanks,

Caleb

Week 5 Blog Post

,
Caleb

Hello class,

I chose to look at starwarswars.com and the How Not to be Seen videos.

Starwarswars.com was a project I’d heard about before but had never looked into. This project combines the first two trilogies of Star Wars films and plays them simultaneously, one on top of the other. This was done, as Marcus explains in the about section on the website, through an effect that only displays the brightest pixels in each video layer. He says that’s why Hoth from Episode V takes up a large section of the project as the white pixels of the snow are the brightest.

How Not to be Seen was a trip. I was thoroughly confused at first, but as the video continued, I think I got a grasp at the message behind becoming invisible. Pixel manipulation allows for any object, person, place or thing to be changed or altered on screen. Green screen, resolution, image layering, all are methods used to alter what the audience sees.

Tying these examples to the main question for this blog, how is the realism of traditional cinema challenged by techniques such as this? As the audience, we are keen on determining whether something is real or not. Is this scene CGI or is its traditional footage? Pixels determine what’s visible, and what’s not. As creators, we can choose what we want or don’t want to be seen. We can choose what’s real or what’s not real.

Thanks for reading!

Caleb