Launching the Imagination & Opening the Gate

- What are the advantages and challenges of representing a story with one image as opposed to multiple images?

Some challenges of representing a story with one image can be that the artist has to rely on the viewers to understand the event being shown; they must have some kind of previous knowledge in order to understand what the artist is showing. Using multiple images takes little explanation because viewers can see the movement of events between each image. Some advantages of working with a single image include being able to express action and emotion within a single frame. This takes skills in composition, gesture, and technique.

- What is causality?

A Causality is the chain of events that happen in a story; one event starts the next, continuing the progress of the story. If the cause-and-effect relationships are unclear and hard to follow, viewers cannot focus and lose interest. However, if the chain of events are easy to understand through the use of clear actions and emotions, then the audience’s attention is held.

- Define narrative compression and give an example of a television or online commercial that uses narrative compression.

Narrative compression is when duration, framing, editing, and narration is challenged in 15 seconds to emotionally and intellectually express a certain product or way or thinking. An example of an online commercial I have seen that uses narrative compression is a Dove commercial. The commercial involves numerous young girls, as well as a young boy, who describe what the phrase “running like a girl” means. All of them physically run like how a girl is stereotyped to run like. The girls are asked why they would answer the question through the use of this stereotype and not run like they normally would. The little boy is asked if his sister ran like that and he answered no. Then the commercial goes on to film the girls running like they normally would, full of power. This commercial successfully achieved capturing viewers’ attention through emotional and intellectual reasoning.

- What are the six strategies advertisers use in advertisements to sell us stuff? Provide example/s of commercials that you have recently viewed that illustrate each of these strategies.

The six strategies include rational, emotional, serious, humorous, realistic, and exaggerated ads. A rational commercial that I’ve watched was about a hearing aid. The commercial gave straightforward information about the product and what it can do. An emotional commercial that I’ve seen is about how women always apologize for everything, even if it isn’t their fault. This captured my attention emotionally because this commercial is being shown on TV, where everybody will see it and maybe change their opinions of women. A serious commercial I have watched was about a man who stole from his family and was addicted to drugs, but overcame his problems through the help of UF’s addiction facilities. A humorous commercial I’ve watched includes the actor Gary Busey awkwardly introducing the Amazon Fire TV.  A realistic commercial I’ve seen was about the new iPhone 6, which caught my attention because I’d like to have one. An exaggerated commercial I’ve seen is about Mayhem from the Allstate commercial series. Because it’s so exaggerated and funny, it has a lasting effect on me and I remember them.

- Describe and give examples (not from the book) of three non-narrative approaches.

Three non-narrative approaches include categorical, rhetorical, and abstract. A categorical approach is based off of one concept, action, or emotion. A rhetorical approach is when sequential images are used to present an argument. An abstract approach is just like the rhetorical approach, only through the use of changing color, shapes, texture, and movement. An example of a categorical approach is when a commercial is all about a new phone’s features, leaving it to the viewers to decide if they want to buy it or not. An example of a rhetorical approach is when a commercial has a series of images that are from the effects of drug use. It argues with evidence what the drug does to the body and what will become of it if drug use is not stopped. An example of an abstract approach that I have seen is an ad in a magazine that has mice eating rat poison. The mice symbolize humans using drugs that poison themselves.

- Berger writes very lyrically about the place where he is staying and working. Please document each instance of motion that occurs in his description. How does the description of the motion contribute to our imagination of this space?

Berger writes about the instance of motion several times including when describing the faded blue of the ceiling, the screwed hooks that the farmer used to hang meat on, the plums turning raven blue, the hills forming the first steps of the mountain, and a swallow flying into the room and then out. The description makes me aware of the layout of the room and where everything is occupying space. The faded blue of the ceiling makes me think of the roof as being tall, which is confirmed because the hooks on the ceiling held meat. The bird flying in and out makes me believe the room in on a second story, where it looks out over the country landscape. It has the view of numerous trees in the foreground, where plums grow.

- At the end of the essay, Berger writes about how the structure of 24 fps allows us to “catch sight of another visible order.” Describe two events or scenes from the videos/films screened in class where the medium caused the ordinarily invisible to become visible.

The film about the ice melting helped cause the ordinarily invisible to become visible because it showed a time consuming process that most humans don’t have the patience to watch. The invisible process of time causing ice to melt was videotaped in a timelapse that allowed viewers to see a huge chunk of ice melting across the city and how long it took. Another event that expresses this concept is the animation about the two beetle’s affairs. This type of animation, stop-motion, made viewers realize that the artist had to move each beetle’s body to create the movement he wanted for it to flow into a smooth film. Through the use of choppy animation, the body movement allows viewers to see his technique and correlate with their own body movement.