Reading Responses

Reading #1

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

Using Multiple images gives you the opportunity to add context to the viewer, making it easier to read based on the images alone. Using one image allows for a more complex or simple application of the desired narrative, however this means the readability of the narrative also become more complex or simple.
        - What is causality?

This reminds me of the concept of “cause and effect.” The narrative is progressed through the first scene causing the next and causing the scene after that.
        - Define narrative compression and give an example of a television or online commercial that uses narrative compression.

The telling of a narrative with in a time constraint, so themes and idea have to be communicated quickly and clearly.

Campbell's soup commercial
        - 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.

1. Rational- Direct display of message or product (Oxyclean commercials)
2. Emotional- Relying on an emotional response to imagery rather than product (Publix Thanksgiving Day commercials with salt and pepper shakers.)
3. Serious- Deals with extreme reactions to death, violence, etc.. (Drug free commercial about not picking up grandma because you were getting high)
4. Humorous- Letting the viewer react positively to a product by humor (Geiko gecko commercials)
5. Realistic- Viewer relates to product because narrative is based in reality, nondramatic (Bosley hair commercials)
6. Exaggerated- Narrative has to break norms of reality and use unrealistic imagery (Nasonex commercial, the world is seen as blurry)
           - Describe and give examples (not from the book) of three non-narrative approaches.

A commercial for a lawyer would be an example of a non-narrative. Also commercials for television stations and radio stations use a non-narrative method of conveying a message.

Reading #2

        - 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?

Swallow flew in, flew out. Friends who pass. Gasp at first, peer closer. These descriptions of movement help the viewer form clear images of whats being described. An energy is being expressed through words.
        - 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.

Though it was only a still the video of the dead horse lying in a patch of flowers is a good example of the invisible becoming visible. In that case a horse not moving becomes dead. Another example I believe can be found in the video of the man pushing the ice block through Afghanistan(?) I think it made the vision of melting ice all the more apparent as we wait to see when it will completely melt.