Short reflection on the movie Wag The Dog

What do you feel is the message the director is trying to express in this movie?

The message that is trying to be expressed in the movie is that manipulating the focus of people is incredibly powerful, and it draws attention to potential ethical and moral problems that can arise. I think the movie is also attempting to make a point about the abuse of power in politics.

Explain if you think the director’s ethnic/cultural/professional background played a role in directing this film?

I don’t think the director’s background played much of a role in his decision making when directing the film. Not to take anything away from comedies, but a lot of them are shot in a similar manner (in my opinion).

What the movie added to your visual literacy?

The film really drove home the potential for visual literacy skills to be misused, and the amount of responsibility of the people with those skills have. I enjoyed watching the scene where some film was being shot and seeing the purposeful editing. I know this was just a movie, but it makes me wonder how much of what people are presented with every day is accurate/unbiased.

Reflection on the movie Nightcrawler

1.   What do you feel is the message the director is trying to express in this movie?  Support your answer with examples.

1.   When watching this movie, the message I got was about ethics and integrity in journalism. While the movie was an extreme example (it needs to keep people entertained), I think it showed audiences potential problems in the field of news and journalism. Without giving too much away to anyone who reads this blog and hasn’t seen the movie, the issues revolve mostly around the desire to be the first with the information. If you know a crime will be committed, are you obligated to report it?

2.   If applicable, discuss if you think this movie has accurate depictions of minorities or if they are situational. Why or why not? Could certain groups of people be offended or misinterpret this movie? Why?

1.   Certain parts of the movie could be seen as offensive, but more in the way that violence is offensive than any racial or ethnic problems. I didn’t notice any overly stereotypical characters, and most people throughout the film could be substituted for someone from a different racial or ethnic group without any story changes. I feel that the whole thing is driven mostly by story and very little by character development.

3.   Explain if you think the director’s ethnic/cultural/professional background played a role in directing this film?

1.   Director Dan Gilroy said he came up with the idea for the film after reading a book that contained a collection of photos of people in New York City at night. He later noticed the huge amount of violence on the news, and put some thought into “the idea that it must be a powerful force for a TV station, when they realize their ratings go through the roof when they show something with the potential for violence, like a police chase". These factors led him to the creation and direction of the film.

4.   What the movie added to your visual literacy?

1.   This film was actually brought up when I was giving a presentation early in the semester that dealt with ethics and media. This movie is a good visual example of a lot of potential ethical and moral issues that can face a journalist, photographer, etc. It allowed me to think in more concrete ways about where the line between right and wrong is, and how the fact that people need money influences where that line is for people.

5.   What kind of artistic and/or visual means did the director use in the movie to focus our attention?

1.   A majority of the movie was dark and had an eerie and almost uncomfortable feel. Something about the main character feels off, and the viewer isn’t quite able to put their finger on it. The facial expressions he makes, the way he conducts himself, etc. all look very natural and still have that “slightly sociopathic” quality and I’m sure that was a deliberate choice to convey his state of mind without directly saying it. The film doesn’t overuse any gory or violent imagery, though there are some intense visuals that influence the emotion of the viewer.

Reflection on the documentary Helvetica

Helvetica

1. What do you feel is the message the director is trying to express in this movie?  Support your answer with examples.
1. The director is trying to impress the importance of the font ’Helvetica’ and is using a documentary format. I had never given much thought to any font before watching this, it had just never seemed important to me until I began this class. After watching, I catch myself checking different places and noticing the use of the font. It really is EVERYWHERE.
2. Explain if you think the director’s ethnic/cultural/professional background played a role in directing this film?
1. I read that Gary Hustwit was an independent publisher at one point in his life, and I feel like that influenced his work in this documentary. As a publisher he dealt with a lot of text, and his job required attention to detail. I think those aspects of his professional life may have played a role in choosing the topic for this documentary.
3. What the movie added to your visual literacy?
1. Before watching this documentary I hadn’t really ever thought about what fonts I was using. I had always been asked to use ‘Times New Roman’, so I set that as the default on my computer and never thought about it again. The movie went in depth on a very specific topic, and I honestly didn’t think I would enjoy it when I started watching it. The amount the people in the film cared about something made me want to learn more about it.

Reflection on the movie Crash

1. What do you feel is the message the director is trying to express in this movie?  Support your answer with examples.
1. I believe the director was trying to portray relations between various racial groups in the city. The movie follows the stories of a small group of people, nearly all belonging to different racial or ethnic groups. Wikipedia’s entry on the director (Paul Haggis) states that “Haggis said that he wrote Crash to ‘bust liberals’, arguing that his fellow liberals were not honest with themselves about the nature of race and racism because they believed that most racial problems had already been resolved in American society.”
2. If applicable, discuss if you think this movie has accurate depictions of minorities or if they are situational. Why or why not? Could certain groups of people be offended or misinterpret this movie? Why?
1. I feel like the movie portrayed the different groups in a somewhat stereotypical way, but in a weirdly fair way as each group was stereotyped roughly equally. That being said, just because it was done fairly doesn’t mean I think it was done well. I feel that people (of all races) that are easily offended may find problems here, but I don’t think there is anything overtly offensive in the movie. The film examines race relations, and naturally there will be some uncomfortable moments that come from that, but uncomfortable is different than offended.
3. Explain if you think the director’s ethnic/cultural/professional background played a role in directing this film?
1. Paul Haggis lives in California, and said that the movie was partially inspired by an experience he had having his car stolen. I don’t believe that his background played much of a role in his direction of the film. After reading a little bit about him it sounds like it was just a story he came up with and really fell in love with.
4. What kind of artistic and/or visual means did the director use in the movie to focus our attention?
1. Close up shots on important moments (ex: purchasing a gun), manipulation of music, and the locations of characters on the screen in some parts are different things I noticed throughout the film.

Hidden Images

A lot of thought goes into a logo. While needing to be clear and easy to read, a logo also has to draw in the eye and grab attention. In addition to this, a good logo is one that is memorable and easily identifiable. The four images above are examples pulled from the website Twenty Two Words, and are just a small selection of many. I highly recommend taking a minute to follow the link and check out some more examples (there are multiple pages, the 'next page' button is a little difficult to find down near the bottom).

How many had you seen before?
How many were new?

A lot of messages/images are hidden in plain sight in logos we see very frequently but probably don't put much extra thought into. For example, we've all seen FedEx trucks driving around at some point in our lives, and most of us have probably never noticed the arrow formed by the "E" and "X" (All thanks to kerning, if you haven't go check out my post explaining what that is!). The designer of the logo, however, deliberately placed the arrow there, likely to symbolize speed or travel.




This is a link to some more popular logos that includes a paragraph or so for each that goes into a little depth about why it looks the way it does. My personal favorite is the old Northwest Airlines logo. It has since been changed, but former pilot Patrick Smith had this to say about it: "... quite simply was a work of genius. It was an 'N'; it was a 'W'; it was a compass pointing toward the northwest."



Can you see all three parts of the circular logo? It wasn't obvious to me at first glance but once I saw it, it instantly became my favorite logo design so far. The logo is simple, yet has layers underneath depending on how much thought you want to put into it. Why they changed this logo, I'll never understand.

Kinetic Typography

Kinetic typography is quite simply the combination of text and movement. The video embedded above is a great example of what kinetic typography is and some of the techniques used.

I'm sure that you've heard "a picture is worth a thousand words" in your life in some form or another. A picture speaks in such a powerful way because the image is presented to us in a more engaging manner than a block of text, and the human brain is able to process images nearly 60,000 times more quickly than text. To describe an image in a way that it could be reproduced based just on your written description could take thousands of words per picture, and sometimes a message needs to be communicated more quickly.

Kinetic typography uses movement and different organizations of letters and spacing to bridge the gap between text and images, making certain words/phrases more powerful through various techniques. Text can be flashed over music, slowly fade in/out, grow larger or darker, or any number of other techniques can be used to try and elicit an emotional response from the audience.

The following links contain the sources I used for background on this post and the video I used:
Images Speak Louder Than Words
General Information
Kinetic Typography Video Examples

Kerning: The Empty Spaces Matter

"In typography kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual letter forms, while tracking adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters."

Wikipedia: Kerning

     The little empty spaces between letters are important, and you could probably make the case they are almost as important as the letters themselves. I bet you've never even thought about them, and that's okay! Most people probably haven't, but it's something we should try to pay attention to because there is text all around us in the world. The spacing between letters play a large part in our lives and we hardly notice.

Below are two examples of how just a tiny difference in the spacing of letters can lead to some interesting results. The message you are trying to send can be distorted, eliminated, or just cause some laughter (as is the case in the examples below).




Breakfast WHAT? A little more space between the "L" and “I” would have made the name of the cereal easier to read and avoided appearing to contain a very different, less appetizing, word.



Every font has different spacing between letters, especially cursive script fonts. It is necessary for letters to connect and flow correctly, and it helps them look good to the eye. Some combinations of letters and spacing end up appearing a little too similar other letters.

(Images found on digitalsynopsis.com)

"People are not going to approach your design with rulers, trying to see if you spaced everything equally. People are going to look at it and see if they can easily read it, and that's all that's going to matter."

Igor Ovsyannykov

(link to blog homepage, contains creative and design advice)

10 Kerning Tips to Improve Your Typography

Visual Symbols In My Life

     I would be willing to bet almost anyone that they couldn't make it through 24 hours without using some sort of visual symbol to help them in their day. The cues we get from these daily symbols are something we have to learn throughout the course of our lives but they become incredibly important in our day-to-day activities, oftentimes without us even noticing.

(www.publicdomainpictures.net)

     This stock photo is just a set of painted white lines on some cement, yet you likely know what it is without needing much more information. The photo is of a crosswalk, and it's something that most people use nearly every day without thinking about it. White lines painted in this particular pattern has become associated with a safe crossing in most people's minds.

Why do people stop at stoplights and stop signs? Other than the fact that the law mandates that they do, people learn to associate the color red with stopping. The shape and color of a stop sign convey the message well enough that most people would stop even if the word stop was removed from the sign.

     The above image is one that I drew quickly in Microsoft Word (which I opened by clicking an icon, without reading any text). Lining things up using a touch-pad on a laptop is frustrating, but for this blog post all the lines are straight enough. I use this symbol on a daily basis when I am trying to get to class. Sometimes there are words on the sign, but oftentimes it is just a gray sign with a couple of black line segments organized like my drawing above. With or without words on the sign, this symbol is enough to let me know the stairs I am looking for are nearby.