The Powers That Be...On the Screen

In The Two Dimensional Field: Forces Within the Screen, Zettl discusses the different technical elements that have a strong pull and impact on the screen. Zettl talks about several important elements including:

1. Horizontal/Vertical

2. Up/Down Diagonals

3. Framing

4. Attraction of Mass

5. Asymmetry (between screen left and screen right)

6. Figure and Ground

7. Gestalt

8. High and Low definition images

9. Vectors

All of these elements effect the composition of an image and how the viewer/audience sees and interprets the image. 

One of these elements that I found particularly interesting is that of framing and the attraction of mass. Frames create strong pulls. These strong pulls, pull towards the corners of a frame, and therefore, create a strong pull of objects in that frame towards the corners. This ties directly into the attraction of mass. As Zettl says, “graphic mass attracts graphic mass” (Zettl, p. 123). Therefore, an object with a larger graphic mass will usually attract something with a smaller mass. This also leads to an object with a larger graphic mass being more independent in a frame then something with a smaller graphic mass, which often is dependent on the object with the larger graphic mass. 

As a photographer or videographer, it is important to keep the idea of framing and attraction of mass in mind when filming or shooting anything. If these concepts are neglected, it could potentially cause the image to lack effectiveness, or cause a miscommunication between the photographer/videographer and the audience. 

Fantastic Flash Documentaries!

In Anders Fagerjord’s, Multimodal Polyphony, he discusses the importance and use of multimodal polyphony on the world wide web. We are constantly surrounded by different mediums: writing, images, music, and videos. 

One way that all these mediums were combined was in Flash Documentaries that became popular on the internet in 2000 and 2001. As Fagerjord describes, “Using media’s Flash software, Web authors were able to create documentary films of still images and voice-over commentary, and distribute them as files small enough for Web download. These are narrated, timed slideshows, where still images are ‘made moving’ by moving the frame in panning, tilting, or zooming the image” (Fagerjord, p. 2). Until this article, I had never really heard of these Flash Documentaries, but these are very similar to what we are doing with our slideshows presently. We are taking our still image pictures and combining them with commentary.

These flash documentaries do three important things for us as viewers:

1. We can take in the experience by looking and listening.
2. The language and photos are both dynamic, so rhythm and time become an important factor.
3. We isolate different devices that are inspired by rhetoric and can be used again by other people.

In order to be able to make a flash documentary effective and meaningful for viewers, the writing, photography (images), music, sound effects, and narration must all come together in a symbiotic way. Everything must be timed correctly, arranged correctly, and communicated correctly in order to effectively convey the narrative of the documentary. These are all important things to keep in mind while working on our next project in class!

Here is an example of a flash documentary I found online:

Given and New in Composition!

The composition or layout of a web page can greatly hinder or highlight the page’s content. Of course, this idea pertains to the text presented on a page. Having hard to read text, bad color choice, text that is too small, or text that is all concentrated in one are of a page can negatively impact a reader’s experience. However, this importance of composition and layout is also very essential to the effectiveness and meaning ascribed to images. 

One of my favorite points that Kress and Leeuwen addressed in the reading The Meaning of Composition is the idea of the “new” and the “given. Kress and Leeuwen writes, “For something to be Given means that it is presented as something the viewer already knows, as a familiar and agreed-upon point of departure for the message. For something to be New means that it is presented as something which is not yet known, or perhaps not yet agreed upon by the viewer, hence as something to which the viewer must pay special attention.”

The eye is trained to, accustomed to, and comfortable with reading from left to right. This makes sense with how the concept of Given and New images are then articulated in a composition. Something that is a Given image is often presented on the left side of a layout, while something that is New is often presented on the right side of a layout. 

Some of the examples shown in the reading were really dark because of the scanning, so I tried to find a good example on my own. Hopefully I am not too far off track! I found this article and thought it was a good, yet very basic example of this Given and New principle. 

The Proactive website opens and you see scrolling images on the left of beautiful famous people with gorgeous skin, and on the right you see the three step proactive system. The Given then is that “these women have gorgeous skin” the New is that “you can get that skin with Proactive!”

You, the Viewer, Making Meaning!

In the reading, Viewers Make Meaning, Cartwright and Sturken discuss the important and determining role that viewers play in giving an image its effective meaning. They list three ways, other then the image and the producer, that an image is given meaning:

1. the codes and conventions that structure the image and that cannot be separated from the content of the image
2. the viewers and how they interpret or experience the image
3. the contexts in which an image is exhibited and viewed

All these things listed are produced by the viewer and the environment surrounding the image and the viewer of the image. 

Another concept discussed in the article that I found very interesting was the idea of interpellation. “To be interpellated by an image, then, is to know that the image is meant for me to understand, even if I feel that my understanding is unique or goes against the grain of a meaning that seems to have been intended.” When I read this advertising was a natural thought in my mind. 

Beer commercials are always stand outs for me. I know that they often aren’t marketed towards me because I am a woman, but some of them I find highly entertaining. Beer commercials interpellate me because I know what they are intending to do even if they are not targeting me, and to some degree the effectiveness (or cleverness) of a beer commercial does convince me to buy a brand. One beer commercial that I adore is by Heineken:

BEER CLOSET COMMERCIAL

ENJOY!!!

Be Wary of the Image!

Its important to recognize that images do not equal reality. In the reading Images, Power, and Politics by Sturken and Cartwright, the point of being educated/informed and wary of looking at images is emphasized.

Images are incredibly powerful and can communicate a lot to a viewer. However, its important to remember that images/photographs are still very subjective. There are two big ways that they are:

1. The viewer's experiences and background.

2. The photographer chooses everything.

The way that everyone sees an image is very different because everyone is coming from different experiences. One great example is the example of the Confederate flag. For some people, that image is an image that evokes the ideals of heritage, pride, and Southernness. However, having not grown up in the South (and not having any Southern heritage), the image of the Confederate flag does not evoke positive emotions for me. It evokes prejudice, slavery, and racism. Neither perception of the image is "less powerful" then another, it is simply powerful in a different manner.

Confederate Flag evokes different reactions to the same image

The second thing to remember is that the photographer that takes a picture chooses when to take the picture, how to take the picture, what part of the scene to focus on, and then how to edit a photo. What that means is that a photo can't completely represent full "realism" in news/media/digital media because someone is still manipulating the image that we, the viewer, are seeing. 

This reading was of particular interest to me because I do find that when I see a picture in the news I tend to take it at face value. I often don't stop to consider all the work that went on behind the scenes with the choosing of the shot and then the manipulation of it. I, in no way, think that this "wariness" of images distracts from the potential power of images, it just requires the viewer to be a bit more informed!