Video Jokes

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Blog 6B - Video Game Commentary

Blog 6A - How to Be Creative

HowToBeCreative by Hugh Macleod

Blog 5B - Video Commentary

Blog 5A - Reframing an Image

I was drawn to the original image because it first off reminded me of people who paint pictures on their hands to look like animals or other objects.  I also was intrigued as to why Goossens chose to represent the senses sight, taste, touch, and hearing, but neglected to put a nose in his picture to represent the sense of smell. My guess is that there is some secret meaning or subtext that Goossens put in his piece that I’m unaware of.  My reframing on the other hand has no hidden meaning or symbolism. I really like the color scheme as well.  There’s not a lot of contrast of colors within the original piece. The shades are all of blue and brown, which fit nicely together.   It creates a warm affinity between the earthy tones used in the hand and the ground, and the blues in the sky. The original picture also has a lot of depth to it.  The objects in the original recede back into the horizon line, and create limited space by framing the lips between the eye and the fist.  In contrast, my reframing is a very flat image. I chose to reframe the image in this way because it focuses on what I think is the most interesting thing in the picture.  Also, by not showing the hand being attached to the ground,  the hand could be attached to an arm.   The framing is also a lot tighter all around the fist, so the rhythm is the picture is really just one solid beat.  There’s not much to look at other than the hand.  The original image has a much more even rhythm.  While the objects vary in closeness to the viewer, they are equal distances apart on a horizontal plane, leading to a very even beat as you move from left to right.  In addition, the eye on the hand in the original falls on the intersection of the top and left thirds and the lower and left thirds, which gives the image a nice balance.   I also think that the original image is more spread out.  Since its rhythm is more even, it’s a little more calming.  However, the reframed picture has much more visual intensity because the picture the fist is thrown right at the viewer.

3A Cover Assignment

Britney Spears's Song "Oops I Did it Again" Official Music Video
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Children of Bodom's Cover of "Oops I Did it Again" Official Music Video
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The most obvious difference between the two songs is the timbre difference.  Britney Spears has built her career on her looks and her voice.  The music that she produces always has very clean melody and harmony lines, and the sound that is produced is sweet and soothing.  Children of Bodom take a complete twist on this, and the sound they produce is noisy, grating, and often unpleasant.  As a metal enthusiast, even I found the sound displeasing.  People who are used to hearing Britney’s version of the song will certainly be surprised. Children of Bodom did not intend for the song to be pleasant however.  They chose to have a high contrast between their song and Britney’s song.  The song represents what they hear when they listen to Britney’s original piece.  Intense is certainly a very good word to describe Children of Bodom’s cover.  The song is loud and very “in your face”.  The singer is screaming at the top of his lungs while the guitars thrash through distortion pedals.  It has a very high intensity, which is in contrast with the smooth, lilting tones found in Britney’s original song. Also, Britney’s song has varying levels of intensity throughout the song, while Children of Bodom stay consistently a very loud intensity.  With a lot of metal artists, it’s hard to identify whether or not a melody is present in the song to begin with.  Through the rough, gravely shouting of Children of Bodom, a glimmer of the original melody can be found.  But the important thing about the melody of this song in comparison with the melody in Britney’s song is that Children of Bodom don’t really care about the melody.  For them as artists and as businessmen, they are not trying to “sell” anyone a beautiful melody.  Their cover is almost parodic in nature because of the absurdity in premise.  Britney on the other hand sells her songs based on how good the songs sound, and she achieves this by having beautiful melodies and harmonies. Both songs have the same lyrics to an extent, but it’s important to note the differences and why those differences are there in the first place.  Children of Bodom choose not to mess with the main lyrics to create an affinity between their song and the original version and to ensure that people would get that they are creating a parodic song.  The song has spoken dialogue written into it.  Children of Bodom chose to instead speak the dialogue in Finnish.  While I have yet to identify a significance in choice of language, they actually don’t say the same words that Britney does.  Instead, they parody the dialogue that Britney says in her song.  Also, while it’s not necessarily a lyric, in the very beginning of the song, you can hear a loud spit.  I believe that Children of Bodom chose to do this to represent that they are essentially spitting on the song.  It sounds bad and they know it, but that’s part of the parodic nature of the song.  Finally, both songs use tension and release.  After the dialogue, the songs return to the lyrics in the refrain, but choose to sing a slightly different melody.  It creates a tension with the rest of the song that is resolved by harmonizing with the rest of the music that is being played.

3B and 4B - Soundscape Comments and Song Comments

4A - Acknowledging the Lizard

Brainwashed - Godin

Connect - It’s crucial for us connect with others.  In the media industry, the adage “no man is an island” is truer than ever.  Everything is based on collaboration and connection.  People advance in the industry by having connections with others, people make reputations for themselves by their ability to develop positive relationships with people they work with, and eventually, people will look to be connected to you once you’ve made connections yourself.

Acknowledging the Lizard - The “lizard” refers to the ancient part of our brains that resists our efforts to stand out.  Godin says that in today’s society the people who are truly successful stand out from the crowd.  However, when we stand out, we run into the risk of failure.  This failure is the lizard’s worst nightmare, and so it tries its best to stop us from taking that risk

I think that the blog assignments we do are useful to a limited extent.  Starting to create our digital footprint is a very good first step, but I think that some additional ones could be taken.  Many assignments like this one, where we review manifestos that some person wrote, is interesting I suppose, but is it the best use of our time?  A more useful blog assignment would be to comment more on work that other people do.  But instead of asking us to record audio tracks commenting on other people’s work onto our own blog, instead we should be reading and viewing content that is put on people’s blogs then commenting directly below it.  I think that will give the blogger a chance to see what people think about their creative products, and hopefully foster people to begin a creative and professional discussion about media.  After all, its good to build relationships between media students since we will be emerging into the media industry together in three years or so.

I think that people certainly acknowledge the lizard and the embarrassment of failure in this class.  However, I think that many people aren’t quite able to ignore the resistance that the lizard tries to force upon us.  I have talked to people who refuse to let me see their projects because they are afraid of being laughed at.  I think that perhaps more hands-on work in lab would make people more confident in there work.  I know that if my first garageband attempt ever had to be posted online for all to see I might be a little embarrassed as well.  It might even be helpful to hold an optional informational session once a week to help people who have never worked with the programs before.