Visual Communication

MC3319 Visual Communication - Texas State University

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Emotional Effects

In the movie "The Life Before Her Eyes", Uma Thurman plays Diana 15 years after a traumatic accident, as an art professor with a husband and child, who is still haunted by what she witnessed years before.

She moves back and forth from the present into the future and alternates between memory and imagination. The director uses montage and slow motion to crystallize moments, to allude a world steeped in memory, and a life that is experienced as an ongoing recollection.

She creates the atmosphere and the feeling the character is in through certain sounds and cuts and pairs them together to achieve that world.

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SoundWorks Collection: Gary Hecker - Veteran Foley Artist

Foley is the reproduction of everyday sound effects that are added into a film or video in the post-production stage in order to enhance the audio quality. The sounds can be anything from the whoosh of the wind and sound of footsteps to squeaky doors and breaking glass.

In this video you’ll see him create a sound sequence of Russell Crowe riding a horse in 2010′s Robin Hood.

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Match On Action

Match on action is a cutting technique that correlates two different views of the same scene at the same moment in time. This allows the viewers to see the same action from another angle. The different shots are edited together so that the movement flows from shot to shot like the scene below from The Shining.

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Eyeline Match

Eyeline match shows the audience what the character on screen is looking at. It starts with showing a character off-screen, then cuts to an object or person they are looking at. In the movie Disturbia they use a lot of eye matching throughout because it's a horror film that involves a lot of secretly watching. The shows the two main characters, Kale and Ashley are looking out of a window, according to the eyeline match rules the next shot shown will be what they are looking at from their point of view. It's an effective technique because the viewers can actually experience the character's experience.

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Scott Rensberger - Guest Speaker

Scott Rensberger had some valuable and useful knowledge to share with us during his guest appearance. This is a quote by him that I really like.

I live by the saying, "A good story is EVERYTHING."  If you don't have a great story, then everything you do to help a bad story is equivalent to rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.

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John Goheen - Guest Speaker

My favorite part of John Goheen's guest appearance was watching the video about the soldier and the bomb-sniffing dog. It was a sad  but touching story and it was nice to see that the family got to adopt the dog after their son had been killed.

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Tone

Tone can be established by something as simple as lighting in a movie. The Grand Budapest Hotel is a charming, intelligent, charismatic movie and Wes Anderson did a good job at showing it all through out the film. You can see how the luxurious lighting in this particular scene could help portray these qualities.

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Contrast

Since we can see different colors it's one way you can create contrast visually. Using color to create contrast can show and emphasize differences between visual elements and help the viewer to understand the message. Another way to create contrast is through the use of shapes. Using opposing shapes can create differentiation or even be used to create visual components.

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Saul Bass Oceans Eleven Title Sequence

In the title sequence for Oceans Eleven Saul Bass used brightly colored dots to make up most of the graphics and names to mimic the casino lights to match the theme of the movie.

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Sex in Advertising

Sex in advertising is getting more and more risque by the year. Everyone is trying to out do each other and are pushing the shock value up to do so. This advertisement doesn't overtly show anything that would shock you but it does insinuate sex so it still grabs your attention. However you have no idea what they are selling. It's an advertisement for Puma shoes.

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Sex in Advertising

The first thing you notice about this advertisement isn't the product or the text. It's the naked woman in the middle of it. This just proves that sex in advertising works and gets your attention. However, you probably won't remember what the advertisement was for and what it's trying to sell. Research shows that because of the sexy woman, men will be less likely to read the ad’s text and women (who are not the target of the ad) will be more likely than men to read the copy. Women will look at the sexy man in the ad and not read the text but men will be more likely to read the ad’s text.

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Body Image and the Media

A series of ads by Unilever’s Lynx, a brand of men's deodorant, were banned by the UK’s Advertising Standard Authority because of many complaints that they were degrading to women and objectified them. The ASA thought the language in the poster “clearly intended to imply that using the advertised product would lead to more uninhibited sexual behaviour.” They “therefore considered that the poster would be seen to make a link between purchasing the product and sex with women and in so doing would be seen to objectify women.”

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Body Image and the Media

The Photoshoped supermodels on covers of magazines and in advertisements make women feel like they have to look like they do or they won't fit in or be considered attractive. The image below shows a picture from the actual photo shoot and then the final result that went on the magazine. You can see the completely obvious difference.

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Visual Propaganda

Propaganda's goal is to deliberately select one-sided facts, arguments, and images and present them in a way that will have the biggest persuasive impact on people. This advertisement is an example of that. The British National Party put up this billboard. BNP is blaming foreigners for problems and uses strong religious metaphors to deliver the message.

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Visual Persuasion

Visual persuasion is used in advertising to change people's attitudes or opinions about something or some issue. It tries to appeal to your emotions to cause you to take a certain action. This poster is an example of visual persuasion. It shows you what could happen if you drink and drive and make you think twice about driving drunk again.

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Encoding and Decoding in Semiotics

Encoding is when the producer of the sign creates its meaning and decoding is when the viewer of the sign interprets its meaning. In the case of this magazine cover the editor of the magazine is encoding one of the latest fashions. However the reader could decode the message as either the latest fashion or think that's what she is supposed to look like.

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Semiotics

Semiotics is the study of signs and is extremely important when creating a pictogram set. Especially when it's for the Olympics because it has to translate and make sense to people from all over the world. Each pictogram has to clearly communicate the sport it is for or it would be useless and certain people would be confused and lost. You also don't want them to be too detailed though because that would just further complicate things visually. These are the ones for the Sochi Olympics that are currently going on. I think they work really well because they are not over detailed but are still clear.