SPARRO\^/HAWK PRODUCTIONS

College Projects, DJ Mixes & Compositions, and Meaningless Fanart.

[kestrelhawk8172]

Final College Blog Post- My Thoughts on the Film "Amélie" by Jean-Pierre Jeunet

Analyzing and watching the film Amélie by Jean-Pierre Jeunet was a delightful experience. My mother and father had seen the movie before so we decided to watch it together while I wrote a few notes in my notebook. I first noticed that the narrator described everything the same way Amélie sees the world. There were a few events that happened in real life that connected the movie with its setting: the Montemarte section of Paris in 1997. The lighting was warm and yellow throughout most of the movie, which depicted a very sunny depiction of the ironic sadness and isolation that Amélie experienced during her childhood and the plot itself. Her father didn’t pay much attention to her, and her mother homeschooled Amélie for most of her life until she died. This was soon the cause of Amélie’s very quiet and quirky personality, finding little details and delights in life to cover her inner sadness, while seeking solitude from the intimidation of human faces. There were quite a few shots and special effects used to depict Amélie’s vibrant imagination. Red and green with a touch of blue were used here and there to depict hope in finding a happier place in the world, and while the real world was depicted dull using filters, Amélie’s imagination sequences made the colors more brilliant. In one imaginary sequence, the TV scolds her for being an introvert and messing up her life; in another, the animals in the paintings and on the lamp talk about her. Time seems to fly by when Amélie is incredibly focused on something, as shown in some of the montage scenes. However, one of the most frequent obstacles to making a friend or learning about love was Amélie’s fears and social anxieties, symbolized by great distances, trains crossing in front of her, or panes or lenses of glass. But as she helps out the people in her neighborhood (except the grocer) and her crush, the fragile painter she talks with sends her a message that if she lets opportunities like this pass her by, her heart will become as brittle as his bones. This theme is spread out throughout most of the film: to make friends, you don’t just have to take the initiative to talk to people and help them out, you also have to let them in. This was also well-illustrated with the very first person that Amélie helped: after receiving the box of his childhood, he sits down at the Two Windmills Cafe and talks about how his daughter now has a younger son and how he should reach out to them “before he’s in a box himself:” the box becoming a metaphor of not just death, but the walls of social anxiety. The music beautifully expresses the emotions of the plot as well: the whimsy, the mischief, the frantic pace of a scheme, the beauty and culture of Paris seen through a person who has been isolated nearly all her life, finally letting someone in. 

Even with my analytical mind turned on, my personal perspective was still the strongest part of this analysis, as I related so much with Amélie. We both have vivid imaginations and are very quiet at first but with quirky personalities. Both of us are ‘young-hearted’: having a sense of delayed maturity, especially when it comes to processing emotions. Amélie, her crush Nino, and I collect various objects or concepts: Nino collects footprints and torn photos, Amélie collects flat rocks to skip in the river, and I collect rocks, trinkets, and stories from the Internet or through other media. It was made incredibly obvious in the movie that both Nino and Amélie have something like social anxiety, which I also have. Amélie’s parents also had noticeable traits of OCD having to do with cleaning out their spaces (the purse and the toolbox) and seemingly had different types of anxiety. Since autism is a genetic mutation passed down through generations, it made me wonder: if they had lived in the 21st century, would Amélie have been diagnosed with a high-functioning form of autism like mine? Even in the late 90s, there was a bit of autism research being developed, but it was still a misunderstood disorder at the time; people were just dismissing neurodiversity as “Oh, they’re just slightly different from us; let’s bully them.” Now that technology has improved, I’m glad I was brought up in an era that was more supportive and accepting of neurodiverse people. The message of this movie is a brilliantly happy yet poignant one, expressed beautifully through the use of special effects, lighting, music, and the pure emotion expressed by the actors. Beautiful film overall, would watch it again if I wasn’t so busy with schoolwork.

Drawing as tax. Made in Apple Freeform, lol. Future action/documentary movie poster on my life, possibly? "She has everything she needs now. All she needs to do is use them at the right place and time... SPARRO\^/HAWK- Coming soon to theaters near you"

[kestrelhawk8172]

Persuasion vs. Propaganda (Second College Assignment)

The relationship between propaganda and persuasion is very interconnected, so much so that they tend to overlap quite a bit, but I wouldn’t say that they are the same thing. While persuasion is using various tactics to push someone towards an ideal or to get them to do something, propaganda is the medium used to do so, whether it’s audio or symbolic images. You can try to casually persuade someone to do something in conversation, while propaganda is making more of a conceited effort to manipulate the mind into thinking about or doing something. You can also say that while normal persuasion brings up actual information as well as emotional tactics and visual cues, propaganda only uses emotional tactics and visual cues. Take a look at these two posters, for instance. 

The first poster contains a woman wearing a white blouse and black skirt, and she’s standing with her arms open in a welcoming gesture. Her smile is a comforting one despite the wreckage of the land around her, and the American flag hangs behind her representing the cause that the Liberty Loan is for. It makes you think, Well, if she got the second Liberty Loan and she’s happy about it, maybe I should do it. That way I’ll be happier too, even if I’m not in the ranks. Personally, it makes the viewer want to step through the frame and let her hug them. Because women can be seen as empathetic, it almost seems as though the woman in the photo understands the internal conflict of not being in the Armed Forces but still wanting to help the war effort, so she offers an opportunity to help with the Liberty Loan. 

In the second poster, the poster uses the Gestalt theory of Visual Communication to take ordinary male citizens and turn them into soldiers marching off into the distance. They are all marching in the same direction, with the words above, “Step into your place,” further emphasizing the message. Neither of these posters had informational facts about the war effort at that time because to inform wasn’t the objective of the advertisement, not to mention informing was usually the job of the press covering the war. Take a look at these other two posters.

This is where propaganda and persuasion begin to overlap. To get people to start fighting, one has to frame the enemy in a way that is threatening or terrifying, using shock to convince people to join the war. The first poster frames America as the “good guys” in the conflict by using the symbol of the noble bald eagle, fierce and yet beautiful. It has its talons extended, beak open in a war cry, or ready to tear through the enemy, defending its territory. The enemy here is portrayed by another eagle, equal in size and ferocity, but placed lower in the picture to declare it inferior, with the color scheme of black and red to convey its monstrosity. In the background, airplanes are locked in an intense battle. The message “Be an American Eagle” makes the viewers frame themselves as the heroic eagle, and invites them to join the service to support the war effort. 

In the second picture, the enemy isn’t a country at all, but an ideal: the concept of Communism. The ideal is pictured as a raging wildfire engulfing the American Flag, while terrified citizens turn on one another within the flames. The flames and flag represent the death of democracy, while the citizens express the ideal of communism having no freedom of speech and being governed by fear. The words “This is tomorrow” and “America under communism” frame communism as an impending doom that will take over everything if it isn’t stopped. The poster once again uses fear and shock to make people turn against communism as a concept; again, both posters don’t have any facts on what is happening and instead rely on symbols and visual cues to emotionally sway the audience.

Another drawing below as tax. This one is a bit more of a vent artwork, expressing my inner frustrations about my helplessness to conflicts happening around the world. I am pictured in space, asleep yet crying, with half-feathered, half-batlike “watermelon wings,” while surrounded by flowers and watermelon slices, and floating above the world in flames due to war and climate change. “I yearn for peace, but the world is burning and I can’t do anything.”

[kestrelhawk8172]

MC Escher Analysis (First College Assignment)

The piece of artwork that I’ll be analyzing is that of M.C. Escher’s House of Stairs. Even at first glance, the mind is overwhelmed with the impossibility. Our eyes flicker from the planes of perspective to the sense of erratic movement from the creatures climbing the staircases. While Escher didn’t use color that much, he used differences in light and shadows to enhance the perspective of the staircases. The geometry of the staircases would seem to consist of rectangles making up the stairs, walls, and doorways, but then skewing the planes based on the principle shown in the Penrose Triangle optical illusion. You can find these optical triangles throughout the piece as one stairwell leads to one perspective, and others go to other perspectives depending on which way you feel is down. Depth and illusionary perspective combine to make disorienting planes of impossibility and wonder. According to Visual Communication: Images with Messages (6th Edition) by Paul Lester on page 34, “An illusory perspective can be achieved through size, color, lighting, interposition, and linear perspective.”

The sense of implied movement comes from the 46 creatures wandering the staircases. They were introduced in one of Escher’s previous artworks Curl Up. Called “wentelteefje,” (Dutch for “turn over”), not even Escher, who created their concept, knew what part of the animal kingdom wentelteefje belonged to, except they could curl into a ball and propel themselves forward with their feet. When they curl up and roll, they resemble a backwards Fibonacci spiral. Escher made these curious critters because he didn’t think that nature had anything that could curl up and roll. (One supposes that he didn’t meet the pill bug or any other ball creature during his life.) And indeed, you can see the creatures rolling as well as walking on the walls and staircases. As one follows the movement with their eyes, it begs the question, where did they come from and where are they going? And despite their mismatched appearance, many art appreciators (such as myself) would think them interesting, adorable, even. The defiance of logic in this piece reminds us of how life may throw us events or circumstances we don’t fully comprehend yet, and it can be overwhelming at first. However, if you went along with the flow of the journey, things may explain themselves eventually; or they won’t, and you’ll become accustomed to it regardless.

Original drawing below as tax. Original character Kayla Nutmeg in an Escher-like dreamscape.