WED FEB 14
- Visual Rhetoric Argument
- Visual Rhetoric, Static Image
- Portfolio Assignment P04 will be the first draft of the Visual Rhetoric essay that will become part of your Portfolio. You’ll receive a provisional grade and feedback on your first draft, then post a Visual Rhetoric Rewrite as a separate assignment.
- A Sample Analysis: Thai Life Insurance
- Here we examine just 10 seconds of a 2-minute long-form commercial produced by the Thai Life Insurance company to promote the universal human good of doing small selfless gestures for others. How in the world is that supposed to sell life insurance?
- Portfolio Assignment P04: Visual Rhetoric Argument
- DUE WED FEB 21
Rowan Counterintuitive 
Explaining arguments so that a 6 year old can understand it helps to keep language from obscuring the purpose and meaning of the argument. Visuals can have many different meanings and arguments. Each person can interprut the same picture in different ways. If a person does not think deeper about an image, they are not practicing counterintuitive thinking. In a video, there is a lot that someone can explain after watching one second.
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watch the videos with the sound off and from commercials and analyse everything visual about the ad and make guesses. The point is to try to draw out conclusions of what is it about. T purpose is to describe why the activities on display are being shown and without the background music and scrip what can we deem the impact. next we looked at project 4, one of the ads. our goal in the class was to analyse and make an argument so clear the reader wouldn’t need to see the video but can interpret from your words. next we looked at two examples and looked a little details and visuals to get a bigger picture. sometimes actions and cues speak way louder than any word said.
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We looked at a visual rhetoric of Obama and Bush and how a visual can be manipulated in any way. We looked at two different images one against Bush and one supporting both of them that they’re the same people. But, in the end it doesn’t matter because it is whatever way you look at it. Next, we watched a video from the Ad Council called “Now” and examined it second by second. We came to the conclusion that after about 2 seconds, the video was about domestic abuse. Next we looked at a series of images that showed a begging woman asking money for money on a cardboard box. We watched the video and it is was the guy giving out favors and getting emotions back.
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We began class with the question, “does the idea of not being able to leave the place from which you are born in?” After we discussed this question and some responded how they feel about this, we looked at a weird image of Bush and Obama getting morphed into one person through several photos. This was used to example interpretation and how at quick glance we wouldn’t catch the morph and chose whoever it looks more like however its equally each of them. Following the image we examined the first millisecond of a council ad, and by looking at the first second of the clip we made all these different guesses and interpretations top predict what was going to happen later. Once we watched the full video, we did without sound and for the most part we where wrong with our guesses and it turned out to be a powerful video against domestic abuse. To end the class we again examined different pictures taken from a video and we had to interpret what was going to happen next and we where speaking the “language” of video. Then we watched the actual video and realized what we had assumed was completely wrong. We need to be careful with what we interpret..
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“Where does the sky go?”, “Because a baby is born in China, it must live in China, why?”, “What makes me own my own land?”; these are questions that Prof. asked everyone during class to provoke interesting thoughts. He says that we should look at our topics in the same way that we look at these questions. We should be able to analyze a visual rhetoric without sound and still be able to pull apart pieces of it and draw conclusions. Making judgments on visuals can be manipulated by people who put words to them after the content has been created. Visual Rhetorics can be argued in a way that is different from the original intent.
This visual argument will be the only visual analysis we will make. If we describe the scene very carefully, the reader should not feel as though they need to see the video in order to understand our analysis. Nothing is accidental; the creators of the visual argument show their intent in every second of the video. Prof. suggests that the professionals seek to make their ad seem more authentic and like a home-made video by blurring the scene and washing out the colors. The first few seconds of the video set up and foreshadow the rest of the video. We will choose from the four sample choices that Prof. posted on the agenda and make similar analyses to the one that he made for the visual argument he presented in class. If you want to indicate that someone has no money you should use the least distracting and most clear method of showing it; in the example that Prof. provided, the empty wallet does the best job of displaying the idea without distraction.
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DK9, to be clear, you’re not limited to the four samples. The restriction is that you select only from the large pool of 30-second videos produced by the Ad Council, but they number in the dozens, perhaps hundreds.
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Noted!
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Class started with Prof. explaining what I think is an update to his home page. Where does the sky go????? Lots of convoluted questions without real answers based on questions that kids would ask.
Visual rhetoric arguments-
George Bush morphing into Obama was difficult to explain. It left open why the morph was created, or what it was meant to show. Prof. gave us a couple examples, starting with making a picture about a positive change. The second example was a less positive spin, and it said that all presidents are the same. The visual rhetoric essay has two drafts, the first has a temporary grade, the second is (hopefully) looked over by Prof., and then given a final grade.
We looked over the homework assignment next, and a Radio/TV/Film major, commercial analysis is right up my alley. The example used was on domestic abuse, and we spent an extended period of time analyzing the first second of the footage.
The last thing we looked at was the Sample Analysis tab. The first example was looking at picture examples of being poor or having no money. The second example is analyzing a famous ad about giving to those who have less than you. The ad is Titled “Unsung Hero,” and it is for Thai Life Insurance.
Class today was interesting, and I’m excited to get started on the homework given this class.
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And I’m excited to see what you come up with. 🙂
http://searchassist.verizon.com/main?ParticipantID=euekiz39ksg8nwp7iqj2fp5wzfwi5q76&FailedURI=http%3A%2F%2Fwheredoestheskygo.com%2F&FailureMode=1&Implementation=&AddInType=4&Version=pywr1.0&ClientLocation=us
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In class we discussed how when writing our essay, we need to talk and describe our topic like we were to a child. Write and describe so the reader perfectly understands your point and idea. Also the class discussed static images and learned that there can be many ways a picture can be looked at. There can be many ideas and beliefs of what a static image may be. For example, we looked at the imagine of Bush transitioning to Obama and this picture had many different ways we could look at this. We looked over Portfolio Assignment 4 and said that each frame of the video had meaning from the very first second. Every frame and picture of the video has a meaning and describes the entire picture.
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Is it just me, LB, or is that video really hard to watch?
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In class today, Professor asked very thought provoking questions pertaining to counterintuitive thinking. We are supposed to use this kind of thinking while writing about our topics. After, we started discussing visual rhetoric. We started this by Professor showing us static images (not out of a video) and having us think about what they mean, and then showing us a few different captions the picture could have. These static images were of George Bush and Barack Obama morphing in to one another. After, we looked at two videos and described in depth what each frame/second meant. We figured out a lot of what the advertisement was about just in the first 1-2 seconds. Every frame has a lot meaning and everything is deliberate and intentional.
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Did either of those morph posters seem like reasonable uses of the graphic, PJ? And does it make sense that a single piece of visual evidence could “prove” two very different conclusions? What does that tell you about sources?
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Why is the sky blue? Where does it go at night? This childlike type of thinking is important because it brings the topic down to its fundamentals. This thinking should be used when coming up with questions for the research paper.
Two people may interpret a picture in completely different ways.
Assignment 4 asks to analyze a short video. There are messages in every frame, so it’s good to slow it down pause it, and really think about it.
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Does that actually make any sense to you, PR? I was just trying out an analogy when it occurred to me that the questions I was asking myself about money, immigration, property, and, yes, the sky, sounded like questions a kid would ask. What do you think?
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