Rowan Counterintuitive

0:00-0:01-  The setting of the ad starts off in the morning with a man who dressed professionally. We can conclude he might be working for a rich occupation.  Due to him wearing a dress shirt and tie with his hair combed over. He could potentially be looking out the window pondering about the day that awaits him. He is not stressed about it and looks content as he understands his productive purpose.

.0:01-0:04 – The camera is now shifted to over the shoulder and we see a lady, potentially the wife of the man. She is drinking a glass of orange juice while reading the newspaper. By these facts, we can now conclude that the time and setting takes place in the morning at the presumed couple’s house. The man is finishing up his breakfast and washing his own dish. The man shows gentleman-like characteristics. . Also, the man washing his dishes it could be potentially his responsibility to do the dishes everyday.The husband and wife have an understanding of the responsibility each individual has in the house.The couple seems to be a middle class family in a nice house. We can conclude that wife if possibly also has a decent job. The wife recognizes the man she has marry has ethical qualities, in such way of why possibly she  married him.

0:05-0:08- While walking towards his car, the man notices his neighbor struggling with a water hose. The water hose seems to be knotted and the neighbor, who is an old man, is struggling trying to untie it. The man waves to the old man to try to get his attention. It seems that man and his neighbor hold bed of trust. The neighbor trusts the man we can assume by that because of the physical language of the hand motion. The “wave” of the hand implies of hello.  The man untangles the water hose and starts walking towards the bushes to water them as a favor to the old man. The man can identify a person struggling and is compelled to help him.

0:09-0:13- The setting has now changed to a work environment. We see the coffee, alluding to the fact that he may be on his break at work. He then walks over to his co-workers and pours them cups of coffee. The girl on the right is enjoying her coffee. The man on the left is amazed of how good the coffee tastes and gives him a compliment through hand gestures. The protagonist is highly valued to his co-workers, since he provides a quality service to the office space as he makes great coffee.

0:14-0:15- The man has now gotten out of work and is grocery shopping, perhaps for dinner. The man let the elderly man  cut in from him. The elder man seems to have a wife too because she is behind him dealing with the groceries. It was nice gesture of him letting the old guy cut front of him. It is starting to get late and we can tell it is getting colder because of the jacket he is wearing.The protagonist is passive towards small issues and understands that allowing them to pass first would be for the best to make the line move faster.

0:16-0:17-The man is driving back home after a long a day and he looks down at something. He may have dropped something or his phone may be ringing or he got a text.  The time of the day is 6:40pm which confirms that he did get off work. He is trying to see who texted him, which could be his wife. He is worried about his individual life instead of being full aware of everything around him

0:19- The man approaches the traffic light and he is texting while driving. There is another car next to him and a man is driving the car. There is an African American lady sitting down on a bench waiting for the bus. There are also two girls crossing the street.

0:20-0:27 The driver next to the man looks over and he looks aghast at what he is witnessing. The driver next to him gives him a gesture and is disappointed that people he is texting and driving. The man looks over to the driver next to him who is giving the gesture.The man is confused as to why he is being looked at a certain way. He is wondering what he did to make the people stare at him.The African American lady just stares at him and does not look happy because of what he is doing while driving. She looks very discontented and keeps a stern face. Both antagonist are aware of his social delusions as he’s attention is partly focused towards himself.

0:28-0:31-The man finally understands what he is doing wrong. He realizes that they are looking at him like that because he was texting and driving. Texting while driving is very dangerous and is not the smartest thing to do because it causes accidents. He also understands now that he does not truly help society because he was texting when he was not supposed to. Society flows at certain pace, each individual is responsible for their actions. Simply the man changed the pure motion which lead to corruption.

 Your Son’s Messed Up Haircut

0:01

When the Ad begins the audience is shown a young African American teenager with a light mustache getting a haircut by an African American woman in the middle of a kitchen in the day time. The small kitchen does not contain updated appliances as seen by the small white fridge and the beige oven on the left of the screen; it is nicely cleaned except for the table in the foreground with two mirrors, a comb, a spray bottle, and a rag or towel. From the size of the kitchen, we can assume the house is similarly small and the family is middle class, possibly low middle class. The young man  is wearing a clean t-shirt and jeans with a bored expression on his face. However these clothing choices can let us assume several points. One is that the teen is not wearing brand name clothes, signifying either the lack of extra income of his parents or a lack income he may get from his parents as allowance to buy expensive products. Of course, on a less serious note, he may just not like wearing clothes from Hollister or Ralph Lauren polo tees, or finds spending money on such clothes unnecessary for contentment.

The boredom we can see on the young man’s face may be due to getting his haircut by the woman being a frequent occurrence. Having his hair cut at home frequently by the woman, who is possibly his mother, signifies the family’s thriftiness since they choose not to spend money on getting their hair professionally done. He is sitting on a chair with a towel partially covering his upper torso while the woman is focusing on the back of his hair with the shaver in her right hand. She also is in clean casual clothes, appropriate for being at home.

0:02-0:06

The woman uses the shaver, but immediately following the cut her eyes widen and an openmouthed frown appears on her face. She doesn’t curl her body into herself, so she doesn’t fear a violent reaction from the boy for her mistake. Her body instead backs up slightly from the surprise of her actions. This signifies a mishap in the haircut where she must have messed up and either cut to much or shaved the area completely.

0:07-0:08

The woman, who is confirmed to be his mother after what the young man says (based on the one syllable word we can discern from the video), leans closer to study the area she shaved as if in disbelief that she had made such a mistake. Her close examination can also signify her concern for her son’s well being. What good mother would want their son to have a bad haircut? The son, noticing something went wrong, shifts his eyes upward  with a propped up eyebrow and asks, “Mom?” and the text, “(A) Try to fix it,” appears on the screen. The boy does not make a fuss from what can be observed during these two seconds. He neither throws a tantrum nor reacts negatively to her mistake. The lack of a negative reaction means he doesn’t have violent tendencies when faced with problems and isn’t quick to anger when something doesn’t go his way. If he had a bad family life, he could very well be a temperamental and violent young man instead of the calm and quizzical young man we see in the video.

0:09-0:10

The camera moves to the back left of his head where the spot the mom shaved is now shown to the audience. The young man is holding a mirror  with his right hand to see his haircut. What is revealed is all but a single patch of hair in the middle of the shaved square. But how can he see the spot if we the audience only see his face in the mirror he is holding?

0:11-0:12

The camera returns to the front of the scene. The mother is seen to be holding a mirror behind her son’s head to help him see the spot. She is holding her hand up in a placating manner with wide eyes and saying something similar to “Like it never happened” at 8 seconds where the text said, “Try to fix it.” Even when he sees the “damage” he doesn’t react in a negative fashion and instead is quietly studying the spot. While the placating manner in which she holds her hand could mean the boy may react negatively, the audience sees this action more comedically as the small patch of hair in the middle of the bald spot makes a funny picture. No tension is found in this scene.

0:13-0:14

The mom is the only one in this close up camera shot with the text on the screen saying, “(B) Work with what you’ve got.” The mother may have shaved more of the hair to hide the mistake she made. The camera angle is meant for the unveiling of the haircut to be more surprising. Instead of trying to fix it, she chose to work with what she got.

0:15-0:17

The mother nods her head with a satisfied looked on her face as the camera shifts to the side of the son’s head. The haircut resembles a lizard lying on the middle of his head with the feet of the lizard on the side and the tail down the back of his head. The messed up hair cut is no longer obvious as she used her mistake to make an interesting haircut. Again he only studies the cut calmly, not appearing to hate the unique cut.

0:18-0:20

The scene moves to the family room of the house based on the sitting area and the television. The father and little brother of the young man sit with their backs to the camera on a teal couch. The young man has a smile on his face while looking at his family and another text is seen at the bottom of the screen, “(C) Show solidarity.” The father and brother are looking toward the young man, and probably smiling back at him since he is smiling. The family is a healthy and happy family from what we can observe. They seem to enjoy each other’s presence since they are all in the same room. Did they all get the lizard haircut? It doesn’t look like it because the son’s hair in this scene is not in the odd lizard cut and the brother and father do not have the lizard cut which would be obvious since their back is to the camera. So what haircut did they all get that makes them the same?

0:21-0:22

As the mom entered the camera, the whole family turns their head and a bald patch is revealed on the side of their head similar to the son’s bald patch at the beginning of the video. The brother and father shaved their head similar to his in order to keep him from feeling like the odd one out, reminding me of when families shave their head if one of the family members has cancer and goes through chemotherapy because of the hair loss from the treatment. She did not “Try to fix it” or “Work with what (she) got.” Everyone is all smiles and the atmosphere is light.

0:23-0:25

The final scene contains the mother finishing up the haircut as he holds the mirror to see the final cut. The mom went with “B) Work with you’ve got,” and shaved his hair in a less unique (not lizard), but nicely done, haircut as seen by the smiles on both of their faces. The mother wraps her arms around his shoulders and tightens her hug as he says “Thanks Mom.”

The final text on the screen says, “You don’t have to be perfect to be a perfect parent,” and the logo for AdoptUSKids. She messed up, but the familial love between the mother and son and the entire family can be seen in the video. We, as the audience, couldn’t even tell the young man was adopted. He never feared asking if something was wrong in the first few seconds, or feared the mother’s reaction to his reactions. The brother and father also treated him as if they were blood relatives as seen by their support for the odd bald spot if they chose option “C) Show solidarity.” The mother’s hug further supports our observation that she really and truly loves him. The meaningful squeeze after the initial hug is often used to show support and care for  the person being hugged.

0:26-0:31

At the end, we learn that the ad is promoting adoption of children and based on the final quote, “You don’t have to be perfect to be a parent,” is hoping to encourage parents who may be afraid they won’t be good parents and role models to their child. The fear of doing something wrong is normal, but because of the mother’s haircut disaster, something fun always came out of the disaster no matter the choice the mom and the family made. Either the lizard hair or the whole family supporting the son by having their own bald spots shaved on their heads were fun choices the mom could have made. The ad wants the public to see that adoption can lead to fun memories and days full of love and happiness and that you don’t have to be related by blood to feel like a family.

 

0:00 – 0:03) The commercial begins by stating the date and time of that particular day. Within the first scene is a man of Caucasian decent who appears to be wearing a short sleeve polo shirt with the buttons undone. He is also wearing shorts, with a hat and he has a low cut hairstyle with a beard. In his hands is a little boy, the two of them are smiling at each other. They appear to be inside a garage or storage room with the door open because the sunlight is beaming down on his shoulder indicating it is mostly in the afternoon between 12:oopm and 3:00pm.

0:04 – 0:07) The man appears to speaking to the little boy while he is holding the little boy in his arms. The man looks outside and continues to talk to the boy with a smile on his face. The man appears to be trying to encourage the boy to change his facial expression and look excited. As he continues to speak to the boy, the man stepped forward towards the outside. The man then looks back at the little boy and smiles at him, then the man jogged forward outside.

0:08 – 0:11) While holding the boy the man is outside and it appears to be raining. The man looks down for a second possibly because a rain drop may gotten into his eye. While the man looked, the little boy looks around the surrounding area. The little boy continues to look back and forth with the facial expression of confusion and trying to take everything in around him. As the little boy looks around, the man smiles at the boy observing the little boy’s reaction to being in the rain.

0:12 – 0:15) As the boy continues to look around the man turns to face the house, the man and little boy came out of. The man begins to jog back into the house and as the man is doing so the little boy has a smile on his face.The smile on the little boy’s face could possibly be from experiencing being in the rain. Next to the man and the little boy appears to be a white SUV which could possibly be the man’s or the owner of the house because they were standing in the driveway.

0:16 – 0:19) Now they’re inside the house, the man is looking at the little boy has a smile on his face. On the screen, reads the words, “It only takes a moment. ” Then a second later pops up the words, ” to make a moment.” As the words appear on the screen the little boy is smiling looking outside and the man is smiling looking at the boy.

0:20 – 0:23) The little boy begins to clap while smiling as he looks outside. The man continues to clap with the little boy and while the man speaks to the little boy the both of them smile as they look outside. While looking outside with a smile on his face the little boy puts out out his hand towards outside.

0:24 – 0:27) The screen fades black and on the black screen is the words ” Take time to be a dad today” written in white. The T in take is capitalized, however the rest of the phrase is all lower cased. Then the screen remains black but the words change. Now on the screen is the words “#makeamoment” the hashtag and the a in “#makeamoment” are orange, while the rest of the words are white.

0:28 – 0:31) The “#makeamoment” slogan remains on the screen in the same white and orange font. However this slogan slowly fades away but slowly fades away to a black screen ending the commercial.

0:00 – Ad starts with a shot of the lower half of a man on a rocking horse in the park on a sunny day.  It makes us wonder why there is a grown man at a park. This can also make people uncomfortable.

0:00-0:04 – The camera moves up to show the man bouncing and rocking back and fourth with a huge smile on his face. The man, who appears to be of hispanic decent, is wearing a navy blue sweat jacket, a grey t-shirt, kaki shorts, white socks, and black sneakers. It seems as if his smile is saying “Aren’t we having fun?”  It also seems if its hhis day off due to his casual clothes

0:04-0:05 – The camera moves to a white woman who is sitting on the park bench with a baby stroller. She looks at him and smirks but then diverts her attention back to the stroller.

0:05-0:08 – The scene changes to a white man, in a green jacket, makes a weird face and presses it against the glass of hot dog both while looking to the right as if looking towards some one. When it hits 0:08 seconds, the man removes his face from the glass and has a blank expression as if trying to see what the booth owners reaction was.

0:08-0:10 – An African American man, who owns the hot dog booth, looks up at the white man with a puzzled face as if wondering what had just occurred.

0:10-0:12 – Camera is angled upwards where you see the tops of the trees and the sky. An African American man, in a white short sleeved button-down, tan trousers, and a blue with whit polka-dotted tie, is bouncing up and down while smiling and waving to something/someone.  It seems as if he has just come home from work.  At this point in the video we conclude that the three male adults are acting childish as if showing that no matter what age you are you can always have fun.

0:12-0:15 – The shot shows the back of a neighbors head as they are looking over the fence at the man. He continues to jump in circles while smiling and then he does a ballet spin with his hands above his head.

0:15-0:21 – The camera goes to a little white girl, wearing a pink jacket and glasses, laughing at the man making faces pressed up to the glass. The white man then sticks his tongue out, puts his hands up to his head (as if making moose antlers), and wiggles side to side. The little girl (assumably his daughter) then proceeded to put her thumb up to her nose and wiggle her fingers at him. The African American man then looks at them both and smiles at them. The white man stares back at him and then continues to make another weird face at the little girl.

0:21-0:24- The camera shows the African American man jumping on a trampoline with his son. The little boy is wearing a brown, white, and green stripped short sleeved shirt with jeans. The pair are both smiling and jumping over one another.

0:24-0:27- The shot shows a little Hispanic boy smiling and bouncing on a rocking horse. The camera then pans over to the father doing the exact same thing int the rocking horse in front of him.

0:27-0:31- The camera shows the neighbor looking over the fence at the African American man bouncing on the trampoline.

0:00 – 0:03

Video starts. camera is tracking a middle age black couple through a grocery store, seems to be the dairy aisle. The camera is at a waste shot perspective, only focusing on the characters bodies from the waste up and their background. In their background are the shelves holding some form of products The camera is also positioned to mainly show the couple’s profiles. We also see the wife pushing a shopping cart whilst the husband is following close behind. The husband seems to be holding a jar, he has his head down reading the label on the jar.

0:04 – 0:05

The scene suddenly cuts to an extreme close up of the front left wheel on the shopping cart. there seems to be some sort of a tan mass in front of the wheel, disabling it of movement. camera then cuts to a wide angle view of the entire room. We see the couple as the center of focus. We notice that the couple have stopped moving and are now in wonder as to why the cart has stopped moving.

0:06 – 0:10

Camera then cuts to a close up of the wifes face. One can tell that she is looking down, toward the bottom of the shopping cart. Her facial expressions show confusion in her. In the next second the camera cuts to a wide angle low shot (as if the camera were on the floor) of the couple standing peaking at the front left wheel of the cart. The husband is still standing behind the wife in this shot. Both people have confused expressions. The husband then walks over to the front of the cart and bends down to see what is disabling the cart.

0:11 – 0:15

scene then cuts to a low profile shot of the husband bent down in front of the cart. Here we can slightly see the tan mass blocking the cart. Whilst bent down the husband picks up the tan blob that was originally blocking the cart. The husband holds the blob in his hands and is inspecting it, turning it from side to side.

0:16 – 0:18

The scene then cuts to a close up shot of the husbands face. he is inspecting the tan blob in his hand, and is saying something to his wife. in this close up we see the blob in his hands in the bottom middle of the screen. We also see behind the husband the wife peering over his shoulder. His facial expression mimics that of a doctor inspecting another persons limb.

0:19 – 0:23

The scene then quickly cuts to the husband standing back up to the same stance as his wife. scene cuts again, but this time to a wide angle shot. We can now see most of the surroundings of the room. the couple are at the center of focus in this shot. We see the husband nonchalantly drop the tan blob back on the floor, and the couple start to go on their way leaving the tan blob behind them as if it were never there or ever crossed paths with.

0:24 – 0:30

Video then cuts to an orange screen with text on it reading “small step #81: Snack on fruits and vegetables instead of sweets.”, along with a list of other faded out text like the one highlighted. other non focused text fully fades out leaving the highlighted text the only text on the screen. text transitions into another sentence reading “Take a small step to get healthy.”. More text fades in underneath the focus text reading “Get started at http://www.smallstep.gov”. Underneath that line, in small text, reads “The U.S Department of Health and Human Services.”. Video ends.

(0:00 – 0:14)

In the first fourteen seconds of “Word Pictures,” a PSA produced by the Ad Council in 1989, eleven photographs are individually shown on screen, each one of them visually portraying a different hand drawn word or phrase. They are shown in these photos exactly as they were drawn on paper; in crayon and spelled out in somewhat crudely formed bubble letters, intentionally depicted in this manner in order to imply that they were messages created by young children. I copied all eleven word pictures below exactly as they can be read within the actual ad, grammatical errors and all.

“DUMMY,” “PAThetic,” “BraT,” “Stupid,” “JERK,” “moron,” “CLUMSY,” “IdioT,” “I WISH YOU WERE NEVER BORN,” “I hate you,” and  “Youre Disgusting,”

These are all particularly negative and insulting statements, included within this PSA to indicate that the children who supposedly spelled them out on paper must frequently be exposed to such hurtful language in order for it to stick out so vibrantly in their minds.

(0:14 – 0:19)

The next five seconds of “Word Pictures” are also composed of photographs, this time depicting typical drawings instead of bubble letter messages. The first of the three photos shows a simple sketch of a little boy, illustrated with an expression of despair and tears streaming down his face, implying he was created in order to personify the sadness felt by the same child who drew him. The second drawing is of a dark haired little girl, also with tears streaming and a frown on her face, accompanied by the words “I am sad” written near her mouth, which insinuates a continuation of the same theme from the previous picture. The final drawing depicted in this segment is also of a crying, dark haired young girl noticeably externalizing her unhappy emotions which is unsurprisingly similar to the other two. I believe the Ad Council’s purpose in broadcasting these three drawings of crying children was to visually connect the word pictures from the first eleven seconds of the ad to how young people who are the subjects of such hurtful language might actually feel. The observable crying in the drawings as well as the little message saying “I am sad” in the second of the three are included to connect the dots and tell the public that kids who frequently hear things like “I wish you were never born” generally tend to feel dejected and miserable. I know for sure that I would!

(0:19 – 0:21)

These three seconds of the PSA show another photograph of a drawing, this one a crude picture of a grimacing, gap-toothed man with furrowed eyebrows and the word “Daddy” written on his shoulder. It is evident that this drawing, like the rest of them, was also done by a child, and that the man depicted doesn’t inspire too many positive feelings in the artist. The drawing indicates to the audience of “Word Pictures” that “Daddy” may not be very kind to or patient with his child; the way the man in the picture is drawn shows him yelling with his arms raised above his head and mouth wide open. Also, instead of a static image, these three seconds of the ad actually zoom in on the open mouth of the man in the picture.

(0:21 – 0:25)

For this last segment of the PSA everything on the screen goes dark, and the only visual stimuli are the messages “stop using words that hurt” and “start using words that help” written in white. The darkness on the screen comes from zooming in on the man’s mouth from the previous drawing for effect, done so in this manner to express that parents like “Daddy” say things to their kids such as “I hate you” and “you’re disgusting” that can really hurt them and bring down their self esteem. Based off of the visual evidence provided in “Word Pictures,” a viewer of the ad would most likely conclude that it is advocating for the better treatment of children in our society, and for parents to stop using language around them that makes them question whether or not they’re actually loved by the very people who brought them into this world.

(0:26 – 0:30) – nothing happens visually within this segment of the PSA that supports the message it’s trying to convey

Works Cited

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCiu966Nt2ucSkYzTGBQWzBg. “Word Pictures” YouTube. Ad Council, 1989. Web. 09 Oct. 2016.

(0-3) An older style, dark wagon vehicle is driving slowly through a parking lot at night time in the fall.

(4-6) A group of friends are hanging in the dark parking lot surrounding their old style, middle class vehicles.

(6-9) A man with dark hair and glasses is grabbing a blonde woman’s face as she is looking away from him. The mans eyes appear to be closed as if he is going in for a kiss, But the woman is looking away from him.

(10-13) The picture pans out and there is another young man with a beer bottle in his hand. In the background, the 2 individuals from the previous scene are kissing. Everything is starting to come together with what is going on.

(13-15) Everyone appears to begin departing the parking lot. The man with the beer ducks down and slides into the drivers seat of his car.

(15-17) Two males are laughing, looking at one another from over the top of the car. They are standing on opposite sides. wearing leather jackets. looks like an older generation.

(17-19) The driver hands his open beer bottle to the teenage lady in the passenger seat. The people in the back are all drinking while in the car with no seat belt on.

(19-21) Man in the back seat leans up and grabs the drivers shoulder with a concerned look on his face. Appears to be talking to him. possibly asking him if he is okay to drive.

(21-23) Man leans back feeling comfortable and puts his arm around the girl next to him. She appears to be his girlfriend.Once his friend said that he was okay to drive he got very comfortable.

(23-25) The driver missed the ignition hole with the key fumbling around with his keys next to the skinny brown steering wheel. This is an early sign that he might be a little bit tipsy.

(25-27)Driver turns the silver, older looking key.

(27-28) Flash of light and every individual in the car turns into a skeleton.

( 28-30) A skeleton hand and a human hand are shaking whith the words, “drinking and driving can kill a friendship”.