Analyze Analyze [Blog 7]

To watch the video that I compared ours to, click here.

Both of these videos used very different approaches.  Ours (I'll call our video Joke 4) was a silent film, with just music and text, while the other group (I'll call their video Joke 5) used dialogue and no music.

The first thing to look at is the line in both videos.  They're pretty similar in interior spaces.  Joke 4 begins with an interior scene in a living room.  The afghan, picture, and pillow all points directly to our characters head.  Likewise, in the office space of Joke 5, everything is angled toward the character.  And I mean everything.  The laptop, papers, and even scissors are all pointing to him to accentuate his character.  Joke 5 also uses line very well throughout the entirety of the video.  I assume this is because they shot it all inside.  It's a little harder to create line for eye-direction purposes when shooting outdoors, like we did for Joke 4.  However, in the jail cell, our main characters head is framed by the lines of the cell blocks.

The second thing that adds to the subconsciousness of an audiences' depiction of a story is shape.  In Joke 4, our main character's head is very round, giving him an innocence and a jolly quality.  Our antagonist, on the other hand, has a very triangle face, making her devious character match up perfectly with the devious action she ends up doing.  In Joke 5, the main character has a very square shape to his head, fitting perfectly with the aggravation he displays throughout the entire video.  His wife and all 3 coworkers, on the other hand, have the round faces, which gives them innocent qualities.  Poor Todd.  Also round are the balloons displayed on the mantel and the cake set in front of the protagonist.  All this adds to the contrast of his aggravation and the nice gesture his wife tried to make.

There was contrast between how the producers wanted the audience to take in the characters of the videos.  Joke 4 was very active; because there was no dialogue, the audience is put in the position to assume how each character feels and the way they speak the text on the screen.  However, Joke 5 was didactic; the producer wanted the audience to know exactly what kinds of qualities the characters possessed and did this through providing the dialogue.

Contrast and affinity played an important role in both videos.  Joke 4 had the contrast of interior and exterior scenes, while Joke 5 was strictly interior (with the exception of establishing shots).  Both videos had a male and female character, and I guess you could even go so far to say that in both videos the females were the antagonists (always causing problems, those women).  And, of course, the contrast between not only dialogue/no dialogue but color/black and white adds a specific feel to each video.  Joke 5 is warm so the audience can feel a little more connected than Joke 4.  Kinda cold and gray.