The Importance of Auditory and Visual Cues In Film

While watching the iMovie projects in class yesterday, I noticed that the audience's feelings toward them were highly influenced by the filters used in the video.  At times it was easier to understand the mood or situation in the video due to the filter used.  The colors appeal to our senses so it makes sense that the use of color (or lack thereof) helped to create a certain mood.  For example, many students chose to use the dream or romance filter to depict a difference in sense of time and/or reality.  Another filtered used was the black and white.  This lack of color helped to add an element of seriousness to the video and a touch of sadness or emptiness.  Overall, from watching the videos yesterday, I learned that filters are a huge visual clue to the audience because it reveals the situation as well as mood of the video.

Another interesting thing I noticed is that music is a very useful auditory cue to the audience.  The music is what really helps to set the mood and it even sets up the tone of the video.  Sometimes people used just one song, other times they used multiple.  Using multiple songs allows for the viewer to pick up on mood or tone changes; using one song lets the viewer know that there is one over-arching theme in the video.  For example, Kelsey and I both used one song for our videos which helped the audience to understand that while her video was total happiness, mine was total sadness.  In Kat's video, she had an entire playlist because her storyline went in multiple directions, varying from happy to sad.  Auditory cues really help the audience keep track of the storyline and the sounds definitely tell the audience how they should be feeling.

However, Caitlin didn't really use many auditory cues in her video but she still got her point across.  I think this is because she still gave visual cues through dialogue.  Trying to tell a story without auditory or visual cues would be pretty hard to do.  Mike's video lacked dialogue but included music.  I think that without the music it would've been pretty hard to understand his video.  However, the dinosaur was engaging in activities that we have all experienced so the visual cues were pretty clear.  So, in my opinion, every film has to contain at least visual cues for the audience to understand what is going on; music mostly helps to "set the stage" by providing a mood/tone.

Around the World in 2000 Pictures

This is an interesting video I found by Alex Profit.  His video takes the viewer on a tour through Paris, Barcelona, Berlin, St. Petersburg, Shanghai, Tokyo, New York, and London.

Looking Back

The first half of the semester felt like a lot more reading and learning concepts such as time in relation to space and space in relation to time.  It seems as if our class also spent a lot of time learning how to understand a piece of art and to properly critique it.  The first two questions the class tackled were “What is art?” and “What is time?”.  These are two very important questions to ask an intro art class and the best part about them is that they are open-ended due to their philosophical nature.  The vast array of questions gets the class thinking, exploring different possibilities, almost training the brain to think more like an artist.  Most of the Intro to Visual Thinking course is about understanding what constitutes art and how to go about understanding and critiquing it.

In the first class of the semester we watched and discussed Kylie Minogue’s video by Michel Gondry for her song “Come Into My Wolrd”.  I really liked how he took the cyclical nature of the chorus in the song and visually represented it in such a creative way.  There was so much going on in that video yet the sense of time was not changing, just the events between each start point.  In the second class we watched Cibo Mato’s “Sugar Water” which was another music video by Michel Gondry.  I think that his artistic representation of time is awesome and original.  I personally like how he manipulates time to tell a story a certain way.  This brings me to “Momento” which is a movie that we watched in class.  This too had a unique timeline, making for a different and interesting story.  From the videos and the movie I have learned how to force my brain to view the concept of time in a different way and they have also taught me that time doesn’t need to be represented chronologically or linearly, that’s just the way the mind thinks.  I actually find it to be stimulating to think of time in a non-conventional way.

If I have learned anything from this class, it is how to represent sensory concepts such as time, motion, and sound in my artwork and the type of affect that can create.  Taking a look at Futurist paintings had really impressed upon me that it is possible to simulate motion even in paintings and drawings.  Comic books do the exact same thing.  I never knew the power of simple lines until I attended this class.  Something I truly enjoyed doing was practicing synesthesia.  Not only was it fun but I also felt more emotionally attached to my art by trying to recreate sound rather than motion and time.  This is probably due to the fact that in society today, we are used to constant, rapid movement—it doesn’t fascinate us as it did with the Futurists—instead we feel more of a connection and fascination with music and sound.  Perhaps that is because of the popularization of the iPod.  People are no longer looking up as they commute to and from wherever, but instead they are looking down, generally donning a pair of ubiquitous white headphones.  

So, to wrap this up, I think that the most valuable aspects of the class so far are:  learning that art and time have no true definitions, it is possible for motion, time, space, and sound to be visually represented, and that critique is necessary in art in order to improve upon your skills.  Therefore, presentation and discussion of artwork in class is an extremely important concept to force onto the class because it's the part about being an artist that is more of a challenge than one would think.

On a completely different topic:  our next project for class involves researching an artist for a research paper and presentation.  I have found three amazing artists that interest me a lot.

Jackson Pollock:  Inspired by Indian sand-painting, Mexican muralists, and Surrealist automatism, this abstract expressionist used action painting (coined later than his time) to create very unique works of art.  I like that every gesture on his canvas is a "liberation from value" (Harold Rosenburg).  I wonder if his excessive drinking is the reason that his paintings are so charged with energy.  This is a piece of his that I really enjoyed:

Piet Mondrian:  One of the forerunners of the De Stijl (Neo-Plasticism) movement, Piet managed to express the concept of harmony and order in abstract ways.  However, aside from his most popular work (pictured below) I also like some of his early work where he is inspired by cubism but is still using representation in his artwork.  As an additional note, I'm confused as to why he uses colors like red and yellow which signify anxiety to me when this piece is supposed to be representing harmony. 

Alexey Brodovitch:  A designer, photographer, and teacher of rebelling against convention and embracing the unknown.  He produced many successful artists.  His popularity came from the magazine Harper's Bazaar.  The works that I'm most interested by him though are his ballet pictures that he published.  He went against the documentary-style pictures of his time and kind of did his own thing.  I admire that.  I wonder if Brodovitch ever felt that his work was cheapened because of it being so commercial.  I think that I would definitely feel this way.  Maybe he enjoyed the mass exposure his artwork got.  This is one of his pictures from "Ballet":

Hopefully choosing an artist for my research project won't prove to be too difficult!