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Assignment 2 – Image Reflection

The purpose behind my images is to illustrate the growing issue faced by the film industry of online piracy. My images are therefore designed to depict the subsequent looming ‘death’ of the film industry, in order to bring to light the magnitude of this modern-day issue.

IMAGE 1

The gaze of my first image is of both the general public and film workers view that the film industry is ultimately a dying industry. The Gaze ultimately highlights ‘the power of the eye’ by being described by Manlove to be a creators’ visual 'drive' behind their image (2007, p.84). Therefore, being the perspective that a creator wishes to be represented and understood by their audience (Manlove 2007). In addition to this, the salience of my first image surrounds the lens which sits in the centre of the image and signifies film, further alluding to the act of focusing. Salience evidently creates ‘a hierarchy of importance among the elements, selecting some as more important, and more worthy of attention than others’ (Kress & Van Leeuween 1996, p.212). Moreover, the circular shape of the lens symbolises the circle of life, and how the days of traditional means of viewing film are over as the online world of downloading succeeds. Pixlr was also effectively used to place layers within the lens, to ultimately add depth and dimension to the image.

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IMAGE 2

My second image carries on with this theme by using the signifier of a skull as a sign of death and decay of the film industry. Therefore, the symbolism of the opening of the skull to well-known internet logos e.g. ‘sign up here’ ‘download’ etc., regards the images gaze of what was once a people based and hands on industry, is now turning into one that is being taken over by digital means of production and distribution. The skull is further portrayed as the given in this image -as it is below what is coming out of its head, and the internet is portrayed as the new -as it is above and rising from the skull. Kress & Van Leeuween explain that the upper section is used to ‘show us ‘what might be' while ‘the lower section tends to be more informative and practical, showing us 'what is'’ (1996, p.193). Furthermore, the black and white colour scheme used creates a mournful atmosphere, while the contrasting splash of blue signifies not only sadness relating to the loss of traditional film, but too of the colour of internet explorer which signifies the rise of the digital downloading era.

IMAGE 3

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My third image experiments with framing by using multiple overlapping frames to draw audience attention and salience to the drain, as three elements overlap here. Framing is explained by Kress & Van Leeuween as elements which create dividing lines that either ‘disconnects or connects elements of the image’ (1996, p.183). The signifier of the sink evidently portrays the images gaze of both the general public and film workers view, that the film industry is metaphorically ‘going down the drain’. I played upon this idiom by positioning the Hollywood text so that its vector directed the viewers eye to the drain. I further used Pixlr to experiment with opacity levels in order to create a watermarked image of a director’s clipboard -choosing to make it blue to align with the splash of blue used in all my images- to allude to how the traditional film industry it is ultimately fading into the background/past. Finally, the lights framing the image depict how the bright, alive, and wealthy perception of Hollywood held by the general public is no longer a reality, as the viewers gaze is drawn to the centre of the image to realise that it’s in fact heading down a declining slope.

IMAGE 4

The gaze presented by my fourth image regards both the general public and film workers view that DVDs are becoming a thing of the past as digital downloading becomes the public norm. The information value -being that of the placement of elements and ‘the specific informational values attached to the various 'zones' of the image’ (Kress & Van Leeuween 1996, p.183)- attributed to the overlapping yellow tape, guides the viewers eye to entre from the top left and to exit from the bottom right. Therefore, the viewer reads the front most text ‘CAUTION LIMITED STOCK’ first and is then guided to look at the DVD to add further meaning to the text. I evidently used Pixlr to edit in the new text ‘Limited stock’, to manipulate the commonly known signifier of caution tape which is traditionally used to warn or catch attention. Hence, the tape potentially symbolises film workers warning the general public of the repercussions of movie piracy. The use of the primary colour yellow further draws viewer attention and is therefore the most salient and forefront part of the image.

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IMAGE 5

For my final image, I ensured that it didn’t contain any text so that people with reading difficulties could still access the gaze and representation of the image without needing text to inform them. This therefore engages with the ethical responsibilities of multimodal and participatory communication, as when barriers are removed the disabled become able to be independent and equal within society (Davis 2017). The gaze of the image is of film workers belief that the film industry is metaphorically going up in flames, and therefore so too are their jobs. This is seen in the mildly transparent flame background, which adds the information value of symbolically engulfing the film crew. I further drew upon the 60 minutes episode ‘movie pirates’ as inspiration for this image, as it states that ‘it's the internet that has Hollywood's hair on fire’ (Movie Pirates 2009). In addition to this, it addresses how invisible all the billions of movie pirates are and how ‘just like an avalanche, you can't drag those people into court’ (Movie Pirates 2009). Evidenly, in order to portray this in my image I purposely used faceless people to account for the millions of film pirates online who hide behind their devices. I also used Piklr to recolour the image of the film crew into a silhouette, so that it would better contrast the bright and seemingly ‘conquering’ background.

Furthermore, ethical issues had to be considered when creating these digital images in order to legally abide by Australian copyright and privacy laws. It is stated by Hall that ‘issues having to do with authorship, subjectivity, and uniqueness are built into the very nature of the digital process’ (1999, p.270), which is why creators even more so now than ever have to take seriously the responsibility to either determine ownership or pay for its use. I therefore used a combination of my own photography and drawing, and already existing creative commons images from sites such as: flikr and wikicommons, and referenced all according to their prescribed copyright.

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Information References

Davis, J. L. 2017, The Disability Studies Reader, 5th edn, Routledge, NY.

Hall, D. 1999, The Original and the Reproduction: Art in the Age of Digital Technology, Visual Resources, Vol. 15, No. 2, pp. 269-278.

Kress, G. & Van Leeuween, T. 1996, ‘The meaning of composition’ in Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design, Routledge, London, pp 181- 229.

Manlove, C.T. 2007, ‘Visual “drive" and cinematic narrative: Reading gaze theory in Lacan, Hitchcock, and Mulvey’ Cinema Journal, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp.83-108.

Movie Pirates, 2009, television program, 60 Minutes, Channel 9, Sydney, 1 November.

Image references

image 1:

‘Clapboard background design Free Vector’ by hanggorocandra available at http://www.freepik.com/free-vector/clapboard-background-design_998382.htm#term=clapboard&page=1&position=4, Under a Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0) license, Full terms at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Egan, R. 2017, Sky, Self-captured, Sydney.

Egan, R. 2017, Wings, Self-drawn, Sydney.

‘FD35mm f/2 (Yellowed Lens)’ by huzu1959 available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/huzu1959/5455447683/, under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0, Full terms at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/.

‘Unknown’, by unknown, Available at https://pxhere.com/en/photo/707937, Under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, Full terms at https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

image 2:

Egan, R. 2017, Curser, Self-drawn, Sydney.

Egan, R. 2017, Download and Signup icons, Self-created, Sydney.

Egan, R. 2017, Numbers, Self-created, Sydney.

‘MacBook Pro Retina 13inch and PowerBook 100’ by raneko, available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/raneko/8229071881/in/photolist-dxb9nF-e3GDDG-8WoT2a-a1dUpn-4BgAPn-dKL2v1-aKrp3t-3AfdRZ-8Qrykv-fzTjBU-cWbBZs-4j4c1p-6WRGsX-6bCjYj-jZfwFu-DTgAER-8Y7QuY-8FcUNy-b4phzP-9eZ9rY-nD95s2-nXpmtp-afXcyT-hM3Dk-aHRzUV-L8ysd-88F6L1-gAz2ZC-dxb9kV-9bvDpH-6zWwR-deLXYH-4CMRiq-bDQ55C-fFp6EL-5R5Lb7-82hBZt-aPNvsF-hLPaiE-9DnrDU-cPgdBq-kBDgdH-9ZndQ6-92kQKd-2zzeA-fEAKox-sR639-eBPA5j-4BdVo1-7gsYcE, under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0, Full terms at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

‘Skull’ by Jordan Lloyd available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/jordanlloyd/7389124926/in/photolist-cfXcpC-tE7Xd-otd67Y-6mGnh3-9Lf9Ao-MxQ2ZQ-kGVSen-dRL3vL-m3UdTy-8p7HJW-83SHaw-cgRAGh-9a3ioP-bn4jrw-

12911640 (word count = 1137)

QYTo7-cEs3Gy-cs3YML-8MxZP-m1vt8d-d4rFQu-dtEPNJ-6RCv7y-asUwSR-bxBLvn-9AbmiJ-bBEkRT-7DYjLE-5GSPCZ-pHpDn3-8RNp3V-9T2Bki-RCo99-bczmWi-bi2fL6-QXeJL-9ptJgc-2eYyV-W1J7kF-4vhXHz-U4BFZm-nqrMgi-9tSCc-9mepx-nbqyXS-qEKmcX-98nn7e-51N9gf-f1VTv7-gRJRGT-nS91G, under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0, Full terms at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

‘Video-film.svg’ by RRZEicons, available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Video-film.svg, under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, Full terms at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

image 3:

Egan, R. 2017, Hollywood, Self-created, Sydney.

Egan, R. 2017, Sink, Self-captured, Sydney.

‘mirror-158091_1280’ by OpenClipart-Vectors, available at https://pixabay.com/p-158091/?no_redirect, under a CC0 Creative Commons license, full terms at https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

image 4:

Egan, R. 2017, DVD, Self-captured, Sydney.

‘Yellow caution tape’ by m01229, Available at https://www.flickr.com/photos/39908901@N06/9666386513/in/photolist-fJbKWr-79Bppx-65r638-7ZYdce-oTcJe-Epm3Cn-8YoGAo-8nojT6-8Ubojc-5ffhD5-4zpjax-6bdbiJ-azA5j5-p7hvW1-9gueGa-cAtxiU-hwe4W-8PWcJP-8N7q3C-f4aqj8-8QsxVX-4yF6GZ-58kXc-bAxkE5-6xa5NU-9nPRd-BamxDw-pDoRDz-9gGtHn-576Vxp-USQG61-duTeFC-65SqpJ-85Nwc6-6vhW4m-f3MsuN-57LSTr-Ycihd-27rNe2-4XfU4k-V4pQSx-7wKQ4D-rEQ9HQ-48r7x-5r6ZkZ-ncXDT4-NhmPLE-6vhWA7-31piKz-aPtQ7K, under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0, Full terms at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

image 5:

‘Film Crew on Set in Studio’ by Debbie Johnson, Available at https://www.pexels.com/photo/film-crew-on-set-in-studio-159898/,Under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license, Full terms at https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/

‘Plameny.jpg’ by MontyPage, Available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Plameny.jpg, Under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license, Full terms at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/deed.en

12911640 (word count = 1137)

COMMENTS

1. https://12928343dl17.wordpress.com/ “I would first like to say that your choice to contain the bulk of the image elements within the tv screen (this is also an example of framing) is highly effective, as it acts as a focal point for the audience and determines the information value of that particular mediums use -being that of advertisings use of televisions to enter the homes and minds of their buyers/target publics. This also links to McLuins idea of ‘the medium is the message’, which you could include in your reflection to further relate theory to practice. I also think that your choice to use the primary colour of yellow was highly effective in drawing attention and acting as an ‘alert’ stimulus for the viewer -possibly alerting them to the dangers of such intrusion. I would further like to commend you on the gaze portrayed in this image of advertising professionals and how they see commercial media as one big advertising opportunity. However, I think that in future images you should strive to portray a more sinister and deceptive view of this ‘everyday’ act and the manipulation involved in these ‘opportunity takers’.”

2. https://12928343dl17.wordpress.com/ Firstly, I’d like to say that I love the overall design of this image! I like the use of vectors in the arrows, which ultimately guides the viewers salience and focus to the text of the screen -almost forcing me to read it, which works really well to press the idea of advertising forcing importance. I also liked the use of the faded image of audience members over the top of the seats, however it would be even more amazing if the image had a more 'zombie' like atmosphere. For future images, I think you should continue to explore your concept of 'profit' mentioned in this post, and somehow try to incorporate money and greed -this could be done by using certain signifiers of profit/wealth e.g. colour green, gold, or dollar sign. To relate theory to practice you could draw inspiration from Chomsky and Herman when they bring up issue such as how ‘the media serves the ends of a dominant elite’ (2010, p.2) and how profitability drives all mass media.References:Herman, E.S. & Chomsky, N. 2010, Manufacturing consent: The political economy of the mass media. Random House, Pantheon Books, Chicago.

3. http://13034234DL17.wordpress.com/ I really love how your experimenting with gaze by making them surround well known quotes about journalism, however I question whether you'll be successfully making comment on one issue in general for all images combined. Secondly, the repetition of a black human figure being present in all of the images is very effective in creating a theme and constant for the viewer. In particular, your first image successfully uses 'rule of thirds' which ‘leads to more visually appealing photos than simply placing objects in the photo centre' (Mai et. al. 2011, p.91), and also guides the viewers eye from left to right to relate all the elements together. Your choice to include the colour red in three of your iterations is also great because It alludes to the hidden danger of journalism, but I will make the comment that perhaps this colour could be continued in the rest of the images.References:Mai, L. et. al. 2011, 'Rule of thirds detection from photograph', IEEE International Symposium, pp. 91-96.