Understanding Media

Egyptian Woman Protestor Beaten at Tahrir Square

2012-01-05T09:13:00.065-05:00

I have been deliberating on issues related to ‘Commodification of Women’ and ‘Objectification of Women in Popular Culture.’ It has become imperative that a sharing of thoughts takes place amongst friends so that an appropriate approach or alternative perspective emerges to negotiate this complicated and controversial aspect of human behaviour. The proposal is to post a series of notes and for friends to respond with their take on the issue. These postings are a preliminary exploration of the issue and trait observable in everyday life.

There has been a mediated image of a woman protestor from Cairo (Egypt), which has become a showcase for Arab Spring, courtesy Mass Media. The picture has drawn comments and narratives from all corners of world. However, reacting to most bloggers' response to the Egyptian Security Forces' manhandling the woman, I am constrained to point out the perceived hypocrisy on the part of most Arab commentators.

Why are most Middle East narratives screaming about how armed personnel manhandled a ‘Muslim’ woman (the operative word being Muslim), her ‘blue brazier’ exposed and she robbed of her honour, dignity, and who now has to wear a veil of shame. It seems by implication that it is ok to strip a non-Muslim woman! Further the Egyptian male's media consumption habits indicate that women are viewed as a commodity through advertisements and other popular culture. But when a woman protester finds herself exposed at the hands of security forces, we hear voices crying foul. One can sense the male hypocrisy in apparent social sanctions where woman is a property and in need of protection. Worse still, one can detect the deep-rooted tradition of women’s objectification in a society torn with civil strife.

In fact, Egyptian society has consistently betrayed the sexual objectification of women, be it in their films, dance form or fashion. According to Rebecca Chiao, one of the principal players behind HarassMap, an online crowdsourcing resource that allows women in Egypt, to anonymously report incidents of sexual harassment, "every time you walk out of the house, you are under attack – physically and verbally." Los Angeles Times, dateline November 17, 2011 | 12:34pm, reports how a young Egyptian feminist and political activist, Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, recently startled the Egyptian nation by posting a nude self-portrait on her blog. She explains her action as a scream “against a society of violence, racism, sexism, sexual harassment and hypocrisy” in contemporary pro-puritanical Egypt. According to Mona Eltahawy of The Guardian, dateline Friday 18 November 2011 15.36 GMT, “when a woman is the sum total of her headscarf and hymen – that is, what's on her head and what is between her legs – then nakedness and sex become weapons of political resistance.”

It is pertinent to note that images of women, like children, historically become commodities during war or conflict scenarios in ways that men’s are not. Male patriarchal societies view them as goods to protect or spoils for the victor. War or agitation, like so many other things in life, objectifies women. Thus, the mediated image of the Egyptian pro-democracy protester is an act of enforcing the familiar. We are accustomed to seeing the limp, half-naked bodies of women and girls as a vehicle to market perfumes to cars to shoes. These images, also, form a familiar landscape of popular culture and reports of war, honour killings, and gender targeted crimes. Such a cultural conditioning eggs us to adopt an interpretive frame of reference for such images. We find ourselves adopting a posture and a viewpoint where the protester is a victim and therefore an object of either pity or shame.

In reality, what we see in the picture is a universal response of any security force when dealing with forceful protestors. Protestors, like revolutionaries have no gender but are defined by the cause and driven by a passion for change. Somehow, the choice of adjective used to qualify the protestor has left a bad taste in the mouth. It would be saner to use qualifiers like dedicated, passionate, angry, disgruntled, frustrated, or vociferous as security forces come heavily down on protesting Egyptian Intelligentsia.

Why is the 'sex' or for that matter even the religion of the protestor important - why are the highhanded efforts of the Egyptian army not the centre of discussion in this context? The two images on the right show security forces elsewhere on the globe forcefully handling protesters. Yet we do not hear about the need to protect the honour of these violated men. Social conditioning does not permit members of society to view men as commodities, therefore it is considered manly if you came back scarred from a war. But for a woman, these are scars of shame. The Burqa (or Abaya) is a symbol of women’s modesty; therefore, the protestor’s gender becomes the focal point as does the woman’s subservient role in a conservative male dominated society. One hears disturbing voices of young knights wanting to embark on a quest like modern day Don Quixotes to “retrieve” her “honour.” This mind-set reinforces the concept of women as property, which men need to constantly guard and goods that serve the victor as trophies of war.

Modesty and Honour are not problems in themselves! Many women may choose the veil for reasons they find meaningful and significant. Modesty as defined by the veil, becomes a serious problem only if it serves as an instrument to continuously and obsessively focus on women as sex. Modesty, as some Taliban, Wahabi and Salafi voices argue, does not permit women to go out in the streets rubbing shoulders with men as workers and entrepreneurs. Women, as per conservative voices, have no business to be out and protesting! Well, they are out protesting because they are equal in suffering; in denial of rights to express and exercise choice, they are equal in expressing their desire for change and removal of an oppressive martial regime! Oppressors have no gender; they are the powerful elite who have everything to lose in any popular revolution!

The image assumes its true potency and import once we liberate the ensuing narrative of its misogynistic fetters. Today women are agents in conflict and agents of change. We see in the picture, a saga of an everyday protestor facing the wrath of security instruments of an oppressive regime. We see no flesh, no gender, no shame, but an activist of a popular democratic movement. We see a warrior! Moreover, it is difficult not to see the photograph as a social document. It does raise some questions, and it speaks volumes… Let us not go to battle for her. Why not go to battle with her!

Reacting to Chikini Chameli – the official Song on Youtube by Karan Johar producer/director of Agneepath [film]

2011-12-16T23:58:00.000-05:00

Recently, I came across a link to a song sequence, Chikni Chameli, from a yet to be released film, Agneepath, by the producer/director, Karan Johar. Suspecting a rich fare of music and dance lurking in store a click of the mouse away, my fingers did the salsa. What unfolded was abhorrent and repulsive.

Firstly, the title of the song track reeks of overt sexual tones. ‘Chikni,’ a word both in Hindustani and in Urdu language, is an adjective and feminine gender. The classical meaning is greasy or slippery as in loamy soil after rain. However, the slang or vulgarised usage means appealing, attractive, desirable, sleek, sexy, shiny, showy, and slick apart from other regional variations. Nevertheless, it is not very complimentary to call a woman ‘chikini.’ It is a euphemism for carnal desirability – an object of sexual consumption. Another equally important implied reference is to women of fair or white skin. Chameli, a Hindi equivalent of Yasmin in Arabic, is a white jasmine flower known for its strong exotic fragrance in many cultures across the world. ‘Chameli,’ though not very popular, is also a name for girls in rural & suburban belts of the northern stretches or the Indo-Gangetic plains of the Indian subcontinent. The combination of ‘Chikni’ (adjective) with ‘Chameli’ (proper noun) has unambiguous negative connotation, the phrase implies a fair coloured seductress or a white skinned temptress who exists as an object of sexual gratification for the alpha male. In fact, sub-urban hoodlums while eve teasing resort to calling names like ‘Chameli,’ to passing girls. Many a work of popular culture portrays prostitutes as dramatis personae named Chameli. Therefore, the phrase ‘Chikni Chameli’ has, understandably so, negative social sanctions.

Secondly, the visual design, the mise-en-scène of the song, has a white skinned nubile woman skimpily clad in warm (yellow, reddish pink, and orange set of costumes) tones offset against a group of dark skinned bunch of young gun and laathi (bamboo-sticks) wielding clean shaven dacoits. The evening ambience, glow from the lanterns, and the dark green bush-shirts and whitish loin clothes of the dacoits function as a foil to the projected sexuality, foxiness, and implied physical vulnerability of the fair maiden - Katrina Kaif. In an another sequence elsewhere in the same song, Katrina Kaif swings from a chandelier above a horde of dark sex starved human wolves lusting to sink their teeth into the exposed dangling meat revealed through her underskirt, as implied by the camera angle. The visual metaphor of heat & fire for lust and youth comes into play when Katrina lights a matchstick by running it across her arm before lighting a dacoit’s beedi (local Indian cigarillo made from leaf and cut tobacco). It, also, serves as a signal to the stubble sporting, youthful, muscular male protagonist who is busy playing hard to get or is unmoved by the wiles of the gustily oscillating fair sex. Another cinematic metaphor reinforces the idea of women as objects of consumption, consumption as in alcohol and perhaps a possible subsequent headache. Kaitrina Kaif is seen vibrating like tin foil with out-stretched arms holding a bottle of alcohol in each hand as she furtively issues an invitation to a binge of indulgence and drink from the ‘bottle of youthful consummation.’ If we were to map the intra & extra diegetic gaze through the available version of the music video, most visuals from the song sequence follow a predictable pattern. Choreography is crass and unsophisticated, betraying bad taste. High contrast lighting ratio attempts to play the spasmodic danseuse in limelight and compliments her limited assets. In other words, it is Sheela ki Javani all over again. Karan Johar either lacks enough visual sense to conjure up the erotic and aesthetically pleasing text or is just a crude holder of the typical male gaze.

Lastly, the lyrics, too, are crass, bizarre, and vulgar. I will try to translate keeping the spirit, mood, and intention rather than transliterate the words. The opening stanza reads as follows -

(line 01)           Bichhoo mere naina badi zehereeli ankh maare
(line 02)           Kamsin kamariya saali ik thumke se lakh maare
(line 03)           Note hazaaron ke, khulle chhutta karaane aayi
(line 04)           Husn ki teeli se beedi chillam jalaane aayi
(line 05)           Aayi chikni chameli chhup ke akeli pawwa chadha ke aayi
(line 06)           Aayi chikni chameli chhup ke akeli pawwa chadha ke aayi..

(Translation to lines 01 to 06)

My scorpion eyes sting with poison laden wink...

This be-witching slender waist kills thousand with single swing,
I have come to en-cash thousand currency bills, [no idea what it means]
I light passion with the flame of my beauty… [Ignite male passion with her wanton beauty]
The desirable Chameli has come alone and on the sly, drunk on a quart of alcohol... [Implying that she has abandoned her inhibitions]
The desirable Chameli has come alone and on the sly, drunk on a quart of alcohol...

(line 07)           Jungle mein aaj mangal karungi
(line 08)           Bhookhe sheron se khelungi main
(line 09)           Makkhan jaisi hatheli pe angaare le lungi main
(line 10)           Haaye! gehre paani ki machhli hoon Raja
(line 11)           Ghaat Ghaat dariya mein ghoomi hoon main
(line 12)           Teri nazron ki lehron se haar ke doobi hoon main

(Translation to lines 07 to 12)

I will revel in gay abandon in the jungle
I will play with [sex] hungry tigers,
I will enslave the fiery embers [of passion & desire] on my smooth and soft palms,
Oh! I am a fish of deep waters, oh my dear,
I have swum many a river
Nevertheless, I cannot safely wade through the swirling depth of your eyes…

(line 13)           Hoye.. jaanleva jalwa hai
(line 14)           Dekhne mein halwa hai
(line 15)           Pyaar se paros doongi toot le zaraa
(line 16)           Yeh toh trailer hai poori filam dikhane aayi
(line 17)           Husn ki teeli se beedi-chilam jalaane aayi

(Translation to lines 13 to 17)

Oh, your charisma and charm is a killer,

You look like tasty dish,
My love will consume you, a piece at a time...
this is an epilogue to the events yet to unfold, let me show you the future…
I will light passion with the flame of my beauty… [ignite male passion with her wanton beauty]

(line 18)           aayi chikni chameli chhup ke akeli pavva chadha ke aayi
(line 19)           ayi chikni chameli chhup ke akeli pauua chadha ke aayi…
(line 20)           Banjar basti mein aayi hai masti
(line 21)           Aisa namkeen chehra tera
(line 22)           Meri neeyat pe chadhke chhoote na hai rang gehra tera
(line 23)           Joban ye mera crajy hai raja
(line 24)           Saare pardo ko kaatungi main
(line 25)           Shaamein meri akeli hain aaja sang tere baatungi main
(line 26)           Haaye! baaton mein ishaara hai
(line 27)           Jisme khel saara hai
(line 28)           Tod ke tijoriyon ko loot le zara
(line 29)           Choom ke zakhmo pe thoda malham lagaane aayi
(line 30)           Husn ki teeli se beedi chillam jalaane aayi

(Translation to lines 18 to lines 30)

The desirable Chameli has come alone and on the sly, drunk on a quart of alcohol...
The desirable Chameli has come alone and on the sly, drunk on a quart of alcohol...
the dry, barren, and drab community is blessed with joy & festivity,
radiance of your face...
engulfs my body in eternal grace…
my youth is brazen, O dear, [knows no bounds]
I'll lift all the veils, for I have no fear [transcend all boundaries]
come, share my lonely evenings,
in my words, you will find certain meanings,
There is ecstasy in this game...
Break open the lock for there is something to gain [wealth of my body]
I will caress and administer balm of my kisses to your wounds [wounds of violent passion]...

(line 31)           aayi chikni.... aayi.
(line 32)           Aayi chikni chameli chhup ke akeli pawwa chadha ke aayi
(line 33)           Aayi chikni chameli chhup ke akeli pawwa chadha ke aayi..

(Translation to lines 18 to lines 30)

Here comes the desirable…here she comes
The desirable Chameli has come alone and on the sly, drunk on a quart of alcohol...
The desirable Chameli has come alone and on the sly, drunk on a quart of alcohol...

In short, the song, which is a teaser to the film, primarily serves to titillate carnal instincts of the audience. It is yet another example of a pathetic display of ‘objectification of women’ in traditional Hindi films from Bollywood, India. Song sequences, in particular, have become show windows catering to the baser needs of the audience from male designers of cultural text in a largely patriarchal society. Popular films tend to present men as active, controlling subjects and treat women as passive objects of desire. Men do the looking; women are there to be looked at! The cinematic codes of popular films ‘are obsessively subordinated to the neurotic needs of the male ego,’ says Laura Mulvey[ i].Traditional films, Mulvey argues, do not allow women to be ‘desiring’ sexual subjects in their own right. Such films objectify women in relation to ‘the controlling male gaze’ (Mulvey 1992, 33), presenting ‘woman as image’ (or ‘spectacle’) and man as ‘bearer of the look’ (ibid., 27). Since, audience identifies with the male protagonist; they too are holders of this gaze. According to Mulvey, this ‘Male Gaze’ is responsible for overvaluation of the female image and to the cult of the female movie star – a logic that can help explain the recent rise in status and role of ‘item girl’ or ‘item number’ in Bollywood.

Femininity is a social construct, and thus the Lacanian statement that "Woman is a symptom of man." Some readers may argue that Katrina Kaif is not a passive player in the politics of sex. Is she not only educated and in more than one way - liberated, and a professional film artist by her free will. She [Kaif] exercised ‘choice’ by accepting a clearly defined screen role and, as well as, mutually agreeable professional fee towards the same. She by agreeing to be a catalyst in ‘manufacturing desire,’ and by her direct gaze both engages and deliberately challenges the voyeuristic audience, thereby, exercising her political power over her male audience – power that extends beyond the realm of the cinema screen into the everyday arena of life . Maybe, she draws satisfaction in this politics of power play by knowing how the spectator gaze (both voyeuristic and fetishistic) operates and that she can control and direct the erotic instinct, which focuses on the look alone. However, I have some questions of my own – how does the female audience view Katrina Kaif on screen? Do they actively gaze upon Hrithik Roshan (the male protagonist) in the film? Is there a guilt factor when women voyeuristically gaze upon the male protagonist?

The primary purpose of this uninvited splash of discursive narrative is to think critically about the powerful and prevalent cultural texts that surround us in our daily lives, and encourage working towards a better understanding of what our culture is saying to us through the cultural texts we consume. It is very important that we negotiate meaning about what our cultural texts say about us as a society. Nevertheless (on a lighter note), another tragedy ensues from the fact that Katrina Kaif is a strange spasmodic gyrator with little pretentions to dancing.

Endnote:

[1]Mulvey, Laura ([1975] 1992): ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’. In Caughieet al. (Eds.), op. cit., pp. 22-34. Also published in: Mulvey 1989; Mast et al. (Eds.) (1992), op. cit., pp.746-57; abridged version in Bennett et al. (Eds.) (1981), op. cit., pp. 206-15; originally published in Screen 16(3): 6-18

Should "Radio stations should stop the music at 11am on Remembrance Day..."

2011-11-07T18:39:00.010-05:00

War Monument in Niagara Falls, Canada.

In response to “Radio stations should stop the music at 11am on Remembrance Day out of respect for the vets http://kowchmedia.com/blogs/on-the-kowch.”

Steve Kowch, Canada's Online radio mentor to talk show hosts, anchors, reporters and tutor to radio and J-students at kowchmedia.com, recently proposed, “Radio stations should stop the music at 11am on Remembrance Day to honour our veterans.” It is difficult not to agree with what he says. All nations and societies should honour their men in uniforms, leaders, and the war dead. I am personally aware of organizations and institutions that solemnly observe a moment of silence, honouring the brave. Nevertheless, it is a little difficult to envisage a scenario where the entire ‘Commonwealth’ falls silent to honour the dead. We cannot enforce, forcibly, people to abide by such norms.

Therefore, it is a little difficult to agree with the proposal though I appreciate the sentiment! I am afraid that it may transform into a hollow ritualistic gesture meaning nothing. Remembrance Day, minus the radio issue, will always leave our eyes moist and throats lumpy. Nevertheless, should we not be doing something more concrete for the members of our armed forces and their families?

Moving on, do remember, many a time a simple, noble and well intentioned gesture may morph into a signifier of a dangerous and chauvinistic mind-set. Today we stop music on radio stations to honour the war dead; tomorrow we force clubs and bars to shut down, and the day after…only God knows!

Steve Kwoch, like any patriot with a reasonable dose of emotion, goes on to say that “it's hard to believe that an industry like the radio benefiting from a freedom of expression our veterans died to preserve can be so ungrateful on the one day of the year everyone else - including listeners - pause to remember.” Despite his well-intentioned exclamation, there lurks the danger of voicing what many media professionals do, “merely reflect the world as powerful groups wish it to be perceived.” I see an inadvertent hint of bias mobilisation and internalised preconception.

The whole idea, by implication, of the Allied forces representing the forces of everything good and noble and the Axis powers as regimes of evil, is a little difficult to digest. What does “freedom of expression” have to do with the World Wars, the Korean War, the Cambodian War, the Vietnam War, and Intervention in Nicaragua, Brazil, Chile & the Philippines. Or, what does “democracy” have to do with the support for regimes in Guatemala, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain & Israel. It is a simple case of "greed & self before the humanity" factor.

The so called ‘Great Wars’ were fought over a sharing of the pie – the colonial hegemony and accruing profits for industrial (western) societies through an overt and systematic exploitation of resources in Africa & Asia. Irrespective of the outcome of the Great Wars, the winning side would have carved a similar role for themselves, as have the present world powers. The Third World and the developing World would have continued to pay the same price, the dictatorial regimes would have plagued the poor and the oppressed aided and abetted by the winners of the Great Wars; and thirst for “the black gold” and other resources would have yielded similar results. It is time we learnt to read history without the baggage and the biases of the victor.

On a different note but on the same subject, the establishment, with the manufacturing consent of its established industrial order, uses events like Remembrance Day for a subtle drumming up of war-jingoism or whipping up of a threat perception of a hidden enemy or ‘war against terror’ or ‘the clash of civilisations’ white wash for mass consumption. A serving of a stiff swig of sentimentality through stylized night vigils carried out across the Commonwealth marks the ‘event’.

Or, is it that the Flanders poppy we wear, perhaps, is a symbol of our collective guilt for failing to do enough for ‘the brave but unsuspecting cannon fodder,’ and our failure to hold the ruling elite responsible for their greed, selfish pursuits and internecine policies that perpetuate & precipitate all conflicts & wars like they did - the Great Wars.

Ironically, our well-intentioned gestures of “lest we forget” serve a clinical cathartic device employed by the ruling few. The dominant elite (government) through the Remembrance Day not only deploys a pressure-valve technique but uses it as a diversion tactic, lest we discover that, we, the commoners, face the horrors of war and the miseries of failed free-market oriented capitalist policies because of the ruling elites’ refusal to change and mend their ways. That is why the ruling class fixes our premises of discourse and interpretation through the manipulation of the media. This process appears so natural and seamlessly smooth that most media professionals, like Steve Kwoch, despite all the integrity and good intentions find themselves convinced of the fact that it is they, who choose and interpret issues and news for the public. Further, it is used to enforce a state of collective amnesia, lest we remember that we possess the power, the power to change, and the power to undo the hegemonic exploitative structures & devices of the elites, the world over. We need no socialists or democrats to set our world in order – just common sense and insight!

The issue of ‘radio-silence,’ pun intended, is a complex multi-dimensional issue with far reaching consequences. On the surface, it is all about remembrance and honouring the war dead. On another level, it is about taking concrete steps to rehabilitate of our war veterans as socially healthy and productive members of civil society. On a different plane, it is about how governments carry out campaigns of dis-information to execute a self-serving agenda. It is about creation of myths and alternative truths to justify actions of the ruling elite. It is, also, a saga of silencing of the masses by manipulating information through media and established industrial order. It is like the Opium Wars where the governments actively encourage a state of lotus eating existence. This regulated diet, consumption of part-truth part-fabrication and often-fallacious information, is to prevent the public, the masses, from questioning the true intent or the agenda setting by the elites. The issue is about a “guided market system,” with normative guidance provided by the ruling class – i.e. the government, corporate community leaders, higher echelons of media industry, and few selected & screened individuals or/and pressure groups.

The Anna Fever

2011-09-02T07:04:00.024-04:00

Political and bureaucratic corruption in India has always been a major concern. A 2005 study conducted by Transparency International in India found that more than 45% of Indians had first-hand experience of paying bribes or influence peddling to get jobs done in public offices successfully. Interestingly, Transparency International estimates that truckers in India pay US$5 billion in bribes annually. In 2010, India slipped three notches to the 87th rank out of 178 countries in Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index.

The tentacles of corruption are spread everywhere and not just limited to government organizations. Recent instances such as the IPL scam and the Commonwealth Games fiasco underscore how big money attracts corruption in every occupation. Corruption is not just limited to India. It is a dark all-pervasive phenomenon, a malignant cancer, destroying the benefits of globalization in many poor countries.

Given the scenario, Anna Hazare is a breath of fresh air that has fired up the soul and imagination of a nation plagued by corrupt polity. Being anti-Anna would imply being corrupt, against the very aspirations of a commoner, and archenemy of the great architects of a young independent India! Yet, this holistic dictum of 'either you are with us or against us,' is reminiscent of rhetoric used by then-President George W. Bush in the run-up to the Iraq war. Yet, the more one reads about the Jan Lokpal Bill as espoused by Anna Hazare and his alleged supporters the more one doubts the true intent and purpose of this so-called mass movement.

The ever hungry for anything that can make as headline, Media made much ado about Anna’s tirade. Further, its usage of terms like ‘Team-Anna’ and making it sound synonymous with Team-India has gone a long way in firing up the moral fibre of a very decadent society.

In fact, Anna Hazare and his supporters were able to capitalize on the federal government's inept handling of the issue. The bumbling congress party leaders made sure that world saw Anna Hazare as a 'noble crusader' rather than a politically naïve activist who is using 'fasting' as a tool of blackmail to push an agenda, no matter how noble, which is likely to destroy the democratic fabric of our polity.

No one can dispute Anna Hazare's principal assertion that corruption is harming India. However, his demand to give the proposed watchdog, The Jan Lokpal, authority to investigate and prosecute Supreme Court judges and the prime minister is bothersome. In a typical democracy, judges and top elected officials have immunity. The idea is to protect these people, while in office, from politically motivated prosecutions. Moreover, the present constitutional checks and balances are adequate to impeach any erring political entity. Anna Hazare’s argument that the present system allows government to shield the corrupt officials & elected representatives holds little water. In fact, any supreme council or supreme watchdog agency, like the Lokpal, is always in danger of assuming the authoritarian role of providing a safe haven to the corrupt & the criminal elements.

His ideologue seems to go against the very tenets of democracy that he professes to be upholding. He seems to be an unwitting instrument to usher in chaos and destabilise the present form of polity. He is either an unwitting sleeping partner or an activist wedded to usher in an era of right-wing Presidential Autocracy advised by an elite panel of Dharam Gurus & Nagpur based Chanakyas. There has been a deliberate and concerted effort to brand Anna Hazare as modern day Mahatama Gandhi and Lal Bahadur Shastri.

However, before we jump to conclusions and my motive let us deliberate on the questions and issues raised below:

01.) Is Anna Hazare a naive activist marshalling the cause of anti-corruption forces or a messiah of truthfulness, justice, equality, and a new socio-economic order?

02.) Is Anna Hazare really the face of a resurgent young India or yet another front chosen by the ultra-right wing parties and other opportunist political entities?

03.) Are we that naïve that we would fail to notice the organized forces that are behind Anna Hazare's campaign?

04.) Why is Anna Hazare incessant on creating a divide based on dangerous politics of ‘Us & Them’?

05.) Why is Anna Hazare so convinced of his own virtuosity? Watching him on a certain TV channel (in a highly politicised game show, which was supposed to show case the talents of kids singing par excellence) he came across as desperately trying to portray himself as the modern day ‘Gandhi.’ He (in words and body language) did not betray a single sign of Humility, Selfless dedication to a cause, and Humbleness. He came across as a person desperate to go down as a martyr. He did not speak like a social reformer but like a political aspirant!

06.) If the entire nation has become so intolerant of ‘corruption’, then why is every elected government corrupt?

07.) Why is every official corrupt? Is it because we allow them to be corrupt? Or, because deep inside we are equally corrupt?

08.) In addition, why is every businessman/entrepreneur busy cheating, peddling, lying, and defrauding the Federal Exchequer?

09.) Why do we sell our votes at the political hustings?

10.) Why do we elect such corrupt governments?

11.) Why are known anti-social elements shouting themselves hoarse chanting ‘Vande Mataram’? The very hoodlums who only till yesterday were busy black-marketing, drug peddling, bribing, over-charging, cheating on taxes, perjury – in fact, the list is endless.

12.) Why are we busy selling our consciousness at the drop of a hat?

An interesting observation that is worth leaving the readers with is that the so called mass movement appears to be an upper-caste, middle-class movement as it seems to address their issues – such as bribes paid to the police or at passport offices. Peasants, vulnerable sections, do not fall in their purview.

Television Advertising & Indian Urban Children: An Introduction

2009-04-28T04:32:00.004-04:00

Advertising, ‘the hidden persuader[i]’, ranks fifth amongst the big businesses of the world (Chunawalla & Sethia, 2003)[ii]. Advertisers use advertisement for many purposes with many different possible effects. However, what guides the producer-manufacturer-corporate establishment to use this mode on consumers is the persuasive power of the medium.

Through television, we learn new behaviours as the result of perceived needs. NIKE and Lexus went from perceived as luxury items to needed items through advertising. Apparently, men now must have big screen TVs and women want constantly to buy shoes. At least, this is the message given out through advertising.

In addition, the way in which we buy products has changed. For example, there is a MasterCard commercial that shows a woman walking down the street impulsively buying on credit, and receiving a feeling that the end result is: Priceless.
Skills and knowledge have changed by television advertising immediate communication and awareness. Many insurance companies advertise their internet sites online, which can be used to raise awareness. They are not alone. With the instant communication age, we advertise the necessity of consumer awareness.
In addition to immediate obvious advertising, there is also the influence in television shows. Take the evening news, which often focuses on consumer awareness. Take comedies, which show various brands of soda used in a household, implying that everyone worthwhile drinks that brand. Take dramas, which show women crying into Ben and Jerry's after the tearful break-up. Our needs and wants have changed. We no longer decide for ourselves that we want products or how we want them. Instead, we allow television to teach us, since after all, if it's on television, then everyone must be doing it, and it must be true.
For many children, advertising media is a normal part of life. Anderson et al (1986)[iii] had raised a serious concern over time spent by children and young ones using or watching the television being upped to between 20 and 30 times greater than the time spent associating with their family The latest trend, due to working parents and nuclear structure of the family, indicate that children in the United Kingdom and the United States may, on an average, spend between four and five hours a day, outside school time, watching some forms of electronic media (Cooke, 2002)[iv]. This exposes children to much potentially harmful material. Kunkel (2001) suggested that today’s children in the United States may view more than 40,000 advertisements every year. The huge number advertisements on television mean that many children spend a significant proportion of their lives watching advertisements. Unfortunately, there is no such authentic data available from Indian-Sub-continent on television viewing habits of urban children (even for metropolitan cities!).
Recent developments in advertising for children indicate a developing tendency of marketers and advertisers to employ some form of animation in children's television advertising. This helps them to catch children's attention during commercial programming. The technological advancements, especially in computer graphics, allow a greater flexibility, variability, and creativity in the elaboration of advertisements. On the other hand, the practice of taking advantage of the improvements in computer animation and special effects seem to suggest that marketers may be experiencing an increasing challenge to capture children's attention. They are therefore compelled to be even more creative, requiring new and improved ways of reaching them, particularly because children of the 1990s grew up accustomed to technology, consumer electronics, and video games.
Commercially crafted words and images promoting from unhealthy foods to toys and commercial vehicles confront today’s child wherever the child may choose to turn, in fact even the commodities & services like paints & distemper to vacations that children cannot directly need are targeted at them in hope that they may act as pressure group for parents. Advertising messages designed to capture children’s imagination, appear on television and radio, on the internet, at the cinema, in comics and magazines, on food labels and even at school. Whilst most parents and many medical, health and education professionals endorse Government advice that consumption of fatty, sugary and salty foods only infrequently and in limited quantities, food advertising targeted at children portrays these unhealthy foods as attractive food choices.
The food sector, as other goods manufacturers & service providers recognise television as a particularly powerful advertising medium, which reaches tens of millions of children and adults on a daily basis. Some European countries, most notably Sweden, recognise the need to protect children from commercial pressures created by television advertising and have well-established controls to ensure that advertisements are not targeted to children under the age of 12 years.
The ‘problem’, in today’s media dominated society is that children advertising industry aggressively seeks to understand, anticipate, and influence the perceived needs and desires of young consumers. Because marketers have taken an increasingly disciplined approach to market research, they have gained a wealth of information about children. Successful marketing relies on correctly representing customer lifestyles and making products relevant to their lives. A range of advertising styles, techniques, and channels used, reach children and youth to foster brand loyalty and encourage product use. Some approaches are market segmentation; television advertising; sales promotions at schools, stores, and sporting events; multimedia exposure; celebrity endorsement; kid’s clubs; product placement; and advertorials. In addition, retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, the media, schools, and corporate donors are creating mutually beneficial partnerships to gain access to, and capture the attention of, young consumers. One of their long-term goals is to develop a market for tomorrow’s adult consumers.
Present Advertising Aimed At Children
Advertising hardly a recent human endeavour dates back to as early as ancient Rome and Pompeii. Town criers were another early form of advertising. As an industry, advertising did not take off until the arrival of the various mass media: printing, radio, and television. Nevertheless, concerns over advertising targeting children preceded both radio and television. The British Parliament passed legislation in 1874 intended to protect children from the efforts of merchants to induce them to buy products and assume debt.
Targeting children as consumers, however, did not become commonplace until the advent and widespread adoption of television and grew exponentially with the advent of cable television, which allowed programmers to develop entire channels of child-oriented programming and advertising. Opportunities to advertise to children further expanded with the explosive growth of the Internet, and thousands of child-oriented Web sites with advertising content have appeared in the past few years (Report of the APA Task Force on Advertising and Children 2004)[v].
In most western nations, the authorities try to protect children by establishing age limits and ratings. However, all children and their parents do not always understand the ratings, or they tend to belittle their value.
The term ‘Television’ has come to refer to all the aspects of television programming and transmission as well. The medium, similar to any contemporary communication means, is a link in the living rooms like a magical bridge opened to the world. Television, however, is perhaps the most influential form of media as a primary storyteller. Research on television viewing and children's socialization indicates that television has a great impact on children's lives (Lauer & Lauer, 1994)[vi]. Studies have shown that preschoolers spend nearly 30 hours a week watching television; they spend more time watching television than they spend on anything else except sleeping (Anderson et al, 1986; Kaplan, 1991; Aulette, 1994)[vii]. Nielsen Media Research[viii] has found that by the time children are 16 years old, they have spent more time watching television than going to school (as cited by Basow, 1992)[ix]. As a result, by extremely conservative estimates, children are exposed to about 20,000 advertisements a year (Stoneman & Brody, 1981)[x].
The pervasiveness of marketing to children is of particular concern because of their inherent vulnerability to commercial persuasion. Children under the age of eight do not recognize the persuasive intent of ads and tend to accept them as accurate and unbiased (Kunkel et al. 2001)[xi]. Kunkel et al, also, found that a 30-second commercial can influence brand preferences in children as young as two years old[xii].
Advertising has been shown to have a harmful effect on children’s health. For example, research shows there is a link between advertising and childhood obesity. The majority of ads targeted to kids are for candy, cereal, soda and fast food (as cited by www.commercialexploitation.com/what_we_do.htm, generated 03/06/04)[xiii]. As Brian Wilcox, Ph.D., former chair of the American Psychological Association Task Force on Advertising and Children said that “uch advertising of unhealthy food products to young children contributes to poor nutritional habits that may last a lifetime and be a variable in the current epidemic of obesity among kids” (American Psychological Association press release, 23/02/04)[xiv]. Further, many of these advertising and marketing campaigns use popular children’s television and movie characters, thus making the ads more appealing and interesting to children. As the Kaiser Family Foundation report, “The Role of Media in Childhood Obesity,” concludes, “(I)t appears likely that the main mechanism by which media use contributes to childhood obesity may well be through children's exposure to billions of dollars worth of food advertising and cross-promotional marketing year after year, starting at the very youngest ages, with children's favorite media characters often enlisted in the sales pitch”( Kaiser Family Foundation, 2004)[xv].
Indian Advertising Scenario
Advertising has a medium to heavy concentration in India, which is only bound to get heavier. In India, the advertising business is growing at the rate of 30 to 35 percent. The advertisement expenditure, from 1997 in the country rose from 850 million dollars to roughly 5 billion dollars by the year 2000. The year 2005 end registered advertisement expenditure of well over 10 billion dollars.
“Advertising started to grow at a phenomenal rate of 40% and more after ‘liberalisation’. Then recession set in. In 1998-99, the industry grew by 17.9%, with 12 of the top agencies zooming up by more than 20%. As compared to the usual 4-5% growth rates in the West, these are very respectable figures. As compared to the rest of Asia, the growth rate is miraculous” (Chunawalla & Sethia, 2003)[xvi].
Television advertising in India has undergone a rapid change over the last few years. Today, it reflects technological advancements in its sophistication and can match advertising efforts in many parts of the world. Children comprise a major portion of any TV audience, a fact that is capitalised by advertisers. Knowing them to be a captive audience, advertisers direct their advertisements specifically at them and through them at their parents. The children are easy prey to the hard sell, the flashy images, and the repetitive images that embed messages into their receptive minds. If allowed to continue unchecked, advertising in India may soon reach the stage of abuse and manipulation as witnessed in the US.
Review of Literature
Throughout the history of children's television advertising, researchers have criticized in different ways the use of television commercials directed towards children. By the 1970s, the criticism generally fell into two categories:
The persuasive nature/function of advertising and the possible hidden messages believed to be part of the advertisement, and the specific content of the advertisement per se (Winick et al. 1973)[xvii].
Winick et al. (1973) argued that while advertising directed towards children stimulated their materialism and consumption, it also encouraged conflicts with their peers and parents for the same materialistic issues. They further advocated that, because children have not yet fully developed reasoning abilities, they are unable to evaluate the conveyed message, which could contain non-rational or unrealistic information that could be deceptive. Children, therefore, should be protected from advertising.
Investigations on the content of children's television advertising grew in importance after the genesis of television advertising directed to children (Alexander et al. 1998)[xviii] in conjunction with the development of marketing to children during the 1950s (McNeal 1987)[xix]. Content analysis was the research methodology generally employed to explore the environment of children's television advertising. Albeit content analysis was a relatively new methodology for consumer research in the 1970s, it was already broadly used in other research areas such as political science, journalism, social psychology, and communications research (Kassarjian 1977)[xx]. Unfortunately, no such extensive study has been undertaken in the Indian context. However, some journalistic works exist but serious study is conspicuous by its absence.
Though serious research into children’s consumer behaviour dates back to the 1950s with the publication of Brand Loyalty (Guest, 1955)[xxi] and Careers and Consumer Behaviour (Reisman et al, 1955)[xxii], it was in the 1960s that children as a consumer market was recognised. The recognition was due to researchers expanding their scope of inquiry to include children’s understanding of marketing and retail functions, influence on parents in purchasing decisions (McNeal, 1964)[xxiii], and relative influence of parents and peers on consumption patterns (Cateora, 1963)[xxiv]. These pioneering papers were largely responsible for establishing the topic of children’s consumer behaviour to a marketing audience, presenting empirical methods and data pertaining to children, and communicating results in mainstream marketing journals.
However, it was around the mid-1970s that children-consumers related research gained currency in the marketing community. In 1974, Scott Ward published his article “Consumer Socialisation”, where he argued forcefully in favour of studying children and their socialization into the consumer role. The author defined consumer socialization as “processes by which young people acquire skills, knowledge, and attitudes relevant to their functioning as consumers in the marketplace” (Ward 1974, p. 2)[xxv]. Today, researchers have explored a whole plethora of topics reflecting child’s as a consumer, knowledge of products, brands, advertising, pricing, decision-making strategies, and parental influence and negotiation approaches. In addition, the social aspects of the consumer role, exploring the development of consumption symbolism, social motives for consumption, and materialism have been examined in detail.
The role played by television in moulding children's behaviour as consumers has been widely documented in marketing literature. Osman & Aliah Hanim (1987/88)[xxvi], for example, asserted that their sample of children from the urban district of Petaling Jaya were able to recall unaided a wide variety of brands for snacks, clothes, toothpaste and soft drinks as a result of their television viewing patterns.
Frideres (1973)[xxvii] concluded from his study findings that television tended to create desires for toys among small children. He further posited that television advertisements might not affect all children directly. Instead, informal communication between children tended to also create needs in an indirect manner. Robertson, Rossiter and Gleason (1979)[xxviii] have also found some support for a direct link between exposure to medicine advertisements and a child's beliefs, attitudes and requests to parents regarding medicine.
Behavioural studies generally focus on the extent to which children are persuaded by advertisements. More specifically, they focus on children’s preferences for certain products over others and/or by the requests made for products in response to advertising. Studies on the behavioural effects of advertising find that television has a major effect on the products children ask for and that increased television watching leads to increased requests for advertised products. In addition, television advertising creates misperceptions among children about the nutritional values of foods and how to maintain positive health. Health experts believe that constant promotion of high-calorie food is contributing to the epidemic of childhood obesity in the United States by encouraging preferences for junk food and contributing to poor eating habits.
In "Advertising Decisions and Children's Product Categories," Eileen Bridges, Richard Briesch, and Chi Kin Yim (2004)[xxix] find that the “nag factor” (see Glossary) is effective and frequent brand switching is common for households with children. It may be pertinent to cite Professor George Gerbner, dean of the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Pennsylvania. Gerbner argues that the mass media cultivate attitudes and values, which are already, present in a culture: the media maintain and propagate these values amongst members of a culture, thus binding it together. He has argued that television tends to cultivate middle-of-the-road political perspectives. And, Gross considered that 'television is a cultural arm of the established industrial order and as such serves primarily to maintain, stabilize and reinforce rather than to alter, threaten or weaken conventional beliefs and behaviours' (Boyd- Barrett & Braham, 1987)[xxx]. Such a function is conservative, but heavy viewers tend to regard themselves as 'moderate'.
If Gross is to be believed then we need to address one major issue that of ‘Established Industrial Order’. In American and also to a fair extent in European context this may be true but what about in societies where the established Industrial Order is from another cultural-set (western / developed society) and operates and seeks to influence the viewer (children) in a developing society like India.
Gerbner and his colleagues contend that television has a small but significant influence on the attitudes, beliefs, and judgements of viewers concerning the social world. The focus is on ‘heavy viewers’. People who watch a lot of television-programmes are likely to be more influenced by the ways in which television programmes frame the world than are individuals who watch less, especially regarding topics of which the viewer has little first-hand experience. Light viewers may have more sources of information than heavy viewers may.
However, Judith van Evra (1990)[xxxi] argues that by virtue of inexperience, young viewers may depend on television for information more than other viewers do, although Hawkins and Pingree (as cited by van Evra)[xxxii] argue that some children may not experience a cultivation effect at all where they do not understand motives or consequences. It may be that lone viewers are more open to a cultivation effect than those who view with others (Evra, 1990)[xxxiii].
Like wise, dominating our 'symbolic environment' is television advertising. It presents 'not a window on or reflection of the world, but a world in itself' (McQuail and Windahl, 1993)[xxxiv].
While absolute consensus has yet to be reached on the impact of advertising on children, many experts agree that television has a unique capacity to influence children both cognitively and behaviourally. Studies of cognitive effects generally focus on a child’s ability to distinguish between commercials and television programming and to understand that advertising is a tool used to sell products. Many young children, especially those under the age of eight in India, may have difficulty with this distinction; it is not until around the age of 12 that most children are able to comprehend the purpose of advertising.
Defining the Problem
In certain western countries, the authorities try to protect children by establishing age limits and ratings. However, children and their parents do not always understand the ratings, or they tend to belittle their value. In addition, many movie theatres and video-rental stores are known to disregard the age limits. Besides, some programmes and films are not even rated. The situation in India is far more alarming and unregulated (Vadehra, 2004)[xxxv].
Significance & Rationale
The study ‘Advertising and Indian Children: A Study of Socio- Economic & Political Impact in the National Capital Region’ assumes that the media have significant effects. Our minds are full of media-derived information and impressions. We live in a world flooded by media sounds and images, where politics, government, and business operate on the assumption that we know what is going on in the wider world. (This is true in case of population above the age of 18 years. However, in case of children, perception of reality is often, as many studies suggest, most prone to be compromised.) Few of us cannot think of some personal instance of gaining significant information or of forming an opinion because of the media. Much money and effort is also spent on directing the media to achieve such effects.
Ever since James McNeal (1992)[xxxvi] recognized children as a distinct consumer market, advertisers have been interested in developing strategies to reach the child consumer. Matching the growing interest in children as consumers is increased concern about the consequences of marketing aimed at children, in particular television advertising.
Children’s exposure to television commercials is all through the year; and according to Kaplan (1991)[xxxvii] and Aulette (1994)[xxxviii] children ages 2 to 11 watch as many as 22,000-25,000 commercials each year. On an average, children will see 420 or more commercials each week[xxxix]. Come holiday or festival season the barrage of television advertising intensifies and children become extra vulnerable to the pressure. Pitted against bright, talented ad-agency teams devoted to convincing kids they cannot live without a certain action figure, computer game, or pair of brand-name sneakers is an adult’s sense of moderation. Many children expect that the holiday season will bring them every gift on their wish list. The result can be disastrous -- disappointed kids and guilty parents. Further, there is manipulation of media content through product placement; that is, financing programming by incorporating a sponsor's product into a show's content (Linn, May 21, 2000)[xl]. The children remain exposed to this double jeopardy.
Therefore, this paper looks at the mass media (advertising) as a socializing agent and investigates whether advertisement viewers (children) come to believe the ‘Ad’ version of reality the more they watch it.
The study further investigates another hypothesis that Indian Urban Children, under the influence of advertising campaigns of corporate like Kellogg, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Nestle-Cadburys, McDonald, Parle, Leo-Mattel, Maruti Udyog, and Peers soap are slowly transforming from a Pester Group Into A Pressure Group through a case study in the National Capital Region (New Delhi, India).
The mainstay of this research is that Advertising constitutes a separate ‘social institution’ within society, with its own rules and practices, but subject to definition and limitation by the wider society. “The media (advertising being part of it) are ultimately dependent on society, although they have some scope for independent influence and they may be gaining in autonomy as their range of activity, economic significance, and informal power grows” (McQuail, 2000)[xli].
The influence of television on children's behaviour has long been of concern among parents. Grossbart and Crosby (1984)[xlii] have suggested that heavy television advertising of food products creates some concern among parents because it promotes poor nutritional habits and serious health risks. Another source of television influence emanates from the advertisements interference with the content and/or structure of parent-child interactions. Television advertising can create a conflict between a child and his/her parents when they disagree as to what is "best" for the child.
The advertising industry aggressively seeks to understand, anticipate, and influence the perceived needs and desires of young consumers. Because marketers have taken an increasingly disciplined approach to market research, they have gained a wealth of information about children. Successful marketing is based on correctly representing customer lifestyles and making products relevant to their lives. A range of advertising styles, techniques, and channels are used to reach children and youth to foster brand loyalty and encourage product use. Some approaches are market segmentation; television advertising; sales promotions at schools, stores, and sporting events; multimedia exposure; celebrity endorsement; kid’s clubs; product placement; and advertorials. In addition, retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, the media, schools, and corporate donors are creating mutually beneficial partnerships to gain access to, and capture the attention of, young consumers. One of their goals is to develop a market for tomorrow’s adult consumers.
The basic premise of market segmentation is that different groups of consumers have diverse attitudes, interests, and behaviours. Moreover, by acknowledging these differences, marketers believe they can increase their chances of influencing consumers’ behaviours. Segmentation involves describing the potential market’s physical, behavioural, demographic, psychographic, and geographic characteristics. Gender, age, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity are four ways that advertisers segment the youth market.
Marketers often segment age with several other factors, such as gender and socioeconomic status. Only recently have marketers acknowledged the importance of ethnic minority subcultures. Marketers tend to assume that the preferences and consumer habits of various ethnic groups are not significantly different among young children, but these preferences and habits become significant during older childhood and adolescence when ethnic and cultural identities are formed. The ability to understand and depict cultural nuances and the use of appropriate language are the two greatest challenges faced by marketers and educators in effectively reaching ethnic minority groups that are distinct and heterogeneous.
Television has been identified as the medium that provides the widest and most frequent reach for younger children. Studies, conducted in the United States of America and Europe, show that pre-schoolers spend more time watching television than they spend on anything else except sleeping (Anderson, Lorch, Field, Collins, & Nathan, 1986)[xliii]. According to Kaplan (1991)[xliv] and Aulette (1994)[xlv] children ages 2 to 11 watch an average of 26 hours of television each week. In a 3-hour setting, a child may watch about 30 minutes of advertising, totalling 20-40 advertisements each hour depending on their length and may be exposed to as many as 22,000-25,000 commercials each year. Research on television viewing and children's socialization indicates that television has a considerable impact on children's lives (Lauer & Lauer, 1994)[xlvi]. Television commercials use attention-catching techniques such as attractive models and familiar songs and jingles; they provide easily stored and recalled images from memory; they motivate children to retain information by highlighting the relevant, desired behaviour; and they are highly repetitious. Advertisers are now looking beyond children’s programs to reach the larger audience of children who are watching prime-time television or listening to the radio with their parents because it is an opportunity to reinforce the connection between children’s independent purchases and their influence on family purchases. Marketers who want to focus on children’s personal spending choose media that deliver messages to a large number of children in their desired target group. Marketers who want to take advantage of young people’s power to influence family purchases choose commercials or television programs that reach children or teenage youth together with their parents.
Heroes, heroines, and role models can motivate children and teenage youth to buy products and services. The celebrities most admired by children are entertainers or athletes. The likes of McDonald’s and Pepsi have used Michael Jordon, Michael Jackson, Shahrukh Khan, and Virendra Sehwag to endorse food and beverage products targeted to children. Celebrity endorsements encourage children to buy products for their status appeal.
The status products being marketed are costly, and celebrity commercials are becoming increasingly slick. Today’s children are contending not only with the celebrity appeal in television and magazine advertisements but also with peer pressure from friends who see the same commercials. Children must also face the financial realities of wanting products that they do not need and/or their parents cannot afford.
Some corporations (Nickelodeon, Fox, Burger King, and Disney) have created kid’s clubs. A kid’s club establishes an ongoing relationship with its members by providing membership cards and participatory activities that are dependent on spending money. Research has suggested that kid’s clubs promote consumerism, reinforce commercial interests by building brand loyalty, and provide a convenient vehicle to deliver commercial messages and perpetuate ongoing advertising to children. Many of these clubs use their enrolment databases to distribute coupons for club merchandise.
The above-sited issues in themselves warrant a further in-depth study on impact of advertising on children as:
Children represent a group of potential consumers, with increasing purchasing power, yet on account of their youth are easily influenced by impressions conveyed by adults. They are probably the most susceptible group of all consumers in this respect.
Children are exposed and should be protected. The adults closest to them, normally the parents, usually provide the first line of protection. However, this is a difficult perhaps impossible task for the parents alone, especially considering the enormous effectiveness of the TV medium.
Children cannot distinguish between TV advertising and programs. A substantial part of the research indicates that it is only around the age of 12 that most children have developed a more complete understanding of the purpose of advertising. (Even if children at an earlier age may very well be aware that TV ads are presented in a different form than TV programs, it does not mean that they are also aware of the commercial purpose).
Children look at advertising for adults, why can they not have their own. Research shows that children understand more easily the purpose of TV advertising directed towards adults than the purpose of ads directed at them.
Children are an important economic factor. To companies children are an attractive target groups as they become aware of certain products at an early age and significantly affect the purchasing decisions of their parents.
A large proportion of food advertising in connection with children’s programs bears testimony to the fact that companies increasingly tend to challenge the decisions of parents.
The proposed research’s premise is that the main kinds of media (Advertising) induced changes can:
Cause intended change
Cause unintended change
Cause minor change (form or intensity)
Facilitate change (intended or not)
Reinforce what exists in larger social reality (no change)
Prevent change
Any of these changes may occur at the level of the individual, society, institution, or culture. Heavy watching of any media is seen as ‘cultivating’ attitudes, as George Gerbner argues (as cited by Severin & Tankard, June 2000)[xlvii], which are more consistent with the world based on commercial dictates of corporate producers of goods & market rather than with the everyday world. Watching advertising may tend to induce a general mindset about needs, “must have,” and consumerism in the world. Some young impressionable minds on growing up as adults may exhibit tendencies of blind brand loyalties, or fickleness of mind, or subscribe to certain biased free-market oriented socio-economic policies, and or even divergent neo-cultural political mindsets. This in turn may prompt deviant or irrational approach to life, society, and social interaction. In western-developed societies, much policy and regulation is directed at preventing the media from causing harm.
In the epilogue to her path-breaking book, When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century[xlviii], Carolyn Marvin writes that the early electrical technologies - the electric telegraph and the electric light - were central to the new era of "cognitive imperialism", in which "Western civilization was the centre of the stage play for which the rest of the world was an awestruck audience”. This holds true today for advertising as the gradual westernization of developing societies is an inevitable consequence of the, perhaps unconscious propaganda of multi-national advertising agencies.
Operative definitions:
What is a Child?
Article 1 defines the holder of rights under the Convention on the Rights of the Child[xlix] as ‘every human being below the age of 18 years unless under the law applicable to the child, majority is attained earlier.’ The Convention clearly specifies the upper age limit for childhood as 18 years, but recognises that majority may be obtained at an earlier age under laws applicable to the child.
Though legislation has been enacted to make 18 years the general age of majority in India, 21 years continues to be the upper limit for childhood for some purposes, partly due to the influence of nineteenth-century English Law and partly due to current exigencies (Child and Law, 1998)[l] For example, India recognises 21 years as the age of majority in circumstances where a guardian has been appointed by the Court for a child below the age of 18 years.[li]
Through out the study, the term child / children refer to young people aged between 8 years and 12 years only. Children are economically dependent and not capable of reasoning at the adult level, and considered emotionally and economically vulnerable. According to Allen Kanner (October, 2003)[lii], a child psychologist, “They (children) are less sophisticated in terms of analyzing the purpose of an advertisement, and the strategies and manipulation being used to convince them…”
What is advertising?
Advertising can be recognised and defined as openly paid, non-personal communication forms used with persuasive intent by identified sources through various media.
An analysis of each element of this definition follows:
Openly Paid: Advertising is openly (and directly) paid for as against publicity, which is not openly paid for by the source (therefore, the source, meaning the sponsor, is not identified). Since it is paid, the sponsor (identified source) has control over the form, content and scheduling of the advertisement.
Non-personal communication: This phrase excludes any form of personal selling, which is usually done on a person-to-person or on a door-to-door basis. If it is a person-to-person presentation, it does not strictly constitute advertising.
Forms: Advertising may be in any form of presentation. It may be a sign, a symbol, and an illustration, an ad message in a magazine or newspaper, a commercial on the radio or on television, a circular despatched through the mail or a pamphlet handed out at a street corner, a sketch or a message on a hoarding or a poster or a banner on the Net. Any form of presentation, which an advertiser imagines will fulfil the requirements of an ad can be employed. The proposed study shall, however, be confined to advertising on electronic media namely Television.
Persuasive Intent:
The message of any advertising is always to ‘persuade’ the target audience to realise the potential, merits, and importance of the product or goods, services, and Ideas for Action and awaken the sleeping desire or encourage a need to purchase the same. The text prompts the audience to explore, evaluate, and realise the need for the product or service and thereby prompt the target audience member to undertake a purchasing decision.
All this can be done by attracting attention, rousing interest, building desire, and obtaining action (which will result in successfully selling of goods, services, Ideas for Action.).
Identified Sources:
The sponsor (source) of any advertising material is always openly identified. It may be so by his or her company’s name or brand name or both. If, in an ad, the sponsor is not identified and it is not paid for its use of the media in which it has appeared, the message is considered publicity. The publicity material, when prepared, may be paid for by its sponsor; but the media that carries it does so free of charge.
Advertising is a disarmingly simple and extraordinarily complex phenomenon. The study of implications of this phenomenon or advertology, as Isaac Asimov called it, is based on three traditional premises:
That media (advertising) is a part of the larger whole of the society and business system.
That the receiver of the advertising message is at the heart of the advertising transaction: Advertising seems to perform most efficiently when it interprets its subject matters in terms that are ‘meaningful’ to the lives of those it seeks to influence.
That advertising does not lend itself to oversimplification and facile categorisation. Hence, the various forms of advertising (retail, business, trade, idea, and etcetera) and is referred through out the study as a whole rather than treated as things apart or different forms since the intent in case of addressing the young consumer is the same.
Aims & Objectives
To understand responses of children about selected advertising.
To ascertain persuasive power of advertising on children in urban India has both short-term and long-term effects, which are small, gradual, indirect but cumulative and significant.
Explore the effects of advertisement viewing on the attitudes of viewers (urban Indian children).
Explore possible “first order effects” (general beliefs about the everyday world) and “second order effects” (specific attitudes) on urban Indian children.
A policy recommendation be developed on the basis of which i) a ban for children under 12 be recommended or ii) a rational, stringent set of guidelines and regulations governing advertising for children.
[i] Packard, Vance (1961). The Hidden Persuaders. Pocket. later Printing. Mass Market Paperback.
[ii] Chunawalla, S., A., & Sethia, K., C. (2003). Foundations Of Advertising – Theory & Practice (5th Edition). Himalaya Publishing House. Mumbai
[iii] Anderson, D. R., Lorch, E. P., Field, D. E., Collins, P., & Nathan, J. G. (1986). ‘Television viewing at home: Age trends in visual attention and time with TV’. Child Development, 57, p. 1024-1033.
[iv] Cooke, R. (2002). Kids and Media. International Journal of Advertising and Marketing to children, 3(4), p.29-36.
[v] American Psychological Association (2004), "Report of the APA Task Force on Advertising and Children", American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, available at: www.apa.org/releases/childrenads.pdf.
[vi] Lauer, R. H., & Lauer, J. C. (1994). Marriage and family: The quest for intimacy. Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark.
[vii] Anderson, D. R., Lorch, E. P., Field, D. E., Collins, P., & Nathan, J. G. (1986). Television viewing at home: Age trends in visual attention and time with TV. Child Development, 57, p. 1024-1033.
Kaplan, P. (1991). A Child's Odyssey. St. Paul, M N: West Publishing.
Aulette, J. R. (1994). Changing families. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
[viii] See Glossary
[ix] Basow, S. A. (1992). Gender stereotypes and roles (3rd ed.). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole Publishing.
[x] Stoneman, Z., & Brody, G. H. (1981). Peers as mediators of television food advertisements aimed at children. Developmental Psychology, 17, p. 853-858.
[xi] Kunkel, Dale, “Children and television advertising,” Dorothy G. Singer & Jerome L. Singer, 2001 edition, Handbook of Children and the Media, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. pp. 375-393.
[xii] Kunkel, Dale, “Children and television advertising,” Dorothy G. Singer & Jerome L. Singer, 2001 edition, Handbook of Children and the Media, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. pp. 375-393.
[xiii] Stop Commercial Exploitation of Children, http://www.commercialexploitation.com/what_we_do.htm, generated 6/3/04.
[xiv] “Television Advertising Leads to Unhealthy Habits in Children; Says APA Task Force,” American Psychological Association press release, 2/23/04, http://www.apa.org/releases/childrenads.html, generated 6/4/04.
[xv] Kaiser Family Foundation, The Role of Media in Childhood Obesity, February 2004, p. 10, http://www.kff.org/entmedia/loader.cfm?url=/commonspot/security/getfile.cfm&PageID=32022, generated 6/6/04.
[xvi] Chunawalla, S., A., & Sethia, K., C. (2003). Foundations Of Advertising – Theory & Practice (5th Edition). Himalaya Publishing House. Mumbai. (2p)
[xvii] Winick, Charles, Lorne G. Williamson, Stuart F. Chuzmir, and Mariann P. Winick (1973), Children's Television Commercials: A Content Analysis, New York: Praeger.
[xviii] Alexander, Alison, Louise M. Benjamin, Keisha Hoerrner, and Darrell Roe (1998),""We'll Be Back In a Moment": A Content Analysis of Advertisements in Children's Television in the 1950s," Journal of Advertising, 27 (3), p. 1-8.
[xix] McNeal, James U. (1987), Children As Consumers: Insights And Implications, Lexington: Lexington Books.
[xx] Kassarjian, Harold H. (1977), "Content Analysis in Consumer Research," Journal of Consumer Research, 4 (June), p. 8-18.
[xxi] Guest, Lester P. (1955), “Brand Loyalty—Twelve Years Later,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 39 (December), p. 405–408
[xxii] Reisman, David and Howard Roseborough (1955), “Careers and Consumer Behavior,” in Consumer Behavior, Vol. 2, The Life Cycle and Consumer Behavior, ed. Lincoln Clark, New York: New York University Press, p. 1–18
[xxiii] McNeal, James U. (1964), Children as Consumers, Austin: Bureau of Business Research, University of Texas at Austin.
[xxiv] Cateora, Phillip R. (1963), An Analysis of the Teenage Market, Austin: University of Texas Bureau of Business Research.
[xxv] Ward, Scott (1974), “Consumer Socialization,” Journal of Consumer Research, 1 (September), p. 1–14.
[xxvi] Osman Md Zain & Aliah Hanim Mohd Salleh. 1987/88. Patterns of Television Viewing by Malaysian Children in the Urban District of Petaling Jaya." Journal Pengurusan 6 & 7: p. 69-80.
[xxvii] Frideres, James S. 1973. "Advertising, Buying Patterns and Children." Journal of Advertising Research 13, 1 (February): p. 34-36.
[xxviii] Robertson, T, Rossiter, J R & Gleason, T C. 1979. "Children's Receptivity to Proprietary Medicine Advertising." Journal of Consumer Research 6 (December): p. 247-255.
[xxix] Eileen Bridges, Richard A. Briesch, and Chi Kin (Bennett) Yim (August 2004). “Advertising Decisions and “Children’s” Product Categories. A SMU Cox Research Paper for A.C. Nielsen Company
[xxx] Boyd-Barrett, Oliver & Peter Braham (eds.) (1987): Media, Knowledge & Power. London: Croom Helm. (100p)
[xxxi] Evra, Judith Page van. (1990). Television and child development. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, p. 167
[xxxii] Evra, Judith Page van. (1990). Television and child development. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, p. 167
[xxxiii] Evra, Judith Page van. (1990). Television and child development. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates, p. 171
[xxxiv] McQuail, Denis & Sven Windahl (1993): Communication Models for the Study of Mass Communication. London: Longman (p. 100)
[xxxv] Vadehra, Sharad. “Advertising to children in India”. Young Consumers Quarter 4, 2004
[xxxvi] McNeal, James U. (1992) Kids as Customers: A Handbook of Marketing to Children. Lexington Books, nd, c1992
[xxxvii] Kaplan, P. (1991). A Child's Odyssey. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing.
[xxxviii] Aulette, J. R. (1994). Changing Families. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
[xxxix] Poussaint, Alvin and Linn, Susan. In their web article: Surviving Television Advertising. on http://fun.familyeducation.com/television/advertising/34912.html claimed this figure to be 576 television advertisements per week.
[xl] Linn, Susan (May 21, 2000). How about "The Sopranos" sell . . . soda? Product messages of big time sponsors leach into shows and scripts. © 2000 Globe Newspaper Company
[xli] Denis McQuail, Mass Communication Theory, fourth ed. 2000, SAGE Publications
[xlii] Grossbart, S L & Crosby, L A. 1984. "Understanding the Bases of Parental Concern and Reaction to Children's Food Advertising.” Journal of Marketing 48 (Summer): p. 79-92.
[xliii] Anderson, D. R., Lorch, E. P., Field, D. E., Collins, P., & Nathan, J. G. (1986). ‘Television viewing at home: Age trends in visual attention and time with TV’. Child Development, 57, p. 1024-1033.
[xliv] Kaplan, P. (1991). A Child's Odyssey. St. Paul, MN: West Publishing.
[xlv] Aulette, J. R. (1994). Changing Families. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Publishing Company.
[xlvi] Lauer, R. H., & Lauer, J. C. (1994). Marriage and Family: The Quest for Intimacy. Madison, WI: Brown & Benchmark.
[xlvii] Severin, Werner J. & Tankard, James W. (June 2000) Communication Theories: Origins, Methods and Uses in the Mass Media (5th Edition), Allyn & Bacon; 5 edition (June 19, 2000), p. 299-301.
[xlviii] Marvin, Carolyn (1988). When Old Technologies Were New: Thinking About Electric Communication in the Late Nineteenth Century. Oxford University Press; Reprint edition (May 1990)
[xlix] Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). The United Nations adopted the ‘Convention on the Rights of the Child’ (CRC) in 1989. In 1992, just three years later, India acceded to the CRC, becoming one of the first few countries in the world to do so.
[l] Child and Law, Indian Council for Child Welfare, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, 1998, page 210.
[li] Child and Law, Indian Council for Child Welfare, Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India, 1998, page 210.
[lii] Kasser, Tim and Kanner, Allen D. (Eds). Psychology and Consumer Culture: The Struggle for a Good Life in a Materialistic World. American Psychological Association (APA) (October 2003).

What is Gestalt psychology?

2008-11-25T22:43:00.062-05:00

Gestalt psychology is a school of thought that looks at the human mind and behaviour as a whole. Originating in the work of Max Wertheimer, Gestalt psychology formed partially as a response to the structuralism of Wilhelm Wundt. The development of this area of psychology was influenced by a number of thinkers, including Immanuel Kant, Ernst Mach and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. The word Gestalt in German literally means "shape" or "figure."

Wilhelm Wundt is best known for establishing the first psychology lab in Liepzig, Germany, generally considered the official beginning of psychology as a field of science separate from philosophy and physiology. In addition to this accomplishment, Wundt also established the psychology journal Philosophical Studies. Structuralism was the first school of psychology and focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components. Researchers tried to understand the basic elements of consciousness using a method known as introspection. By today’s scientific standards, the experimental methods used to study the structures of the mind were too subjective—the use of introspection led to a lack of reliability in results.
Other critics argue that structuralism was too concerned with internal behaviour, which is not directly observable and cannot be accurately measured.

Gestalt psychology is a theory of mind and brain that proposes that the operational principle of the brain is holistic (meaning that “the whole is more than the sum of its parts”, that is the idea that all the properties of a given system (biological, chemical, social, economic, mental, linguistic, etc.) cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone. Instead, the system as a whole determines in an important way how the parts behave. Therefore, reductionism is sometimes seen as the opposite of holism.), parallel, and analogue, with self-organizing tendencies; or, that the whole is different from the sum of its parts. The Gestalt effect refers to the form-forming capability of our senses, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of figures and whole forms instead of just a collection of simple lines and curves.

"The fundamental "formula" of Gestalt theory might be expressed in this way,” Max Wertheimer wrote in 1924. “There are wholes, the behaviour of which is not determined by that of their individual elements, but where the part-processes are themselves determined by the intrinsic nature of the whole. It is the hope of Gestalt theory to determine the nature of such wholes.”

Have you ever noticed how a series of flashing lights often appears to be moving, such as neon signs or strands of Christmas lights? According to Gestalt psychology, this apparent movement happens because our minds fill in missing information. This belief that the whole is greater than the sum of the individual parts led to the discovery of several different phenomena that occur during perception. Based upon this belief, Gestalt psychologists developed a set of principles to explain perceptual organization, or how smaller objects are grouped to form larger ones. These principles are often referred to as the “laws of perceptual organization.”

Prägnanz (German. n. conciseness, concision, quality of being brief and comprehensive, succinctness) is the fundamental principle of gestalt perception, also referred to as the law of prägnanz, which says that we tend to order our experience in a manner that is regular, orderly, symmetric, and simple. According to Robert Sternberg (See Cognitive Psychology, 3rd Ed., Thomson Wadsworth© 2003), Gestalt psychologists attempt to discover refinements of the law of prägnanz, and this involves writing down laws which hypothetically allow us to predict the interpretation of sensation, what are often called “gestalt laws.” However, it is important to note that while Gestalt psychologists call these phenomena “laws,” a more accurate term would be “principles of perceptual organization.” These principles are much like heuristics, which are mental shortcuts for solving problems. You will find below some of the different ‘Gestalt laws’ of perceptual organization, with the law of Prägnanz being the most general law.

Law of Prägnanz

The law of Pragnanz is sometimes referred to as the law of good figure or the law of simplicity. This law holds that objects in the environment are seen in a way that makes as simple as possible. According to the law, we are innately driven to experience things in as good a gestalt as possible. “Good” can mean many things here, such a regular, orderly, simplicity, symmetry, and so on, which then refer to specific gestalt laws. For example, a set of dots outlining the shape of a star is likely to be perceived as a star, not as a set of dots. We tend to complete the figure, make it the way it “should” be, finish it. Like we somehow manage to see this as a "B"...

One very important aspect of Prägnanz is figure – ground relationship. This aspect is often elaborated as an extension of general law of Prägnanz or the law of similarity. Camouflage has a direct bearing on figure-ground relationship.

However, it was Edgar Rubin, a Danish psychologist, who was the first to systematically investigate the figure-ground phenomenon. The phenomenon captures the idea that in perceiving a visual field, some objects take a prominent role (the figures) while others recede into the background (the ground). The visual field is thus divided into these two basic parts. This effect is often used by smart logo makers, as in the three figures suggest: The logo of visitnorway.com (see figure left-above) can be viewed as both three separate elements of blue, green and navy colour. It may, however, also be viewed as a person stretching his/her arms into the air. Similarly, the logo of the Gnome Desktop Environment (see figure on the right) can be viewed as both a "G" and a footprint. Lastly, the Macintosh logo (see figure below)be viewed as a regular happy face and a happy face in profile (looking at a computer screen).

Common to these logos is that you can focus on only one "interpretation" at a time; you cannot observe both the figure and ground at the same time, as ground will become figure when shifting the focus.

It should be noted that the figure-ground is most often exemplified using the Rubin Face/Vase Illusion, named after Edgar Rubin.

Law of Closure

According to the law of closure, things are grouped together if they seem to complete some entity. Our minds often ignore contradictory information and fills in gaps in information. In other words, the mind may experience elements it does not perceive through sensation, in order to complete a regular figure (that is, to increase regularity) i.e. the law of closure says that, if something is missing in an otherwise complete figure, we will tend to add it. A triangle, for example, with a small part of its edge missing, will still be seen as a triangle. We will “close” the gap.

In other words, the law of closure posits that we perceptually close up, or complete, objects that are not, in fact, complete. In the figure on the left the letters 'I', 'B', and 'M' although the shapes we see, in fact, are only lines of white space of differing length hovering above each other.

Similarly, we see the figure on Paul Thagard's book (see figure on the left) as forming a three-dimensional box although all we see, in fact, is 24 dissimilar red shapes (count for yourself!) on a dark red background. The figure above is the typical textbook example of the law of closure; we perceive a circle and not 8 individual circles.

The Gestalt approach can be said to be a "bottom-up" theory as it starts from the bottom (the aspects of the stimuli that influence perception) and work its way up to higher-order cognitive processes. An example of another bottom-up theory (of perception) that is well-known in the HCI community is James Gibson's theory of "direct perception" (see affordances and perception).

Law of Similarity

The law of similarity holds that things which are similar in some way appear to be grouped together. Grouping can occur in both visual and auditory stimuli. In other words, the mind groups similar elements into collective entities or totalities. This similarity might depend on relationships of form, color, size, or brightness. According to the law, we will tend to group similar items together, to see them as forming a gestalt, within a larger form. Here is a simple typographic example:

OXXXXXXXXX
XOXXXXXXXX
XXOXXXXXXX
XXXOXXXXXX
XXXXOXXXXX
XXXXXOXXXX
XXXXXXOXXX
XXXXXXXOXX
XXXXXXXXOX
XXXXXXXXXO

It is just natural for us to see the o’s as a line within a field of x’s.

Law of Proximity

According to the law of proximity, things that are near each other seem to be grouped together. In other words, spatial or temporal proximity of elements may induce the mind to perceive a collective or totality i.e., things that are close together as seen as belonging together. For example:

**************

You are much more likely to see three lines of close-together *’s than 14 vertical collections of 3 *’s each.

The law of proximity posits that when we perceive a collection of objects, we will see objects close to each other as forming a group. In figure on the left, we perceive the MTV logo and the logo for the Europe Music Awards as forming a group in the top left corner and the logos of the sponsors as forming a group in the bottom right corner. The white space separating the two groups of logos is used to indicate 'grouping', and the proximity of the logos of each groups is thus used to this end. Thus, a semantic separation of 'organisers' from 'sponsors' is achieved via structuring the graphical layout in accordance with this simple principle of perceptual organisation.

Figure, see on the right, is taken from Kazaa Media Desktop, where the law of proximity is used in designing the user interface of the popular peer-to-peer (P2P) software. As shown by the screen dump, the user can choose between P2P and web search. The group of radio buttons underneath are only associated with the P2P search and not the web search. To signal this association to the user, the vertical row of radio buttons are placed comparatively closer to the P2P-search radio button. Figure below is a typical textbook example, exemplifying how the law of proximity groups the items into 3 groups as opposed to 8 individual items.

Law of Symmetry

According to the law, symmetrical images are perceived collectively, even in spite of distance. The law of symmetry captures the idea that when we perceive objects we tend to perceive them as symmetrical shapes that form around their centre. Most objects can be divided in two more or less symmetrical halves and when for example we see two unconnected elements that are symmetrical, we unconsciously integrate them into one coherent object (or percept). The more alike objects are, they more they tend to be grouped.

In the figure on the left, CSC Finland's logo is perceived as an integral whole although the two constituent geometrical shapes seem to be pointing in different directions and have differing colours.

A typical textbook example of the law of symmetry (see figure on the right-below), consists of a configuration of a number of brackets. When perceiving the configuration, we see three pairs of symmetrical brackets as opposed to 6 individual brackets, or two pairs and two singles. This happens despite what is suggested by some of the brackets immediate proximity to each other. Despite the pressure of proximity to group the brackets nearest each other together, symmetry overwhelms our perception and makes us see them as pairs of symmetrical brackets.

Law of Continuity

The law of continuity holds that points that are connected by straight or curving lines are seen in a way that follows the smoothest path. Rather than seeing separate lines and angles, lines are seen as belonging together. That is to say that the mind continues visual, auditory, and kinetic patterns.

When we can see a line, for example (as in figure on the left), as continuing through another line, rather than stopping and starting, we will do so, as in this example, which we see as composed of two lines, not as a combination of two angles.

Law of Common Fate

According to this law, elements with the same moving direction are perceived as a collective or unit. The law of common fate states that when objects move in the same direction, we tend to see them as a unit. In the other words, the law of common fate is a Gestalt principle of organization holding that aspects of perceptual field that move or function in a similar manner will be perceived as a unit.

Gestalt grouping laws do not seem to act independently. Instead, they appear to influence each other, so that the final perception is a combination of the entire Gestalt grouping laws acting together. Gestalt theory applies to all aspects of human learning, although it applies most directly to perception and problem-solving. The law of common fate is one of the visual perception laws as theorized by gestalt psychologists. Paul Martin Lester, the author of Visual Communication, an expert in the field wrote: “the law of common fate…A viewer mentally groups five arrows or five raised hands pointing to the sky because they all point in the same direction. An arrow or a hand pointed in opposite direction will create tension, because the viewer will not see it as part of the upwardly directed whole."

Gestalt’s law of common fate is a pretty simple concept. It is basically referring to visual directional lines within a design or layout. In a photograph, if two or more people are moving in the same direction, they have created a directional line known as the law of common fate. Together, they have a common fate or destiny. Another example of the law of common fate could include similar shapes aimed in the same direction. You might wonder why the law of common fate is of importance to artists. First of all, when two objects (whether it be shapes or organic forms) are pointed in the same direction in a layout, the directional lines become dominant in a design. So, if two or more powerful shapes are aimed at or moving in a certain direction, an artist knows to put the message at the point of destination.

Directional lines push our eyes around a page. This can be a problem every bit as much as bonus. For instance, visual collisions frustrate the viewing audience. It can cause too much tension and cause anxiety for the reader which in turn, makes the layout uninviting and too intense.

If a candid photograph of a moving car is heading to the right, the law of common fate dictates that the directional line is pointing to the right. Then again, if a candid photograph of a car is aimed towards the left and the image is part of a design, the directional line is now aimed towards the left. Therefore, if a car is headed towards the right (on an image), the image of the car should be placed towards the left-hand side of a layout, because our eyes read from left to right. This is why the law of common fate is so important. The law of common fate should not be ignored in graphic designs and advertisements. Understanding the law of common fate and how directional lines work on layouts can make all the difference in how information is read and understood.

References:

http://edinburgh-gestalt-institute.moonfruit.com/#/whatisgestalt/4509313638
Vacche, Angela Dalle. (2003). The Visual Turn: Classical Film Theory and Art History. Rutgers University Press.
http://www.gisc.org/WhyCometoGISC/WhatisGestalt/tabid/57/Default.aspx
http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/gestalt.html
http://psychology.about.com/od/schoolsofthought/f/gestalt_faq.htm
http://psychology.about.com/od/sensationandperception/ss/gestaltlaws.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology
Lester, Paul Martin. (2005). Visual Communication: Images with Messages. Thomson Wadsworth.
http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/gestalt_principles_of_form_perception.html

Visual Analysis of Mediated Images

2008-11-17T04:56:00.082-05:00

Though a visual may be analysed in many ways, of late a convention has been established to study under Six major schools of thought.

The personal perspective deals with an emotional subjective opinion. ‘What do I think of the picture’. It’s the first response or first thought that crosses your mind on viewing the picture. It bears personal bias and prejudices.
The historical perspective helps to determine the importance of the work based on the time period that it was created in. ‘When was this created? What was the social setup at that period of time?
The technical perspective tries to draw a relation b/w the medium and the message. ‘What medium has been used to create the message? How has the creator expressed himself through the medium chosen.
The ethical perspective looks at the moral and ethical responsibilities of the artist. ‘What are the moral responsibilities of the creator? Is his portrayal of the image ethical?
The cultural perspective relates the symbols used in the image to the society. ‘What symbols has the creator used? What is the message conveyed by them?
The critical perspective is a rational conclusion that the viewer draws from the image. It is a personal reaction though free of bias and prejudice. ‘What have I concluded after critically analyzing the picture? How different was my first opinion from the second?

Aim of Critical analysis: A producer of messages must have an understanding of the culture of the audience and use symbols that are comprehensible by them. It helps a viewer understand, interpret and appreciate art.

List all the Objects and Elements

One must notice all the objects and elements in the picture and draw a distinction between the most important and the less important. The placements of elements gives a sense of movement within the picture hence the positioning of objects must be noted. Centre, left, right, top and bottom. Shadows and lighting suggest what part is in focus and give a sense of depth. The location helps in interpretation of the message. One must categorize the purpose as news, art, personal, or any other.

The List

• 4 girls
• Water
• Old building
• Small boys
• Road

The Composition

Placement of Objects
• Foreground: Girls in centre
• Background: Water + Kids (left) playing
• Background: Brightly lit Building on the right
• Background: High contrast / Darker building behind the boys

The girls in the centre are the subject of the picture. The water in the background seems to be coming from a nearby hose pipe or fire hydrant. The girls seem drenched in water. One can see small boys still playing in the water in the background.

Study visual cues

Shadows and lighting
•Illuminated building on right hand side
•Light source is in front of the girls at an angle above them
•Building behind the boys is in shady region

The light and shadow suggests its little after 15:00 hours. It sets the mood of summer and playful indulgence of kids by drenching themselves. There is a sense of innocence.

Study visual cues...

Colour
•Objective- perception of colour & its characteristics
•Comparative- association of colour with objects, events, emotions
•Subjective- Every different colour has different associations in different cultures and societies.
•The girls dark complexion.
•The light shades worn suggests summer season.
•The dark shades suggests old and shanty town.

Form

The triangle shape of the girls is a dynamic shape. its base gives a sense of stability. They are also in a group and seem like a whole unit.

The buildings give a sense of serenity and form the base for the girls that seem in front of it.

'Eight' depth Cues

Many representational visual texts give a very strong feeling of depth despite the fact that they are painted on flat surfaces that lack any depth.

In trying to depict depth, there are several restrictions on the techniques that an artist can use. First, most visual texts, like paintings, drawings, illustrations, and photographs, are two-dimensional. There is no actual depth in the artwork so one must understand, at least intuitively, what information is in the environment that allow us to perceive depth. These sources of information are commonly called depth or distance cues.

A consequence of the two-dimensional nature of painting and pictures is that we lose all the depth information that comes from the fact that we have two eyes. These binocular, or two-eye, depth cues require true depth and thus we will not discuss them in context with conventional visual texts. For example, there is the binocular depth cue called disparity. Disparity arises from the fact that our two eyes have a slightly different view of the world. To allow you to see disparity requires either real depth or two images developed as if from different positions like our eyes.

The artist, in trying to paint or draw, is, therefore, limited to depth cues that (a) need no more than one eye to work, and (b) do not require a moving world. Fortunately there are a collection of such depth cues, a subset of monocular cues called pictorial cues by some authors (Goldstein, 1989).

Interposition
Space
Size
Colour
Lighting
Textural gradient
Time
Perspective

1. Interposition

The first depth cue to be discussed here is interposition which is the partial blocking of a more distant object by a nearer object. Note how the the building is blocked by the girls. In fact, if you notice the kid behind the girls on your right is partially blocking the building too. But, it is the girls who land up blocking him too. Thus creating an illusion as to what is in the background and what is in the front. It is the interposition, overlap, that causes the sense of depth to arise. Usually the impression of depth caused by interposition alone is not very strong.

Notice the foreground figures of two girls with partially blocked figures of other two taking a piggy ride, which are all that are important for our present purposes. Here relative size and even relative height play little role in giving the depth order of the various figures (all the figures are roughly the same level and same size). Shadowing plays an important role in giving each of the figures their sense of three-dimensionality, but to tell who is in what position relative to another, the principle cue is interposition.

2. Space

Space is the frame in which an image is located. With a natural scene, the space depends on how close you are to the subject. Standing in an open field gives the feeling of a large amount of space and enhances the feeling of depth. If an object is close to the eyes, depth perception is limited.
Distance is related to space and helps in our perception of depth.

There is a lot of space behind the girls suggesting they are far from the buildings. The water is in the background and the wet girls suggest they had been in the water previously.

3. Size

Size can help create the illusion of the depth perception if the viewer is aware of the object’s actual size. A jumbo jet seen from a distance is a small bird sized object. If someone has no idea what the jumbo jets are, then the viewer does not react to this depth cue. Likewise, in this photograph we can guess average size (both height and size) and average size of two storied building in the backdrop we become aware of the depth (both in terms of space and distance) between the girls (foreground) and the building (background).

Size, consequently, is closely related to our ability to determine an object’s distance. Distance is related to space and helps in our perception of depth.

Size also is related to scale and mental attention. Without knowing an object’s size, we have to view it next to an object of known size in order to determine its size.

4. Colour

Correct interpretation of colour, and especially lighting cues, allows the beholder to determine the shape of objects, and thus their arrangement in space.

The colour of distant objects is also shifted towards the blue end of the spectrum. (e.g. distant mountains.) Painters, notably Cezanne, employ "warm" pigments (red, yellow and orange) to bring features forward towards the viewer, and "cool" ones (blue, violet, and blue-green) to indicate the part of a form that curves away from the picture plane.

High contrast pictures with great differences between light and dark tones seem closer than objects with more neutral tones colour.

5. Lighting

The exact shape and description of the shadows changes depending on the direction of the light. There are certain general rules about shadows.

First, in a place with only one source of light, e.g. outside, the shadows from all the objects in the area all go in the same direction. As a corollary of this rule, it is certainly true for all natural lights, and for most artificial lights, that the light comes from above to some degree. We do not usually experience getting illuminated from the floor.

Second, for a solid object sticking up the side of the object in shadow is the side away from the light but for a hole in the ground, the shadow is on the side near the light.

Shadow can play a very powerful role in defining form by giving the object a three-dimensional feel as in the title to this page. In addition, artists can take good advantage of shadow to define form by highlighting how different portions of an object are at different depths and therefore the object closer to the light will cast a shadow on the more distant object.

Shadow can play a broader role in defining depth between objects since objects that are in shadow must be farther from the light than objects that are not in shadow.

Differences in light intensities can communicate depth. Carefully crafted lighting design provides subject’s separation from background. If brightness level of the back light is slightly higher than the lights in front then this separation is more distinct. However, no backlight has been used in this photograph. Yet, the prevalence of shadows (largely in mid-space of the picture plane and the shows of the subject indicate subject’s volume and provides the viewer with reasonable illusion of depth perspective.

6.Textural gradient

Related in a sense to relative size but a depth cue in its own right is what has been termed texture gradient. Most surfaces, such as walls and roads and a field of flowers in bloom, have a texture. As the surface gets farther away from us this texture gets finer and appears smoother (Gibson, 1950).

A surface or field that recedes in depth has a texture that gets finer. That is very different from a wall where the surface is approximately the same distance from a person at all points. For example, imagine yourself standing and staring at a brick wall which, instead of receding in depth like a cobblestone road, rises up in front of you. Here the texture, in this case the brick alternating with the mortar, will have about the same roughness all over the surface and provide a clue that the surface does not recede in depth. In addition, texture may play a role in helping us determine the size of an object. Regardless of how far an object is away from us, it covers roughly the same amount of surface, and thus texture, which can help us determine the actual size of an object (Gibson, 1950).

7. Time

Time and space are intricately related concepts that find expression in visual messages. In one sense, time as a depth cue refers to the first element a viewer sees in a frame. That picture will be in the foreground of the viewer’s mind, with other images seen later in the background.

8. Perspective

It is a complex depth perception cue due to cultural factor which comes into play each time we try to interpret depth. However, Perspective, in the context of vision and visual perception, is the way in which objects appear to the eye based on their spatial attributes, or their dimensions and the position of the eye relative to the objects.

As objects become more distant, they appear smaller, because their angular diameter (visual angle) decreases. Perspective is also seen in the way the parallel lines of how railway tracks appear to be meeting at a distant point (the vanishing point) on the horizon. When used in this sense, the 'horizon' is always at the level of the viewer's eye. Because the Earth is round, the true horizon (the line dividing the surface and the sky) is lower than this level. The difference is imperceptibly small when standing on the surface, but noticeable from great height (a person standing on a mountain can see further than someone at ground level).

According to Evelyn Hatcher, there are three major forms of perspective which she details in her book Visual Metaphors: A Methodological Study in Visual Communication. These are as follows:
Illusionary Perspective: An illusionary perspective can be achieved through size, colour, lighting, interposition, and linear perspective. When you stand on a railroad track and look down the ties, the steel rails seem to converge into a single area, or vanishing point, in the distance. This trait of parallel lines when seen at a distance is called linear perspective. This aspect of illusionary perspective that provides the illusion of three dimensional depth in a painting or a photograph is what artists were trying to duplicate with the aid of Leonardo box and camera obscura.

Geometrical Perspective: In geometrical perspective the artist shows near figures in the lower portion of the picture and objects farther away higher in the frame on a vertical line above the near object. This type of perspective is common among traditional Japanese and Mayan artwork. Children often exhibit this type of perspective in their drawings.

Conceptual Perspective: Conceptual perspective is compositional trait that relies on a more symbolic definition of depth perception than the other types of perspective. It can be divided into two types: multi-view and social. With the multi-view perspective, a viewer can see many different sides of an object at the same time. The picture is often an X-ray, or transparent, view of the object. Near objects overlap far objects only by the outside edges or lines that make up their shapes. Pablo Picasso liked to use this type of perspective. In social perspective the most important person in a group picture, a government or corporate leader, is larger in size than other, less important people. A viewer often assumes power relationships because of social perspective. In a picture of a couple the man’s dominance over the woman often is signified by the man being nearer and larger in the frame with his hand resting on or arm wrapped around the woman’s shoulder. Over the past three decades, the feminist movement has made advertisers and others more sensitive to nonverbal negative stereotypes such as these.

Depth

‘8’ Depth cues

1. Interposition
2. Space
3. Size
4. Colour
5. Lighting
6. Textural gradient
7. Time
8. Perspective

Many representational visual texts give a very strong feeling of depth despite the fact that they are painted on flat surfaces that lack any depth.

The first depth cue to be discussed here is interposition which is the partial blocking of a more distant object by a nearer object. Note how the the building is blocked by the girls. Infact, if you notice the kid behind the girls on your right is partially blocking the building too. But, it is the girls who land up blocking him too. Thus creating an illusion as to what is in the background and what is in the front. It is the interposition, overlap, that causes the sense of depth to arise. Usually the impression of depth caused by interposition alone is not very strong.

There is a lot of space behind the girls suggesting they are far from the buildings. The water is in the background and the wet girls suggest they had been in the water previously.

Movement

•The girls have moved fro near the water to the position they are in now.

Where was the picture made? What do u think was its purpose?

The picture seems to be clicked in some Afro-American suburb.
It could have been taken to accompany a feature article on the summer heat.

Personal Perspective

What do I think of the visual?
Omniphasism “All in Balance”
Rick Williams philosopher, photographer & educator at the University of Oregon
Theory that combines the rational and intuitive aspects of the mind.

Omniphasism was thought of by Rick Williams, a philosopher, photographer, and educator at the University of Oregon develop the theory Omniphasism. It’s a theory that attempts to combine the rational and intuitive aspects of the mind into a balanced whole. William uses 8 steps for analyzing a visual message, using his Omniphasism tech called a “personal Impact Assessment”

What is my first emotional response to the visual? Do I like it? Dislike it? How do I feel about the image?

Its a picture of teenage girls who have just played in
water. It’s pleasant to look at.

Personal Impact Assessment

“Part of the idea of going from primary words to associative words to significant words is to move away from Literal interpretation of the photo to a symbolic understanding of it." ~ Rich Williams

Personal Impact Assessment

8 Steps:

1. Take time with the image
2. List Primary Words
3. List associative words
4. Select the most important associative words
5. Pair primary and associative words
6. Relate each pair to yourself
7. Review your inner symbolism
8. Write a story

Take time with the Image

Does the story Stimulate or Alienate?

Its an isolated moment that rests on composition.

What is the story or message?

Some girls played in the water to beat the heat.

List Primary Words

Visual Cues
Objects
Feelings

Primary words

Group of 4 girls
Water
Sun
Old buildings
Light shade clothes

List Associative Words

Observe each primary word and link it to your thought.

One must write down all words that come to ones mind on reading each of the primary words.

Associative words

Group of 4 girls : happy, wet, Afro American
Water: Hose pipe, Fire hydrant
Sun: Summer, heat, daytime
Old buildings: poor neighbourhood
Happy : cool, relaxed

Select the most important associative words

Among the associative words one word would be closest to its primary word underline or select that word. This is the most important associative word.

Choose one word out of the associative words for each primary
word.

Pair Primary and Associative words

Write the primary and most important associative word together.

Group of 4 girls : Afro American
Water: Fire hydrant
Sun: Summer-heat
Old buildings: poor neighbourhood
Happy : cool

Relate each pair to Yourself

Make note of the thoughts that come to your mind on viewing each pair of words.

What does each pair suggest?

Group of 4 girls : Afro american poor
Water: Fire hydrant wet, sultry
Sun: Summer-heat scorcher
Old buildings: poor neighborhood unaffordability of luxury
Happy : cool relief

Review your Inner Symbolism

See if the conclusions drawn from the pairs link to any conflict, event, emotion, value or feeling.

List inner conflicts, emotions, values or feelings

The summer heat is hard to bear . Water is natures boon
to mankind

Write a story

Add up all your thoughts and write a summary or a story. What is the story in the image?

A group of Afro-American girls decide to cool of in the
summer heat by playing with some water from a fire hydrant.

Historical Perspective

When do you think was the image made?

In the 1980’s or after.

Is there a specific style that the image imitates?

The historical perspective helps to understand current trends in terms of their roots in technology and philosophies of the past. Where did the image come from? What was the setup at that time? What is the background of the image? these questions help us to infer meanings.

Technical Perspective

One can evaluate the production techniques. Has the producer used the technology at hand to its best in generating the message? Has it aided in delivering the message as intended effectively.

What medium has been used?

film

What techniques were employed?

A street shot clicked without the subject noticing it
been taken

How was it produced?

With an SLR camera

Is it of good quality?

yes (look at grain size, gama, composition, content, shutter speed etc.)

Ethical Perspective

This is the moral and ethical analysis of the visual. It applies to both the viewer and the producer of the visual.

Categorical Imperative

Immanuel Kant, German philosopher from the east principality of KÖnisberg 18th Century
Categorical (unconditional / without exception)
“Right is Right”
Do your duty

The right thing must be done under even the most extreme conditions. Once a rule is established for a proposed action or idea, behavior and actions must be consistently applied and always in accordance with it. One does his/ her duty.

In the ethics of the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant, founder of critical philosophy, a moral law that is unconditional or absolute for all agents, the validity or claim of which does not depend on any ulterior motive or end. “Thou shalt not steal,” for example, is categorical as distinct from the hypothetical imperatives associated with desire, such as “Do not steal if you want to be popular.” For Kant there was only one such categorical imperative, which he formulated in various ways. “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” is a purely formal or logical statement and expresses the condition of the rationality of conduct rather than that of its morality, which is expressed in another Kantian formula: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in another, always as an end, and never as only a means.”

Utilitarianism

Jeremy Bentham & John Stuart Mill (British Philosophers)
Belief: “The greatest good for the greatest number of people”
Analysis of the consequence : Outcome must do good to most people

In ethics, a tradition stemming from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill that an action is right if it tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to produce the reverse of happiness—not just the happiness of the performer of the action but also that of everyone affected by it. Utilitarianism is an effort to provide an answer to the practical question “What ought a man to do?” Its answer is that he ought to act so as to produce the best consequences possible. Eg: A gruesome image must be published or printed only if it would evoke a positive reaction in maximum of the viewers.

Hedonism

Hedonism is the philosophy that pleasure is of ultimate importance, the most important pursuit. The name derives from the Greek word for "delight".

A student of Socrates, Aristippus founded this ethical philosophy on the basis of pleasure.
Aristippus believed that people should “act to maximize pleasure” now and not worry about the future.
He referred to intellectual pleasure not physical.
Pleasures of the mind
“I Possess I am not Possessed”
Aesthetic pleasure that we get out of a picture

Golden Mean (Finding a compromise b/w the two extreme points of an action or view.

In philosophy, especially that of Aristotle, the golden mean is the desirable middle between two extremes, one of excess and the other of deficiency.

To the Greek mentality, it was an attribute of beauty. Both ancients and moderns realized that "there is a close association in mathematics between beauty and truth". The poet John Keats, in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, put it this way:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need
to know.

The Greeks believed there to be three concomitants of beauty: symmetry, proportion, and harmony. This triad of principles infused their life. They were very much attuned to beauty as an object of love and something that was to be imitated and reproduced in their lives, architecture, Paideia and politics. They judged life by this mentality.

Golden Rule

“Love your neighbor as yourself”
Be humane do not harm others by your actions

The Golden Rule which stems from ethic of reciprocity is a fundamental moral value which "refers to the balance in an interactive system such that each party has both rights and duties, and the subordinate norm of complementarity states that one's rights are the other's obligation." In essence, it is an ethical code that states one has a right to just treatment, and a responsibility to ensure justice for others. Reciprocity is arguably the most essential basis for the modern concept of human rights, though it is not without its critics.

Many assign the imperative commandment of Golden Rule as instruction for a positive only form of reciprocity. A key element of the golden rule is that a person attempting to live by this rule treats all people, not just members of his or her in-group with consideration. The golden rule, with roots in a wide range of world cultures, is well suited to be a standard to which different cultures could appeal in resolving conflicts. Principal philosophers and religious figures have stated it in different ways.

Veil of Ignorance

John Rawls (1971) “Put the shoe on the other foot.

All people are equal
Eliminating all prejudice and discrimination

The original position is a hypothetical situation developed by American philosopher John Rawls as a thought experiment to replace the imagery of a savage state of nature of prior political philosophers like Thomas Hobbes. In social contract theory, persons in the state of nature agree to the provisions of a contract that defines the basic rights and duties of citizens in a civil society. In Rawls's theory, Justice as Fairness, the original position plays the role that the state of nature does in the classical social contract tradition of Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and John Locke.

The original position figures prominently in his book, A Theory of Justice, and it is one of the most influential ideas in twentieth-century philosophy. It has influenced a variety of thinkers from a broad spectrum of philosophical orientations. As a thought experiment, the original position is a hypothetical designed to accurately reflect what principles of justice would be manifest in a society premised on free and fair cooperation between citizens, including respect for liberty, and an interest in reciprocity.

Questions to be asked while analysing a visual from Ethical / Moral Perspective... as per Dr Demi Elliot Poynter Jamison, chair, Media Ethics & Press Policy at the University of South Florida at St. Petersberg.

1. Does the taking and displaying of the picture fit the social responsibility of the professional involved?

2. Has any ones rights been violated in taking and displaying the picture?

3. Does the display of the image meet the needs of the viewer?

4. Is the picture aesthetically appealing?

5. Does the picture choice reflect moderation?

6. Does the professional choice reflect empathy for the subjects experience?

7. Could a professional justify the choice if he/she didn’t know which of the parties (subject, shooter or viewer) he/ she would turn out to be?

8. Does the visual Image cause unjustified harm

Cultural Perspective

Identify the Symbols used, and
Determine their Meaning for the society as a whole.
What is the story and the symbolism involved with the elements in the visual message?
What do they say about current cultural values?

(It is related to the semiotic process) The story revolves around the Afro-American people in the United States of America. Historically, the country has been dominated by a settler society of religiously and ethnically diverse Whites. The heaviest burdens of racism in the country have fallen upon Native Americans, Asian Americans, African Americans, Latin Americans and some other immigrant groups and their descendants.

Major racially structured institutions include slavery, Indian reservations, segregation, residential schools (for Native Americans), and internment camps. Racial stratification has occurred in employment, housing, education and government. Formal racial discrimination was largely banned in the mid-20th century, and it came to be perceived as socially unacceptable and/or morally repugnant as well, yet racial politics remain a major phenomenon as witnessed during the 44th Presidential Elections.

Racist attitudes, or prejudice, are still held by moderate portions of the U.S population. Members of every American ethnic group have perceived racism in their dealings with other groups.

Critical Perspective

An analysis of a visual to arrive at a 'Rational', 'Objective' and 'Thoughtful' Conclusion.

What is my final opinion about the picture?

How does my current view differ from the previous?

Conclusion

“Analysis is ego-driven. The main thing is that it always reveals the person making the analysis -- not really the piece itself˝ ~ David Lodge

It’s a cyclic process.

You will find below four images. You may undertake a visual analysis, based on what you have learnt so far:

The Post-Production ProcessEditing… “Invisible Art”

2008-11-16T22:50:00.027-05:00

Editing is an art of structuring (at times re-structuring, i.e. re-directing) a narrative for the purpose of seemless flow of a convincing story. Editing is executed by connecting two or more shots together to form a sequence, and the subsequent connecting of sequences to form an entire movie / television program. This process is the only art that is unique to cinema / television, and which separates film & Television making from all other art forms that preceded it (such as photography, theatre, dance, writing, and directing. However there exists close parallels to the editing process in other art forms such as poetry or novel writing. It is often referred to as the "invisible art," since the idea, under most cicumstances, is to have the viewer engaged with the narrative that he or she becomes unaware of the work of the editor.

Since, almost every motion picture, television show, and TV commercial is a single camera shoot (per take), each single shot is separated from the other by time and space. On its most fundamental level, video editing is the art, technique, and practice of assembling these shots into a coherent whole. However, the job of an editor isn’t merely to mechanically put pieces of a film together, nor is it to just cut off the film or video slates, nor is it merely to edit dialogue scenes. A film editor works with the layers of images, the story, the music, the rhythm, the pace, shapes the actors' performances, "re-directing" and often re-writing the film or video during the editing process, honing the infinite possibilities of the juxtaposition of small snippets of clips into a creative, coherent, cohesive whole.

Editing, be it film or video, is an art that can be used in diverse ways. It can create sensually provocative montages. It can be a laboratory for experimental genre. It can bring out the emotional truth in an actor's performance. It can create a point of view on otherwise obtuse events. It can guide the telling and pace of a story. It can create the illusion of danger where there is none, surprise when we least expect it, and a vital subconscious emotional connection to the viewer.

Please note, if anybody is under illusion that this is only true for fiction genre and not applicable to documentary and other features including cutting for news format is wrong.

Television and film use certain common conventions often referred to as the 'grammar' of these audiovisual media. This list includes some of the most important conventions for conveying meaning through particular camera and editing techniques (as well as some of the specialised vocabulary of film production). Conventions aren't rules: expert practitioners break them for deliberate effect, which is one of the rare occasions that we become aware of what the convention is.

1.Cut. Sudden change of shot from one viewpoint or location to another. On television cuts occur on average about every 5 or 6 seconds. Cutting may:
•change the scene;
•compress time;
•vary the point of view; or
•build up an image or idea.

There is always a reason for a cut, and you should ask yourself what the reason is. Less abrupt transitions are achieved with the fade, dissolve, and wipe. In a cut, the first frame of a new shot directly follows the last frame of the previous one. Grammatically, a cut is like the space between two words: a division between units of meaning that signals no change at all.

In classic editing, a cut should be nearly invisible because the action on screen moves across the division between shots in an uninterrupted flow. This enhances the illusion that the viewer is watching a continuous process instead of a bunch of discrete images.

Creating this illusion is easy when the shots show different subjects, such as close-ups of two different actors, because the viewer expects the image to change completely from shot to shot. But when two shots cover successive views of the same subject you must spackle the seam with two crucial editing techniques: matching action and changing camera angle.

In matching action you set the edit points so that the incoming shot picks up precisely where the outgoing shot leaves off. There are three ways to do this: continue movement, cut between movements, and start or end off-screen.

Cutting in the middle of an ongoing movement is the hardest method but it delivers the most convincing illusion. In the outgoing shot of Figure 1a, the cup descends part-way to its saucer. Then the incoming shot starts with the cup on-screen and continues on its path toward the table. With precision matching, the two arcs seem like different views of the same continuous action. You can match continuous action with consumer-level editing decks if you're willing to practice with the deck's accuracy.

An easier way is to make the cut during a pause in the action, as shown in Figure 1b. Here, the performer completes the whole set-down in medium shot and the close-up starts with the hand and the cup at rest. With no movement to match, the edit is easier.

Simpler yet is the old off screen ploy (Figure 1c). The incoming shot starts before the cup enters the frame, so the viewer cannot compare its end position with its start position. With this method, you don't have to match action at all.

The method works equally well if you reverse it so that the outgoing cup ends on-screen and the incoming cup starts off-screen. And when you have a really difficult edit, try both at once: finish the outgoing and start the incoming shots with empty screens.

Whichever method you use, matching action does only half the job of concealing the cut. To perfect the illusion you must also shift the camera position. By moving the point of view, you change the subject's background and deprive the viewer of reference points for matching action.

As we've often noted, you can change three aspects of camera setup: vertical angle (from bird's-eye down to worm's-eye), horizontal angle (from front through 3/4 and profile to rear) and image size (from long shot to close-up). Figure 2 shows why it's tough to conceal a cut without changing at least one of these aspects and preferably two.

Figure 2a shows no angle change between the two shots and the obvious jump cut that results. Figure 2b changes one aspect: image size. If you're a slick editor you can make this cut work, but it's easier if you can change a second aspect as well. In Figure 2c the edit changes vertical angle as well as image size for a smoother transition.

Should you change all three aspects of a camera position? Maybe, but not necessarily. It doesn't add to the illusion and it can actually call attention to the edit because the viewpoint change is so great. On the other hand, an extreme angle change can be effective in building suspense precisely because it produces an effect of uneasiness or even disorientation.

Editing cuts

Match Cut (Description): Combining two shots of differing angle and composition so that the action continues from one to the other in the same time and place.

This shows seamless progression of action, focus on detail of action, provide a different view enhancing three- dimensionality, and add energy and increase pacing. The shot above could be followed by a close up of the hands.

Jump Cut: Combining two shots (see both b&w images) above that are similar so that the subject jumps from one part of the screen to another. It attracts attention and speeds up time.

Cutaway: it shows the subject, close up detail or person observing action (see above). Subject is not seen in shots edited before or after cutaway. This is done to cover jump cuts, provide reaction of others to main action, focus attention on subject.

Editing Transitions & Effects

Fade from and to Black: the image gradually appears from a black screen. Fade to black: image gradually disappears to a black screen.the purpose is to begin and end a video, it could be a transition between segments or scenes, or signify major change in time or location.

Dip to Black: A quick fade to black and then back to video. To go to or from a commercial break, quick transition between segments or scenes, or transition between footage and full screen graphics.

Dissolve: A transition between shots where one image is gradually mixed with another until the second image is full screen. To enhance emotions, soften changes between shots, accentuate rhythm of pacing, enhance artistry of action, and smooth jump cuts.

Wipe: A transition between shots that uses movement across the screen. Traditional wipes include changing the image with a move from right or left, up or down, or diagonally. Effects wipes include spins, flips, and animated moves. To show obvious transition between scenes, segments or graphics; add energy and action and increase pacing.

Super: Mixing two images together to show two views of subject at the same time, suggesting that main subject is thinking about the other.

Freeze: A single frame of video that is frozen on the screen to end action, accentuate moment or character, background for graphics, lengthen short shot.

Editing - Graphics & Titles

Lower Third Title: Text appearing in the bottom third of the screen. It identifies the name and title of interview subject, provide caption for image.

Full Screen Graphicit’s a combination of text, background or artwork that fills the screen. For titles in the beginning of a video or a segment, key points or summations, charts and graphs, transition between segments or to or from commercials.

Some Terms often used by Editors

B-roll: It refers to footage that covers an interview or narration audio. It is done to Illustrate what's discussed in audio, add energy and increase pace, cover audio track edits. For example -someone talks, scenes relating to what the person is saying is shown.

Establishing the scene: It’s a wide shot showing setting, to introduce the location for scene, provide sense of 3D space where action occurs, introduce characters. Example -All the shots are wide showing people doing things

Changing the scene/segment: It is a Visual or audio cue that a new scene or segment has begun. It moves the story along, add variety to story, indicate passage of time or change in location. for example an establishment shot (with people talking). Followed by the main person talking.

Visual Sequence: it features a series of shots showing the subject or a process in action. To focus attention on action or process, show details of, show progression of action, engage viewer with subject and to facilitate comprehension. Example -a person applying make-up

Montage Sequence: A series of images, usually set to music, that quickly show various aspects of the story. It shows passage of time, provide a glimpse of actions or events not covered in detail, capture viewer interest at beginning of video, sum up story at end, provide a change of pace, add energy.

Natural Sound: It includes ambient sounds of subjects overheard during recording. To enhance sense of reality, capture spontaneous speech of subject in the natural situation, establish the setting or situation, show transition between scenes or locations, provide background sound to narration.

Reference: All material is assembled from the following sites.

Using Reflected-Light Meters

2008-10-31T01:24:00.044-04:00

Once you have set the proper film or camera speed or sensitivity (this is characterised by a numerical value followed alphabets ‘ISO’. To further understand ‘The Photographic Process and Film Sensitivity’ students may visit Perry Sprawls at his website) by on your camera or meter, you are ready to make the exposure-meter reading. With a reflected-light meter (in camera or handheld), point the camera or meter at the subject. The meter will measure the average brightness of the light reflected from the various parts of the scene. With an in-camera meter, a needle or diode display in the viewfinder or an LCD display on top of the camera will tell you when you have achieved the proper combination of lens and shutter-speed settings. If the camera is fully manual, you will have to set both the aperture and shutter speed. Automatic cameras may set both shutter speed and aperture; or they may set just one of the controls, leaving you to set the other.

If you're using a handheld meter, read the information on your meter and set the camera controls accordingly. An overall exposure reading taken from the camera position will give good results for and average scene with an even distribution of light and dark areas. For many subjects, then, exposure-meter operation is mostly mechanical; all you do is point the meter (or camera) at the scene and set the aperture and shutter speed as indicated. But your meter does not know if you need a fast shutter speed to stop action or a small aperture to extend depth of field. You will have to select the appropriate aperture and shutter combination for the effect you want. There will be other situations where either the lighting conditions or the reflective properties of the subject will require you to make additional judgements about the exposure information the meter provides, and you may have to adjust the camera controls accordingly.

A reflected-light meter reading is influenced by both how much light there is in the scene and how reflective the subject is. The meter will indicate less exposure for a subject that reflects little light, even if the two subject are in the same scene and in the same light. Because reflected-light meters are designed to make all subjects appear average in brightness, the brightness equivalent to medium gray, they suggest camera settings that will overexpose (make too light) very dark subjects and underexpose (make too dark) very light subjects.

Although reflected-light meters are influenced more by the largest areas of the scene, the results will be acceptable even when the main subject fills the picture but it's still of average reflectance (neither very light nor very dark). However, what happens if a relatively small subject is set against a large dark or light background? The meter will indicate a setting accurate for the large area, not for the smaller, but important, main subject. Therefore, when the area from which you take a reflected-light reading is very light or very dark, and you want to expose it properly, you should modify the meter's exposure recommendation as follows:
• For light subjects, increase exposure by 1/2 to 1 stop from the meter reading.
• For dark subjects, decrease exposure by 1/2 to 1 stop from the meter reading.

Please remember that since reflected metering reads the intensity of light reflecting off of the subject, they are easily fooled by variances in tonality, colour, contrast, background brightness, surface textures and shape. What you see is often not at all what you get. Reflected meters do a good job of reading the amount of light bouncing off of a subject the trouble is they don't take into account any other factors in the scene. They are merciless in recording all things as a medium tone. Reflected measurements of any single tone area, for instance, will result in a neutral grey rendition of that object. Subjects that appears lighter than grey will reflect excess light and cause them to record darker than they appear. Subjects that are darker than grey will reflect less light and result in an exposure that renders it lighter.

Selective Meter Readings

To determine the correct exposure for higher contrast scenes with large areas that are much darker or much lighter than the principle subject, take a selective meter reading of only the subject itself. How do you do this? Move the meter or camera close to the subject. Exclude unimportant dark or light areas that will give misleading readings. In making close-up readings, also be careful not to measure your own shadow or the meter's shadow.

Selective meter readings are useful for dark subjects against a bright background like snow or light sand, or for subjects in shade against a bright sunlit background. There is also the reverse of this: The subject is in bright sun and the background is in deep shade. In all these situations, your camera has no way of knowing which part of the scene is the most important and requires the most accurate exposure, so you must move in close so the meter will read only the key subject area. For example, if you want to photograph a skier posed on a snowy slope on a bright, sunny day, taking an average reading of the overall scene will result in underexposure. The very bright snow will overly influence the meter and the reading will be too high. The solution is to take a close-up reading from the skier's face (or a piece of medium-toned clothing) and then step back the desired distance to shoot the picture. Some cameras with built-in meters have an exposure-hold button or switch to lock the exposure setting when you do this. This technique is useful anytime the surroundings are much brighter or darker than your subjects.

Landscapes and other scenes with large areas of open sky can also fool the meter (See picture on the left, originally posted to Flickr as Rays of sunlight by Spiralz). The sky is usually much brighter than other parts of the scene, so an unadjusted meter reading will indicate too little exposure for the darker parts of the picture. One way to adjust for this bias without having to move in close is to tilt your lens or meter down to exclude the sky while taking your meter reading. The sky will probably end up slightly overexposed, but the alternative would be to find a different shooting position excluding most or all of the sky. There are also graduated neutral density floaters that work well in such situations. A neutral density filter absorbs all colours of visible light evenly, and you can position a graduated filter so that the darker portion is at the top of the image where it will darken the sky without affecting the ground below. Incidentally, some built-in meters are bottom-weighted to automatically compensate for situations like this, so check your manual.

Bright backlighting with the subject in silhouette can also present a challenge. With the light shining directly into the lens or meter, aiming the meter into the light can cause too high a reading. If you don't want to underexpose the subject, take a close-up reading, being especially careful to shade the lens or meter so that no extraneous light influences the reading.

Substitute Readings

What if you can't walk up to your subject to take a meter reading? For instance, suppose that you're trying to photograph a deer in sunlight at the edge of a wood. If the background is dark, a meter reading of the overall scene will give you an incorrect exposure for the deer. Obviously, if you try to take a close-up reading of the deer, you're going to lose your subject before you ever get the picture. One answer is to make a substitute reading off the palm of your hand, providing that your hand is illuminated by the same light as your subject, then use a lens opening 1 stop larger than the meter indicates. For example, if the reading off your hand is f/16, open up one stop to f/11 to get the correct exposure. The exposure increase is necessary because the meter overreacts to the brightness of your palm which is about twice as bright as an average subject. When you take the reading, be sure that the lighting on your palm is the same as on the subject. Don't shade your palm.

Another subject from which you can take more accurate and more consistent meter readings is a KODAK Grey Card, sold by photo dealers. These sturdy cards are manufactured specifically for photographic use. They are neutral grey on one side and white on the other. The grey side reflects 18% of the light falling on it (similar to that of an average scene), and the white side reflects 90%. You can use a gray card for both black-and-white and colour balance. Complete instructions are included in the package with the cards.

Handling High Contrast

How do you determine the correct exposure for a high-contrast scene, one that has both large light and dark areas? If the highlights of shadow areas are more important, take a close-up reading of the important area to set the exposure. With colour slide film, keep in mind that you will get more acceptable results if you bias the exposure for the highlights, losing the detail in the shadows. In a slide, the lack of detail in the shadows is not as distracting as overexposed highlights that project as washed-out colour and bright spots on the screen. If you are working with black-and-white film, you can adjust the development for better reproduction of the scene contrast, particularly in highlights.

But what if the very light and very dark areas are the same size and they are equally important to the scene? One solution is to take selective meter readings from each of the areas and use a f-number that is midway between the two indicated readings. For instance, if your meter indicates an exposure of 1/125 second at f/22 for brightest area and 1/125 second at f/2.8 for the darkest area--a range of six stops--set your camera 1/125 second f/8. This is a compromise solution, but sometimes it is your only choice short of coming back another day or changing your viewpoint, and the composition of the picture, to eliminate the contrast problem.

Using Spot Meters

Perhaps the best solution when you need a selective meter reading is offered by the spot meter. Handheld averaging meters generally cover about 30º, while handheld spot meters typically read a 1º angle The angle of spot meters built into the camera are usually wider, about 3 to 12º. The biggest advantage of a spot meter is that is allows you to measure the brightness of small areas in a scene form the camera position without walking in to make a close-up reading. Since a spot meter measures only the specific area you point it at, the reading is not influenced by large light or dark surroundings. This makes a spot meter especially useful when the principal subject is a relatively small part of the overall scene and the background is either much lighter or darker than the subject. Spot meters are also helpful for determining the scene brightness range. See picure on the left by Joseph Dickerson (the image has all rights reseved: Photos © 2004, Joseph A. Dickerson)

A spot meter can take more time to use since it usually requires more than one reading of the scene. This is particularly true when the scene includes many different bright or dark areas. To determine the best exposure in such a situation, use the same technique described previously for high-contrast subjects: Select the exposure halfway between the reading for the lightest important area in the scene and that for the darkest important area in the scene. Bear in mind, though, all films have inherent limits on the range of contrast they can accurately record. Remember too, you can sometimes create more dramatic pictures by intentionally exposing for one small area, such as a bright spot of sunlight on a mountain peak, and letting the dark areas fall into black shadow without detail. Spot meters are ideal for such creative applications. See picture on the left for creative control of light and careful planning of exposure after taking multiple spot meter readings by Dave Johnson. Also, note the subject and its environment... use of a spot meter usually is convenient in such situations.

Using Incident-Light Meters

a. Set ISO/ASA of film being used.
b. Hold light meter in front of scene with the sphere pointed at the camera.
c. Depress centre button.
d. Needle will move to a reading.
e. The reading is measured on the foot-candle scale.

Depending on the lighting conditions, there are two settings that can be utilized - the Red Arrow setting (when the High Slide is inserted in the slot below the sphere) is used outdoors in bright light and the Black Arrow setting (High Slide is removed) is used in lower light circumstances.

f. Move dial to Black Arrow setting when High Slide is not used so the number lines up with the corresponding number on scale.

g. Move dial to Red Arrow setting when High Slide is used so the number lines up with the corresponding number on scale.
h. Shutter speed scale
i. Aperture scale

Please note that above image and text has been taken from http://paulturounetforum.com/2007/09/24/nature-of-light-and-artificial-light/. I have tried not to tamper with this text nor the image. In fact you may want to visit the above website.

Moving on, to use an incident-light meter, hold it at or near the subject and aim the meter's light-sensitive cell back toward the camera. The meter reads the amount of light illuminating the subject, not light reflected from the subject, so the meter ignores the subject and background characteristics. As with a reflected reading, an incident reading provides exposure information for rendering average subjects correctly, making incident readings most accurate when the subject is not extremely bright or dark.

When taking an incident-light reading, be sure you measure the light illuminating the side of the subject you want to photograph, and be careful that your shadow isn't falling on the meter. If the meter isn't actually at the subject, you can get a workable reading by holding the meter in the same kind of light the subject is in. Because the meter is aimed toward the camera and away from the background light, an incident reading is helpful with backlit subjects. This is also the case when the main subject is small and surrounded by a dominant background that is either much lighter or darker.

The exposure determined by an incident-light meter should be the same as reading a gray card with a reflected-light meter. Fortunately, many scenes have average reflectance with an even mix of light and dark areas, so the exposure indicated is good for many picture-taking situations. However, if the main subject is very light or very dark, and you want to record detail in this area, you must modify the meter's exposure recommendations as follows:
• For light subjects, decrease exposure by 1/2 to 1 stop from the meter reading.
• For dark subjects, increase exposure by 1/2 to 1 stop from the meter reading.

You will notice that these adjustments are just the opposite from those required for a reflected-light meter. An incident meter does not work well when photographing light sources because it cannot meter light directly. In such situations you will be better off using a reflected-light meter or an exposure table.

If the scene is unevenly illuminated and you want the best overall exposure, make incident-light readings in the brightest and darkest areas that are important to your picture. Aim the meter in the direction of the camera position for each reading. Set the exposure by splitting the difference between the two extremes.

Actual measuring

Foot Candle meters are the most commonly used meter for video. These meters display the amount of light striking them on a scale calibrated in foot candles, from 0 to 500 and are not dependent on any other factors.

In order to get an accurate reading the meter needs to be placed immediately in front of the subject facing the light source to be measured. The easiest way to take the key, fill, and back light measurements is to do them one at a time, with the other two lights turned off. Start with just the key light on, position the meter in front of the area of the subject struck by the key light. Aim the meter at the key light and note the number of foot candles. For example, if it reads 100 foot candles. Then next, turn on just the fill light and take another reading facing the fill light. If our intended lighting ratio is 2:1, then the fill light should read about 50 foot candles.

Now, turn on just the back light and take its reading. The back light should be somewhere between 50 and 150 foot candles, depending on the effect desired. The final step is to re-measure the key, fill, and back light positions with all the lights on. This is important since where the illumination from the lights overlaps the intensity increases. Adjust the intensity of the lights as needed to maintain the desired lighting ratio.

Understanding ISO / ASA

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Use a meter reading as a guideline rather than a dictate for correct exposure. This makes it important that you understand how your particular meter works so you can consistently get good results no matter what the lighting. The place to begin this understanding is the instruction manual that came with your meter or camera. The instructions should familiarize you with the meter's specific features, its flexibility, and its limitations. Most camera and exposure meter instructions provide the basic techniques of light measurement and mention some of the situations that may "fool" the meter. If you can't find the instructions, write to the manufacture for them.

It may be appropriate to understand one standard before actually handling light meters. This standard often referred to as ASA or more correctly as ISO. International Standard ISO 5800:1987 from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) defines both an arithmetic scale and a logarithmic scale for measuring color-negative film speed. Related standards ISO 6:1993 and ISO 2240:2003 define scales for speeds of black-and-white negative film and color reversal film.

In the ISO arithmetic scale, which corresponds to the older ASA scale, doubling the speed of a film (that is, halving the amount of light that is necessary to expose the film) implies doubling the numeric value that designates the film speed. In the ISO logarithmic scale, which corresponds to the older DIN scale, doubling the speed of a film implies adding 3° to the numeric value that designates the film speed. For example, a film rated ISO 200/24° is twice as sensitive as a film rated ISO 100/21°. Commonly, the logarithmic speed is omitted, and only the arithmetic speed is given (e.g., “ISO 100”). In such cases, the quoted “ISO” speed is essentially the same as the older “ASA” speed.

ISO or ASA (American Standards Association) in the most basic terms is the speed with which your film or digital camera responds to light, so the higher the ISO/ASA rating the more sensitive the film or CCD/CMOS sensor is to light.

In terms of film those with lower sensitivity (lower ISO speed rating like 50 or 100) requires a longer exposure and is thus called a slow film, while stock with higher sensitivity (higher ISO speed rating such as 400 or 800) can shoot the same scene with a shorter exposure and is called a fast film.

The same holds true for digital camera, but you are adjusting the sensitivity of the CCD or CMOS not actually using different film, one of the advantages of using digital format, you can change ISO setting for every second shot without having to physically change film stock!

The basic rule would be a higher ISO gives a higher shutter speed with the same Aperture settings, so less blur. The trade-off is that higher ISO also gives more noise or grain to your images, which can be a bad thing if it’s not a look you appreciate.

Slow shutter speed will give you pictures like the one on the right:

This is so because camera was not held steady during the exposure.

Some what similar problem confronts us when exposure may not permit faster shutter speed to arrest motion of the subject! See the picture below to understand the problem:

ISO or ASA

ISO is the term generally used on Digital Cameras, the standard was ASA and in the later years ISO.

To get a bit more technical it was known as the ISO linear scale, which corresponds to the older ASA scale, doubling the speed of a film (that is, halving the amount of light that is necessary to expose the film) implies doubling the numeric value that designates the film speed so 50, 100, 200, 400, 800 and 1600. My experience with Nikon, their digital ISO ratings tend to be exactly the same as the real film counterparts where the same cannot be said about other manufacturers.

Introduction to Montage

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Montage

It means cutting together or assembling, it is based on the principal that is the sum of parts is a whole.

The original meaning is only the first part of the visual statement, according to montage theory. It's open and -- incomplete. What is missing in the static world of images? You! What montage does -- the thought (action) in evolution with the next shot "throws the meaning" on the previous shot! (In primitive terms we call it a reaction shot). The second shot in its turn is incomplete also -- it asks for another shot! That's how we crave for continuity and can't take our eyes away from the screen! Well, montage theory doesn't look so simple anymore.

The great formula of montage:
1 + 1 > 2
(Following the logic of dialects (thesis, anti-thesis and synthesis), the sum of two parts is bigger, if they are connected.

Soviet montage theory is an approach to understanding and creating cinema that relies heavily upon editing (montage is French for "putting together"). Although Soviet filmmakers in the 1920s disagreed about how exactly to view montage, Sergei Eisenstein marked a note of accord in "A Dialectic Approach to Film Form" when he noted that montage is "the nerve of cinema," and that "to determine the nature of montage is to solve the specific problem of cinema."

While several Soviet filmmakers, such as Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov, and Vsevolod Pudovkin put forth explanations of what constitutes the montage effect, Eisenstein's view that "montage is an idea that arises from the collision of independent shots" wherein "each sequential element is perceived not next to the other, but on top of the other" has become most widely accepted.

In formal terms, this style of editing offers discontinuity in graphic qualities, violations of the 180 degree rule, and the creation of impossible spatial matches. It is not concerned with the depiction of a comprehensible spatial or temporal continuity as is found in the classical Hollywood continuity system. It draws attention to temporal ellipses because changes between shots are obvious, less fluid, and non-seamless.

Eisenstein’s montage theories are based on the idea that montage originates in the "collision" between different shots in an illustration of the idea of thesis and antithesis. This basis allowed him to argue that montage is inherently dialectical, thus it should be considered a demonstration of Marxism and Hegelian philosophy. His collisions of shots were based on conflicts of scale, volume, rhythm, motion (speed, as well as direction of movement within the frame), as well as more conceptual values such as class.

Types of Montages

Analytical and Idea - Associative Montages are two major types of montages; the third is primarily concerned with the rhythm rather than juxtapositions. In Analytical Montage, an event is analyzed for its theme and construction. Essential shots are selected and these are synthesized into a precise series of shots that make up a intense event on screen.

Analytical Montage: a). Sequential Analytical Montage, b). Sectional Analytical Montage.
Idea Associative: a). Comparison Montage, b). Collision Montage.
Metric Montage

In Montage an event is condensed into key developmental elements and put in a cause effect sequence. The main event is implied rather than shown. It requires the viewers to apply psychological closure to fill in gaps so than they feel more involved in the scene, the viewer becomes a participant.

The time order never changes - it can only be condensed and intensified. Such sequence helps in plot development and narrative continuity.

Three diagrams above illustrate the steps involved to make a sequential analytical montage. These types of montage represent the key developmental elements in a cause effect sequence of an event.

Diagram: The proposal, the engagement, the Birth of the first child followed by the birth of a second child:- The selected shots are sequenced in order of the actual event according to logic (Cause and Effect)

Illustration: The proposal, the birth of the first child, birth of a second followed by marriage:- If the proper sequence of the event is not maintained then the meaning changes (Change in Meaning)

Sectional Montage

The event sections are not arranged along the horizontal time vector (event progression)
But along the vertical vector (event intensity and complexity)
It arrests one moment in the event. (subjective time, the vertical line)
Stretching time duration - opposite to condensing time (cuts)

This shows an event from various view points. It does not follow any particular sequence. It thus shows the various complexities of a particular moment. Unlike the sequential montage, it stops the event from progression temporarily and examines a section of it. The basic order of the shots is still important to establish the point of view. However the shots are rhythmically precise.

It can stress the simultaneity of the event through the split screen or multiple screen montages.
In the first illustration the event is shown from the students point of view one feels bad for the students because they are subjected to a boring lecture this is because of the fact that shots of the students are shown first.

In the second the teacher is shown first hence it adopts a teacher’s point of view.

So the viewers sympathize with the teacher who is delivering a lecture because the students are not that interested.

Idea - Associative Montage

Here two unrelated events are juxtaposed to create a third meaning - developed in the days of silent film era to express ideas and concepts that that could not be shown in a narrative picture sequence. These fall under two categories:

Comparison montage

These comprise of shots that are juxtaposed to thematically related events to reinforce a basic theme or idea.
Silent films often would juxtapose a shot of a political leader with preening of a peacock’s shot to depict politician’s vanity.
Comparison montage acts like an optical illusion to influence perception of the main event.

The Russian filmmaker, Kulshov, conducted several experiments on the aesthetics of montages: to show the impact of juxtaposition and context - he interspersed the expressionless face of an actor with unrelated shots of emotional value like a child playing, a plate of soup, and a dead woman – the viewers thought that they were seeing the actor’s reaction to the event.

The television advertisements often use this technique to send forth complex messages quickly across to the viewers, e.g. a running tiger dissolves into a car gliding on the road – a hyperbole signifying car having the strength, agility, and grace of a tiger.

Collision montage

Two events collide to enforce a concept feeling or idea. The conflict creates tension.

Comparison Montage: These comprise of shots that are juxtaposed to thematically related events to rein enforce a basic theme or idea. Thematic related events are compared to reinforce a general theme.

In olden days these were used in silent films for example they would show a shot of a political leader juxtaposed with a shot of preening of a peacock to show that the man was very vain.

In the following illustration the first picture is of a dog looking for food, it is juxtaposed with a homeless person doing the same. This shows that the poor are being neglected by the society.

What's wrong with this picture?

In comparison montages the multiple screens that contain simultaneous collision montages can be shown. This is done in news, various types of information is given on screen enough of care must be exercised otherwise inaccurate message may be given to a viewer.

Collision Montage: Two events are collided to enforce a concept feeling or idea. The conflict created tension it betters the experience of the viewers these type of montages should not be too obvious otherwise annoyed rather than involved.

In this montage makes the viewers aware of the plight of the homeless, insensitivity and social injustice.

The Visual Dialectical Principal

The aesthetics principal upon which the collision montage is based is called the visual dialectic this means opposing contradictory statements can be juxtaposed to resolve contradictions to a into universally true axioms.

Diadram

By juxtaposing a thesis or statement with its antithesis or counterstatement one arrives at a synthesis. In other words a thesis opposed by an thesis results in a new synthesis (a new thesis) in which two opposing conditions are resolved into a higher order statement.

Russian film maker Eisenstein frequently used it in not only as a principle task of montage but as a basis for an entire film.

The Metric Montage

Editing follows a specific number of frames (based purely on the physical nature of time), cutting to the next shot no matter what is happening within the image.
This montage is used to elicit the most basal and emotional of reactions in the audience.
This is a rhythmic structuring device a series of related or unrelated images are flashed across the screen at regular intervals.
A metric montage is created by cutting a film into equal lengths regardless of colour, content or continuity of shots - one can actually clap the hands to the beat.
A tiatery motion is created.
Accelerated metric montage the shots become progressively faster it can punctuate a higher point.

'Invisible Editing'

This is the omniscient style of the realist feature films developed in Hollywood. The vast majority of narrative films are now edited in this way. The cuts are intended to be unobtrusive except for special dramatic shots. It supports rather than dominates the narrative: the story and the behaviour of its characters are the centre of attention. The technique gives the impression that the edits are always required are motivated by the events in the 'reality' that the camera is recording rather than the result of a desire to tell a story in a particular way. The editing isn't really 'invisible', but the conventions have become so familiar to visual literates that they no longer consciously notice them.

Devices

The dominant system of editing, handed down from the Hollywood tradition, is known as continuity editing, the cuts are invisible in to produce a seamless visual and narrative experience.

Continuity editing involves such techniques as:

Continuity editing relies upon matching screen direction, position, and temporal relations from shot to shot.
Motivated cuts - If a story is to be told the cuts have to be seamless. This can be achieved by ensuring that the content motivates the cut. For example if one hears a door open and a character turns his head, one expects to see a cut to the door.
The 180 Degree Rule - Two characters in the same scene must maintain the same left/right relationship throughout the scene. In other words, if in a particular shot Character A is on the left facing right and Character B is on the right facing left; you should keep the camera positioned so the characters stay facing the same direction. If the camera “crosses the line” between the characters and shoots them from the other side, One end up with a reverse cut where the characters’ positions are switched. Even if you cut to a shot of Character B alone, he should still be on the left facing right. While it’s not essential that you follow the 180 degree rule, most directors do so in order to avoid disorienting the viewer.
Shot-reverse-shot structuring that obeys the 180 degree rule -positing an artificial line which the camera cannot cross, thereby creating the illusion of a unified space across shots.
Cuts on action -creating the illusion of continuous motion from one shot to the next. The reason behind this rule is that cutting on action distracts the audience less. People focus on the action occurring, not the cut, and thus are less likely to notice any mistakes like jump cuts. For example, if a woman turns her head to look at something, the cut to the object of interest should be made midway through the action of turning.
Eye-line match -in which the look of a character is matched spatially to what he or she is looking at.
Sound bridging-in which continuous music or sound is used to bridge the cuts between shots, among other techniques.

In this sequence from Neighbours (Buster Keaton, 1920), continuity is maintained by the spatial and temporal contiguity of the shots and the preservation of direction between world and screen. More importantly, the shots are matched on Keaton's actions as he shuttles across the courtyard from stairwell to stairwell.

In the Hollywood continuity editing system the angle of the camera axis to the axis of action usually changes by more than 30 ° between two shots, for example in a conversation scene rendered as a series of shot/reverse shots. The 180° line is not usually crossed unless the transition is smoothed by a POV shot or a re-establishing shot.

Visible Vs. Invisible Technique

The majority primarily prefer the standard conventions of continuity editing.
The classical narrative mode refers to the narrative style common in films of the classical Hollywood period from the 1940's to the 1960's. These films came from the studio system and its concern for commercial success. Despite the different conventions associated with each genre, these films were about escapism and therefore shared the narrative mode favouring the cause and effect linkage of events, there by keeping the audience engrossed in the story. The classical model used continuity editing which is covert, in order to create a unity of time and space, and tell the story without drawing attention the films as something that has been constructed.
The invisible technique comes across as lacking knowledge and careless inexperienced crew.
People generally believe that a character should be recognisable through out a film, images that evoke feelings of ambiguity and uncertainty in the minds of the viewer without character and plot irritates the viewing experience of the audiences.
Certain filmmakers also assume that usage of an alternate language is a sign of ignorance on the part of the camera, as the conventions are not understood by them they feel it is safer to use the classical Hollywood style because it is a tried and tested method that ensures attracting and sustaining the audiences interest, it keeps them absorbed in the story.

The basic concept is to create an illusion of continuity while leaving out parts of the action that slow the film's pacing.

Each story has to have a beginning, middle and an end int the minds of the audience that is what they expect to se however in reality life is unpredictable and uncertain there is confusing activity that does not make sense at times thus while employing the visible technique the movie becomes more real.

Editing Guidelines – Irrespective of the Technique

Video professionals know that production techniques are best when they are transparent; i.e., when they go unnoticed by the average viewer.
However, in music videos, commercials, and program introductions, we are in an era where production (primarily editing) techniques are being used as a kind of "eye candy" to mesmerize audiences.

Guideline #1: Edits work best when they are motivated.

In making any cut or transition from one shot to another there is a risk of breaking audience concentration and subtly pulling attention away from the story or subject matter.
When cuts or transitions are motivated by production content they are more apt to go unnoticed. For example, if someone glances to one side during a dramatic scene, we can use that as motivation to cut to whatever has caught the actor's attention.
When one person stops talking and another starts that provides the motivation to make a cut from one person to the other.
If we hear a door open, or someone calls out from off-camera, we generally expect to see a shot of whoever it is. If someone picks up a strange object to examine it, it's natural to cut to an insert shot of the object.

Guideline # 2: Whenever possible cut on subject movement.

If cuts are prompted by action, that action will divert attention from the cut, making the transition more fluid. Small jump cuts are also less noticeable because viewers are caught up in the action.

If a man is getting out of a chair, you can cut at the midpoint in the action. In this case some of the action will be included in both shots. In cutting, keep the 30-degree rule in mind.

Maintaining Consistency in Action and Detail

Editing for single-camera production requires great attention to detail. Directors will generally give the editor more than one take of each scene. Not only should the relative position of feet or hands, etc., in both shots match, but also the general energy level of voices and movements.

There is also the need to make sure nothing has changed in the scene -- hair, clothing, the placement of props, etc. and that the talent is doing the same thing in exactly the same way in each shot.

Note in the photos below that if we cut from the close-up of the woman talking to the four-shot on the right, that the angle of her face changes along with the lighting. (Because of the location of the window, we would assume the key light would be on our left.)

These things represent clear continuity problems -- made all the more apparent in this case because our eyes would be focused on the woman in red.

Part of the art of acting is in to maintain absolute consistency between takes.

This means that during each take talent must remember to synchronize moves and gestures with specific words in the dialogue. Otherwise, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to cut directly between these takes during editing.

It's the Continuity Director's job to see not only that the actor's clothes, jewelry, hair, make-up, etc., remain consistent between takes, but that props (movable objects on the set) also remain consistent.

It's easy for an object on the set to be picked up at the end of one scene or take and then be put down in a different place before the camera rolls on the next take. When the scenes are then edited together, the object will then seem to disappear, or instantly jump from one place to another.

Discounting the fact that one would not want to cut between two shots that are very similar, do you see any problem in cutting between the two shots above?

The obvious disappearance of her earrings and a difference in color balance, but did you notice the change in the direction of the key light and the position of the hair on her forehead?

Entering and Exiting the Frame

As an editor, you often must cut from one scene as someone exits the frame on the right and then cut to another scene as the person enters another shot from the left.

It's best to cut out of the first scene as the person's eyes pass the edge of the frame, and then cut to the second scene about six frames before the person's eyes enter the frame of the next scene.

The timing is significant.

It takes about a quarter of a second for viewers' eyes to switch from one side of the frame to the other. During this time, whatever is taking place on the screen becomes a bit scrambled and viewers need a bit of time to refocus on the new action. Otherwise, the lost interval can create a kind of subtle jump in the action.

Like a good magician that can take your attention off something they don't want you to see, an editor can use distractions in the scene to cover the slight mismatches in action that inevitably arise in single-camera production.

An editor knows that when someone in a scene is talking, attention is generally focused on the person's mouth or eyes, and a viewer will tend to miss inconsistencies in other parts of the scene.
Or, as we've seen, scenes can be added to divert attention. Remember the role insert shots and cutaways can play in covering jump cuts.

Guideline # 3: Keep in Mind the Strengths and Limitations of the Medium. Remember:

An editor must remember that a significant amount of picture detail is lost in video images, especially in the 525- and 625-line television systems.

The only way to show needed details is through close-ups.

Except for establishing shots designed to momentarily orient the audience to subject placement, the director and the editor should emphasize medium shots and close-ups.

There are some things to keep in mind in this regard.

Close-ups on individuals are appropriate for interviews and dramas, but not as appropriate for light comedy. In comedy the use of medium shots keeps the mood light. You normally don't want to pull the audience into the actors' thoughts and emotions.

In contrast, in interviews and dramatic productions it's generally desirable to use close-ups to zero-in on a subject's reactions and provide clues to the person's general character.

In dramatic productions a director often wants to communicate something of what's going on within the mind of an actor. In each of these instances, the judicious and revealing use of close-ups can be important.

A List of Contemporary Montage sequences

Many films are well known for their montage scenes. Examples include:

The training regimen montages in Sylvester Stallone's Rocky series of movies and later, a parody by Budweiser in a 2008 Super Bowl commercial in which a Dalmatian coaches a Clydesdale horse.
The Takashi Miike film Dead or Alive features a highly kinetic opening montage where several main characters are obliquely shown conducting various actions.
Dirty Dancing
Flashdance
several of director Sam Raimi's films
Ghostbusters
the "Hakuna Matata" scene from The Lion King, where Simba grows from lion cub to adult
Scarface's montage showing Tony Montana's rise to power, set to the song "Scarface (Push It to the Limit)"
Several training montages in Chariots of Fire and Cool Runnings
In one montage in Dave, presidential look alike Dave Kovic (Kevin Kline) learns the job of President; in another, he makes public appearances.
In a montage in Legally Blonde, Elle (Reese Witherspoon) studies for the LSAT and, at the same time, the admissions committee of Harvard Law School views her admissions video essay. In another, she buckles down studying her law school subjects.
In Prince of Tides, Nick Nolte coaches Jason Gould in football, set to the Minuet of the Symphony No. 104 in D major, London by Haydn.
In Heaven Can Wait, Warren Beatty trains in football, set to the Sonata #3 of Handel.
In Groundhog Day's repeated courtship sequence
In the Director's Cut of The Abyss, the Non-terrestrial Intelligences justify their intended deluge of the human race by showing Bud a video montage of human atrocities.
The film Good Morning Vietnam has a montage of violence, set, ironically, to What a Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong. A similar montage is featured in Bowling for Columbine.
Satirical self-referential montages in the South Park episode "Asspen" and the film Team America: World Police.
Requiem for a Dream uses several montage sequences during portions of the film where the characters use drugs.
In an episode of "Family Guy", the dog, Brian, goes through a montage training for a final exam by excercising (as a parody), with the background music saying, "Everybody needs a montage."
In 1985's Real Genius, a montage is used to demonstrate the lapse of time as the students work on their laser and study for their classes.

In nearly all of these examples, the montages are used to compress narrative time and show the main character learning or improving skills that will help achieve the ultimate goal.

Recommendations

Books

Television Production Handbook by Herbert Zettl
Television Production, Thirteenth Edition by Gerald Millerson
Directing and Producing for Television, Third Edition: A Format Approach by Ivan Cury
Fundamentals of Television Production (2nd Edition) by Ralph Donald, Riley Maynard, and Thomas D. Spann
Montage (Cinema Aesthetics) by Sam Rohdie
Modernist Montage: The Obscurity of Vision in Cinema and Literature by P. Adams. Sitney
Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings by Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen
Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know by Jennifer Van Sijll
Sight, Sound, Motion: Applied Media Aesthetics by Herbert Zettl
Picture Composition for Film and Television, Second Edition by PETER WARD
Composition: The Anatomy of Picture Making by Harry Sternberg

Some Terms for Understanding of Editing

2008-10-11T02:23:00.013-04:00

180° rule. The rule is a basic film editing guideline that states that two characters (or other elements) in the same scene should always have the same left/right relationship to each other. If the camera passes over the imaginary axis connecting the two subjects, it is called crossing the line. The new shot, from the opposite side, is known as a reverse angle.

Buffer shot (neutral shot). A bridging shot (normally taken with a separate camera) to separate two shots which would have reversed the continuity of direction.

Continuity editing. It is the predominant style of editing in narrative cinema and television. The purpose of continuity editing is to smooth over the inherent discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical coherence between shots. In most films, logical coherence is achieved by cutting to continuity, which emphasizes smooth transition of time and space. However, some films incorporate cutting to continuity into a more complex classical cutting technique, one which also tries to show psychological continuity of shots. The radical montage technique relies on symbolic association of ideas between shots rather than association of simple physical action for its continuity. It is What became known as the popular 'classical Hollywood' style of editing was developed by early European and American directors, in particular D.W. Griffith in his films such as The Birth of a Nation and Intolerance. The classical style ensures temporal and spatial continuity as a way of advancing narrative, using such techniques as the 180 degree rule, establishing shot, and Shot reverse shot.

Cross-cut. A cut from one line of action to another. Also applied as an adjectuve to sequences which use such cuts.

Cut. Sudden change of shot from one viewpoint or location to another. On television cuts occur on average about every 7 or 8 seconds. Cutting may:

change the scene;
compress time;
vary the point of view; or
build up an image or idea.
There is always a reason for a cut, and you should ask yourself what the reason is. Less abrupt transitions are achieved with the fade, dissolve, and wipe

Cutaway/cutaway shot (CA). A bridging, intercut shot between two shots of the same subject. It represents a secondary activity occurring at the same time as the main action. It may be preceded by a definite look or glance out of frame by a participant, or it may show something of which those in the preceding shot are unaware. (See narrative style: parallel development) It may be used to avoid the technical ugliness of a 'jump cut' where there would be uncomfortable jumps in time, place or viewpoint. It is often used to shortcut the passing of time.

Cutting rate. Frequent cuts may be used as deliberate interruptions to shock, surprise or emphasize.

Cutting rhythm. A cutting rhythm may be progressively shortened to increase tension. Cutting rhythm may create an exciting, lyrical or staccato effect in the viewer.

Editing. Shaping language, images, or sound through correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications in various media. A person who edits is called an editor. In a sense, the editing process originates with the idea for the work itself and continues in the relationship between the author and the editor. Editing is, therefore, also a practice that includes creative skills, human relations, and a precise set of methods.

Establishing shot. In film and television, an establishing shot sets up, or "establishes", a scene's setting and/or its participants. Typically it is a shot at the beginning (or, occasionally, end) of a scene indicating where, and sometimes when, the remainder of the scene takes place.

Fade, dissolve (mix). Both fades and dissolves are gradual transitions between shots. In a fade the picture gradually appears from (fades in) or disappears to (fades out) a blank screen. A slow fade-in is a quiet introduction to a scene; a slow fade-out is a peaceful ending. Time lapses are often suggested by a slow fade-out and fade-in. A dissolve (or mix) involves fading out one picture while fading up another on top of it. The impression is of an image merging into and then becoming another. A slow mix usually suggests differences in time and place. Defocus or ripple dissolves are sometimes used to indicate flashbacks in time.

Film/video editing. It is an art of storytelling practiced by connecting two or more shots together to form a sequence, and the subsequent connecting of sequences to form an entire movie. Film editing is the only art that is unique to cinema and which separates filmmaking from all other art forms that preceded it (such as photography, theatre, dance, writing, and directing). However there are close parallels to the editing process in other art forms such as poetry or novel writing. It is often referred to as the "invisible art," since when it is well-practiced, the viewer becomes so engaged that he or she is not even aware of the work of the editor.

Inset. An inset is a special visual effect whereby a reduced shot is superimposed on the main shot. Often used to reveal a close-up detail of the main shot.

Insert/insert shot. A bridging close-up shot inserted into the larger context, offering an essential detail of the scene (or a re-shooting of the action with a different shot size or angle.)

Intercutting. Here editor cuts back and forth from one subject or event to the other. With this technique, the events appear to be happening at the same time. In parallel editing or parallel cutting, sometimes also called cross-cutting, the sequences or scenes are intercut so as to suggest that they are taking place at the same time. Parallel cutting might show shots of a villain being villainous intercut with shots of the hero or heroine coming to the rescue. Most chases use parallel editing, switching back and forth between pursuer and pursued. Phone conversations, too, are often parallel edited.

Invisible editing. See narrative style and continuity editing.

Jump cut. Abrupt switch from one scene to another which may be used deliberately to make a dramatic point. Sometimes boldly used to begin or end action. Alternatively, it may be result of poor pictorial continuity, perhaps from deleting a section.

Matched cut. In a 'matched cut' a familiar relationship between the shots may make the change seem smooth:

continuity of direction;
completed action;*
a similar centre of attention in the frame;
a one-step change of shot size (e.g. long to medium);
a change of angle (conventionally at least 30 degrees).
*The cut is usually made on an action (for example, a person begins to turn towards a door in one shot; the next shot, taken from the doorway, catches him completing the turn). Because the viewer's eye is absorbed by the action he is unlikely to notice the movement of the cut itself.

Motivated cut. Cut made just at the point where what has occurred makes the viewer immediately want to see something which is not currently visible (causing us, for instance, to accept compression of time). A typical feature is the shot/reverse shot technique (cuts coinciding with changes of speaker). Editing and camera work appear to be determined by the action. It is intimately associated with the 'privileged point of view' (see narrative style: objectivity).

Narrative mode. (also called narrative voice, narrative point of view, or mode of narration) It is any method through which the author(s) of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical piece conveys his/her/their story to the audience. It refers to through which person's perspective the story is viewed and, also, how it is expressed to the audience. Whoever this person is, he or she is regarded as the "narrator," a character developed by the author for the specific purpose of conveying the story. The narrative point-of-view is meant to be the related experience of the character of this narrator—not that of the actual author (although, in some cases, especially in non-fiction, it is possible for the narrator and author to be the same person). In addition to through whom the story is told or seen, the narrative mode employed may also construct how the story is described or expressed, for example by using stream of consciousness or unreliable narration.

Narrative structure. It is generally described as the structural framework that underlies the order and manner in which a narrative is presented to a reader, listener, or viewer.

Narrative style. To understand style part it is important to understand the narrative. A narrative or story is a construct created in a suitable format (written, spoken, poetry, prose, images, song, theatre, or dance) that describes a sequence of fictional or non-fictional events. The word "story" may be used as a synonym of "narrative", but can also be used to refer to the sequence of events described in a narrative. A narrative can also be told by a character within a larger narrative.

Parallel editing. Editing that alternates shots of two or more lines of action occurring in different places, usually simultaneously. The two actions are therefore linked, associating the characters from both lines of action.

Reaction shot. Any shot, usually a cutaway, in which a participant reacts to action which has just occurred.

Reverse cut/crossing the line. Crossing the line is a very important concept in video and film production. It refers to an imaginary line which cuts through the middle of the scene, from side to side with respect to the camera. Crossing the line changes the viewer's perspective in such as way that it causes disorientation and confusion. For this reason, crossing the line is something to be avoided.

Shot reverse shot. A shot/counter-shot in a film technique wherein one character is shown looking (often off-screen) at another character, and then the other character is shown looking "back" at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite directions, the viewer unconsciously assumes that they are looking at each other. Shot reverse shot is a feature of the "classical" Hollywood style of continuity editing, which deemphasizes transitions between shots such that the audience perceives one continuous action that develops linearly, chronologically, and logically.

Split screen. The division of the screen into parts which can show the viewer several images at the same time (sometimes the same action from slightly different perspectives, sometimes similar actions at different times). This can convey the excitement and frenzy of certain activities, but it can also overload the viewer.

Stock shot. Footage already available and used for another purpose than the one for which it was originally filmed.

Superimpositions. Two of more images placed directly over each other (e.g. and eye and a camera lens to create a visual metaphor).

Wipe. An optical effect marking a transition between two shots. It appears to supplant an image by wiping it off the screen (as a line or in some complex pattern, such as by appearing to turn a page). The wipe is a technique which draws attention to itself and acts as a clear marker of change.

Introduction to Video Recording

2008-10-09T12:20:00.007-04:00

VIDEO RECORDING

SOME IMPORTANT QUESTIONS

Q1 Define Video Recording and identify some of its advantages.

Ans) Video Recording is the technology of electronically capturing, recording, processing, storing, transmitting, and reconstructing a sequence of still images representing scenes in motion.

Its advantages:
The quality of video tapes programs is indistinguishable from the original picture and sound with an excellent broadcast quality. The tapes can be reused and also duplicated without loss of quality in picture or sound. The video tapes can also be replayed immediately and the recording can be analyzed by the technicians and the directors. This leads to saving of time. Another major advantage is that the video tape’s picture and sound can be edited or modified separately. Unwanted or faulty sections can be deleted and also replaced by some other material. Video Taped Programs can be easily stored as an entire program or single sections or even as still shots that can be reused and manipulated for further usage. The tapes are also not prone to damage therefore have longer lives.

Q2 What are the different types of Video Systems in use and explain there working.

Ans) There are three types of systems used: BETAMAX, VHS, HI8

Betamax: In the Betamax system, the video tape is guided along the head drum in a U-shape for all tape guidance functions, such as recording, playback and fast forward/backward. When the cassette is inserted, the tape is guided around the head drum (called threading). Threading the tape takes a few seconds, but once the tape is threaded, shifting from one tape function to another can be achieved rapidly and smoothly.

VHS: JVC's VHS System was introduced one year after the launch of Betamax. In VHS, the tape is guided through in an M-shape; the so-called M-tape guidance system. It is considered simpler and more compact than the U-system. Threading is faster and is done every time the tape guidance function is changed. It is therefore somewhat slower and noisier than the U-system. This problem is being solved by "Quick-start" VHS video recorders, which allow fast and silent changes in tape guidance functions. To avoid excessive wear, M-tape guidance system recorders are provided with an automatic switch-off feature, activated some minutes after the recorder is put on hold, which automatically unthreads the tape. An improvement of the basic VHS system is HQ (High Quality) VHS.

In the VHS system different starting points were used than in Betamax, such as track size and relative speed. VHS has rather wide video tracks, but a slightly lower relative tape speed, and that also counts for the audio track. In general, the advantages of one aspect are tempered by the disadvantages of the other. The end result is that there is not too much difference between the sound and image qualities of both systems.

HI8: As a direct addition to the Video-8 camcorders, there is a third system: Video Hi8, which uses a smaller cassette than VHS and Betamax. The sound recording takes place digitally, making its sound quality very good. When using the special Hi8 Metal Tape, the quality of both image and sound are equivalent to that of Super-VHS. The Video-Hi8-recorder can also be used to make audio recordings (digital stereo) only. Using a 90 minute cassette, one can record 6 x 90 minutes, making a total of 18 hours of continuous music. The video Hi8-system also allows manipulating digital images, such as picture-in-picture and editing. Video Hi8 uses a combination of the M- and U-tape guidance system.

Q3 Describe the process of Sound Recording.

Ans) In case of a mono video recorder, the audio signal which corresponds with the image is transferred to a separate, fixed audio head. As in an audio cassette deck, this head writes an audio track in longitudinal direction of the tape. This is called linear or longitudinal track recording.

The video recorder has two erase heads. One is a wide erase head covering the whole tape width which automatically erases all existing image, synchronization and sound information when a new recording is made.

The other erase head is smaller and positioned at the position of the audio track. With this erase head, the soundtrack can be erased separately, without affecting the video information. In this way, separate audio can be added to a video recording. This is called audio dubbing, and can be particularly useful when making your own camera recordings. The linear audio track does have some restrictions. Due to its low tape speed, it is not suitable for hi-fi recordings. Moreover, the audio track is so narrow (0.7 mm for VHS and 1.04 mm for Betamax) that not even stereo sound can be recorded properly.

The frequency range is limited as is the dynamic range (which relates to the amount of decibels), and the signal-to-noise ratio is not very high.(The signal-to-noise ratio relates to amount of noise compared to the total signal. The higher this ratio, the less noise and the better the signal will be).

Hi-fi video recorders were developed for improved sound quality. In the case of hi-fi, the audio signal is also put on tape via revolving heads similar to the video signal, not on the linear track.

As there is no space between the video tracks, as the video tracks lie right next to each other with no space in between, the audio tracks need to be recorded in the same place as the video tracks. The way this is realized is by recording the audio signal under (deeper than) the video signal. In hi-fi video recorders, the audio signal is modulated to a high carrier frequency. This is realized via FM modulation, with the right channel stereo signal at a slightly higher frequency than the left channel.

The corresponding video and audio signals are written to tape immediately after each other. First the FM audio signal is registered at a deep level in the tape's magnetic coating. Straight after the audio signal, the video signal is recorded. As the frequency of the video signal is higher than the audio signal, it will not register as deep in the tape coating as the audio signal. The video signal erases the audio signal in the top layer and records the video signal instead. Thus, the audio and video signal tracks are written in the same magnetic layer, separately, one on top of the other. A hi-fi video recorder is also suitable as a high-quality audio recorder, not only because of the professional recording quality, but also because of the long play possibilities and the low recording costs. A hi-fi-video recorder needs to be tuned very accurately. As the two rotating audio heads function alternately, the recorded sound consists of successive particles and need to fit together perfectly. If they do not, the result is rumble, which is a humming sound. In high quality, well-tuned hi-fi video recorders you will not hear this sound.

Q4 What are Camcorders and what are the formats being used by them?

Ans) A camcorder is a portable electronic device for recording video images and audio onto an internal storage device. The camcorder contains both a video camera and (traditionally) a videocassette recorder in one unit. Camcorders are often classified by their storage device: VHS, Betamax, Video8 are examples of older, videotape-based camcorders which record video in analog form. Newer camcorders include Digital8, miniDV, DVD, Hard drive and solid-state (flash) semiconductor memory, which all record video in digital form.

MiniDV is now the most popular format for tape-based consumer camcorders, providing near-broadcast quality video and sophisticated nonlinear editing capability on consumer equipment. MiniDV storage allows full resolution video (720x576 for PAL, 720x480 for NTSC), much unlike the analogue video standards before. Digital video doesn't experience colour bleeding or fade. There has been a trend, largely spearheaded by Hitachi, Panasonic, and Sony, to sell consumer camcorders based on optical discs rather than tape. Most common are DVD recordable camcorders, which are common among point and shoot users due to the ability to take a disc out of the camcorder and drop it directly into a DVD player, much like VHS-C on the analog side. However, professionals consider DVD media to be too inflexible for easy editing.

Q5 What are the two different image capture formats?

Ans) Digital video cameras come in two different image capture formats: interlaced and progressive scan. Interlaced cameras record the image in alternating sets of lines: the odd-numbered lines are scanned, and then the even-numbered lines are scanned, then the odd-numbered lines are scanned again, and so on. One set of odd or even lines is referred to as a "field", and a consecutive pairing of two fields of opposite parity is called a frame. A progressive scanning digital video camera records each frame as distinct, with both fields being identical.

Thus, interlaced video captures twice as many fields per second as progressive video does when both operate at the same number of frames per second. This is one of the reasons video has a “hyper-real” look, because it draws a different image 60 times per second, as opposed to film, which records 24 or 25 progressive frames per second. Progressive scan camcorders such as the Panasonic DVX100 are generally more desirable because of the similarities they share with film. They both record frames progressively, which results in a crisper image. They can both shoot at 24 frames per second, which results in motion strobing (blurring of the subject when fast movement occurs). Thus so, progressive scanning video cameras tend to be more expensive than their interlaced counterparts. (Note that even though the digital video format only allows for 29.97 interlaced frames per second [or 25 for PAL], 24 frames per second progressive video is possible by displaying identical fields for each frame, and displaying 3 fields of an identical image for certain frames.

Q6 What is Video Compression and explain its different types.

Ans) Video compression refers to reducing the quantity of data used to represent video content without excessively reducing the quality of the picture. It also reduces the number of bits required to store and/or transmit digital media. Compressed video can be transmitted more economically over a smaller carrier.

Digital video requires high data rates - the better the picture, the more data is ordinarily needed. This means powerful hardware, and lots of bandwidth when video is transmitted. However much of the data in video is not necessary for achieving good perceptual quality, e.g., because it can be easily predicted - for example, successive frames in a movie rarely change much from one to the next - this makes data compression work well with video. Video compression can make video files far smaller with little perceptible loss in quality.

Some forms of data compression are lossless. This means that when the data is decompressed, the result is a bit-for-bit perfect match with the original. While lossless compression of video is possible, it is rarely used. This is because any lossless compression system will sometimes result in a file (or portions of) that is as large and/or has the same data rate as the uncompressed original. As a result, all hardware in a lossless system would have to be able to run fast enough to handle uncompressed video as well. This eliminates much of the benefit of compressing the data in the first place. If the inverse of the process, decompression, produces an exact replica of the original data then the compression is lossless.

Lossy compression, usually applied to image data, does not allow reproduction of an exact replica of the original image, but has a higher compression ratio. Thus lossy compression allows only an approximation of the original to be generated.

The size of the data in compressed form (C) relative to the original size (O) is known as the compression ratio (R=C/O). For image compression, the fidelity of the approximation usually decreases as the compression ratio increases.The success of data compression depends largely on the data itself and some data types are inherently more compressible than others. Generally some elements within the data are more common than others and most compression algorithms exploit this property, known as redundancy. The greater the redundancy within the data, the more successful the compression of the data is likely to be. Fortunately, digital video contains a great deal of redundancy and thus is very suitable for compression.

Q7 List the major differences between a film and a video.

Ans) Exposure Latitude - A key difference between DV and film is exposure latitude, which affects contrast and detail. Color negative has a usable exposure range of 7 stops, with normal exposure approximately in the middle. Most stocks provide 4 stops overexposure and 3 stops underexposure where detail is still visible.

Video has a usable exposure latitude of 5 stops, providing 2 stops overexposure and 3 stops underexposure where detail is still visible. Exposure beyond the -/+ limits results in tonal compression and is reproduced as either pure white or pure black, respectively. Obviously, there is a loss of detail as well.

Motion Blur - Film yields a slight blur in moving objects. This is known as motion blur and it results in a distinct fluidity of movement-- a prime contributor to the "film look." Motion blur is caused by film's relatively low frame rate of 24 frames per second. A telltale sign of video is its extreme sharpness and lack of motion blur. There are two interlaced fields for every frame of video, so the effective rate is actually 60 images per second (= 30 fps x 2 fields). This virtually eliminates motion blur, creating an image that is a bit too sharp and devoid of fluidity (the dreaded "video look").

The answer to this is a technical breakthrough called progressive scanning, where each frame is scanned once. In other words, the frame is scanned as a single field, with no interlacing. The lower image rate reproduces motion blur comparable to film. Another benefit of progressive scanning is a dramatic increase in resolution. This occurs because progressive scanning eliminates interlace artifacts (combed edges in movement) and interline flicker (noise in fine patterns).

Resolution - The final difference between video and film is resolution. Many filmmakers erroneously assume that film is far superior across the board. Arguably, the disparity in resolution has less of an impact on the look of DV than exposure latitude and motion blur. It is not noticeable to the average audience, except of when aliasing rears its ugly head. Aliasing can be minimized by avoiding fine patterns, particularly checkered and striped clothing.

DV has an interesting advantage over film that may, in part, make up for its lower resolution. It can "see" in low light almost like the human eye and captures beautiful images during sunrise and sunset.

Q8 What is the major difference between Analog and Digital Video Recording?

Ans) The analog recording method stores signals as a continual wave in/on the media, rather than the discrete numbers used in digital recording. The wave is stored as a physical texture on a phonograph record, or a fluctuation in the field strength of a magnetic recording. In an analog system the continuously varying voltage magnetizes tape particles in a continuously varying pattern that mirrors the signal. On playback, the tape particles create a continuously varying output signal that continues to mirror the original.

Every transfer of the picture information is an imitation--or, more precisely, an imitation of an imitation, with consequences that we'll see shortly.In a digital system, by contrast, the first thing that happens to the original continuous signal is that it's fed through an analog/digital converter chip. That chip looks at the signal hundreds of thousands of separate times per second and assigns each discrete sampling a numerical value that corresponds to the strength of the signal at that precise moment in time. These numbers, rather than the signal itself, are copied and recopied throughout the rest of the process.

Q9 What are the advantages of Analog over digital and vice versa?

Ans) Analog over Digital

ScalabilityAll video, analog and digital, tends to look sharper and clearer on a smaller screen; it's the natural result of squeezing the same amount of visual information into a smaller space. All but the highest quality digital video, however, suffers greatly from enlargement. When you blow up your digitized image onto a huge home-theater TV screen, for example, all of those invisible digital compression artifacts become quite noticeable--straight lines become jaggy, curves look blocky, etc. Analog video, on the other hand, is much better at filling larger screens with sharp-looking images.

SeamlessnessIn the audio world, some purists have returned to analog (vinyl LP) recordings because they can hear the fact that digital recordings only sample the signal at intervals instead of copying the whole thing. To them, CDs sound hollow and brittle in consequence.

Digital over Analog: Instead of copying the video signal, digital duplication transcribes the numerical code that describes that signal. If you transcribe it accurately (and computers are outstanding at chores like that), you can decode the result into a daughter signal that is essentially indistinguishable from the parent.

Freedom from Noise

Noise is any disturbance in an electrical current that is not part of the signal, and every current carries a certain amount of this electrical disturbance. Since an analog dupe is an imitation, it copies the noise right along with the parent signal, while adding new noise in the process. That means that in each generation, the noise level relative to the signal (signal-to-noise ratio) increases and the quality decreases proportionately. In digital recording, noise is not a problem because the signal consists entirely of current pulses carrying information like Morse code: power on = 1; power off = 0. If the voltage level of the "power on" part of the signal is well above the noise level, then the transcribing (copying) system can be set to respond only to current at that level and ignore the noise entirely. So even if the process adds a small amount of its own noise, it never copies the parental noise--nor does it pass on its own noise to the grandchildren. The result is that digital video can be copied through many generations without appreciable quality loss. This is a massive improvement over analog video (and even over cinematic film, which is another analog medium).

Computer Compatibility

By far the biggest advantage of digital video is that a computer can process and store it. Computers are astonishingly powerful but they cannot work with pictures, or more accurately, with the continuously varying wave forms that record them. Before you can get your computer to handle or even recognize video input, you have to digitize the video. For many years, professionals have digitized video, not only to take advantage of loss-free duplicating, but also to perform image processing. Image processing means superimposing titles, compositing multiple images, and adding effects like dissolves and wipes. In image processing, digital is an ephemeral state: an analog signal is digitized, massaged for a few microseconds at most, and immediately reconverted to analog.

But as hard drives got bigger and faster, and as image compression techniques improved, it became possible to digitize the signal and then keep it in that form indefinitely by storing it in the computer.

Q10 Describe the process of Helical Scanning.

Ans) Helical scan or striping is a method of recording higher bandwidth signals onto magnetic tape than would otherwise be possible at the same tape speed with fixed heads. It is used in video cassette recorders, digital audio tape recorders, and numerous computer secondary storage and backup systems. In a fixed head system, tape is drawn past the head at a linear speed. The head creates a fluctuating magnetic field in response to the signal to be recorded, and the magnetic particles on the tape are forced to line up with the field at the head.

As the tape moves away, the magnetic particles carry an imprint of the signal in their magnetic orientation. If the tape moves too slowly, a high frequency signal will not be imprinted — the particles' polarity will simply oscillate in the vicinity of the head, to be left in a random position. Thus the bandwidth capacity of the recorded signal can be seen to be related to tape speed — the faster the speed, the higher the frequency that can be recorded.

Video and digital audio need considerably more bandwidth than analog audio, so much so that tape would have to be drawn past the heads at very high speed in order to capture this signal. Clearly this is impractical, since tapes of immense length would be required. (However, see VERA for details of a partially-successful linear videotape system.) The generally adopted solution is to rotate the head against the tape at high speed, so that the relative velocity is high, but the tape itself moves at a slow speed. To accomplish this, the head must be tilted so that at each rotation of the head, a new area of tape is brought into play; each segment of the signal is recorded as a diagonal stripe across the tape. This is known as a helical scan because the tape wraps around the circular drum at an angle, traveling up like a helix.

Introduction to basic 'Structuralism' in Pscyhology

2008-10-08T00:36:00.003-04:00

Question: What is structuralism?

Answer: Structuralism is general approach in various academic disciplines that seeks to explore the inter-relationships between some fundamental elements, upon which higher mental, linguistic, social, cultural etc "structures" are built, through which then meaning is produced within a particular person, system, culture.

Structuralism appeared in academic psychology for the first time in 19th century and then reappeared in the second half of the 20th century, when it grew to become one of the most popular approaches in the academic fields that are concerned with analyzing language, culture, and society. Ferdinand de Saussure is generally considered a starting point of the 20th century structuralism. As with any cultural movement, the influences and developments are complex.

Structuralism in psychology (19th century)At the turn of 19th century the founding father of experimental psychology Wilhelm Wundt tried to experimentally confirm his hypothesis that conscious mental life can be broken down into fundamental elements which then form more complex mental structures. Wundt's structuralism was quickly abandoned because it could not be tested in the same way as behavior, until now, when the brain-scanning technology can identify, for example, specialized brain cells that respond exclusively to basic lines and shapes and are then combined in subsequent brain areas where more complex visual structures are formed. This line of research in modern psychology is called cognitive psychology rather then structuralism because Wundt's term never ceased to be associated with the problem of observability.

Introduction to 'Psychology'

2008-10-08T00:23:00.003-04:00

Question: What is Psychology?

Answer: Psychology is a collection of academic, clinical and industrial disciplines concerned with the explanation and prediction of behaviour, thinking, emotions, motivations, relationships, potentials and pathologies.

Psychology (Classical Greek: psyche = "soul" or "mind", logos = "study of") is an academic and applied field involving the study of behaviour, mind and thought and the underlying neurological bases of behaviour. Psychology also refers to the application of such knowledge to various spheres of human activity, including problems of individuals' daily lives and the treatment of mental illness. It is largely concerned with humans, although the behaviour and mental processes of animals can also be part of psychology research, either as a subject in its own right (e.g. animal cognition and ethology), or somewhat more controversially, as a way of gaining an insight into human psychology by means of comparison (including comparative psychology). Psychology is commonly defined as the science of behaviour and mental processes.

Psychology is conducted both scientifically and non-scientifically, but is to a large extent wholly rigorous. Mainstream psychology is based largely on positivism, using quantitative studies and the scientific method to test and disprove hypotheses, often in an experimental context. Psychology tends to be eclectic, drawing on scientific knowledge from other fields to help explain and understand behaviour. However, not all psychological research methods strictly follow the empirical positivism philosophy. Qualitative research utilizes interpretive techniques and is descriptive in nature, enabling the gathering of rich clinical information unattainable by classical experimentation. Some psychologists, particularly adherents to humanistic psychology, may go as far as completely rejecting a scientific approach, viewing psychology more as an art rather than a rigid science. However, mainstream psychology has a bias towards the scientific method, which is reflected in the dominance of cognitivism as the guiding theoretical framework used by most psychologists to understand thought and behaviour.

Psychology does not necessarily refer to the brain or nervous system and can be framed purely in terms of phenomenological or information processing theories of mind. Increasingly, though, an understanding of brain function is being included in psychological theory and practice, particularly in areas such as artificial intelligence, neuropsychology, and cognitive neuroscience. Psychology is distinct from, though related to, psychiatry, the branch of medicine which treats mental illness.

Psychology differs from sociology, anthropology, economics, and political science, in part, by studying the behaviour of individuals (alone or in groups) rather than the behaviour of the groups or aggregates themselves. Although psychological questions were asked in antiquity (see Aristotle's De Memoria et Reminiscentia or "On Memory and Recollection"), psychology emerged as a separate discipline only recently. The first person to call himself a "psychologist", Wilhelm Wundt, opened the first psychological laboratory in 1879.

Question: What do you understand by term Modern Psychology?

Answer: The majority of mainstream psychology is based on a framework derived from cognitive psychology, although the popularity of this paradigm does not exclude others, which are often applied as necessary. Psychologists specialising in certain areas, however, may use the dominant cognitive psychology only rarely if at all.

The testing of different aspects of psychological function is a significant area of contemporary psychology. Psychometric and statistical methods predominate, including various well-known standardised tests as well as those created ad hoc as the situation or experiment requires.

Academic psychologists may focus purely on research and psychological theory, aiming to further psychological understanding in a particular area, while other psychologists may work in applied psychology to deploy such knowledge for immediate and practical benefit. However, these approaches are not mutually exclusive and most psychologists will be involved in both researching and applying psychology at some point during their work. Clinical psychology, among many of the various discipline of psychology, aims at developing in practicing psychologists’ knowledge of and experience with research and experimental methods which they will continue to build up as well as employ as they treat individual with psychological issues or use psychology to help others.

Contemporary psychology is broad-based and consists of a diverse set of approaches, subject areas, and applications. A comprehensive list is given in the Topics and Divisions sections below. Where an area of interest is considered to need specific training and specialist knowledge (especially in applied areas), psychological associations will typically set up a governing body to manage training requirements. Similarly, requirements may be laid down for university degrees in psychology, so that students acquire an adequate knowledge in a number of areas. Additionally, areas of practical psychology, where psychologists offer treatment to others, may require that psychologists be licensed by government regulatory bodies as well.

While the exact divisions may vary between different countries or institutions, the following areas are usually considered as core subjects or approaches by psychology societies and universities.

Question: What is Cognitive Psychology?

Answer: Cognitive psychology is the psychological science which studies cognition, the mental processes that are hypothesised to underlie behaviour. This covers a broad range of research domains, examining questions about the workings of memory, attention, perception, knowledge representation, reasoning, creativity and problem solving.

Cognitive psychology is radically different from previous psychological approaches in two key ways.

It accepts the use of the scientific method, and generally rejects introspection as a valid method of investigation, unlike phenomenological methods such as Freudian psychology.

It posits the existence of internal mental states (such as beliefs, desires and motivations) unlike behaviourist psychology.

The school of thought arising from this approach is known as cognitivism.
Cognitive psychology is one of the more recent additions to psychological research, having only developed as a separate area within the discipline since the late 1950s and early 1960s (though there are examples of cognitive thinking from earlier researchers). The term came into use with the publication of the book Cognitive Psychology by Ulric Neisser in 1967. However the cognitive approach was brought to prominence by Donald Broadbent's book Perception and Communication in 1958. Since that time, the dominant paradigm in the area has been the information processing model of cognition that Broadbent put forward. This is a way of thinking and reasoning about mental processes, envisaging them like software running on the computer that is the brain. Theories commonly refer to forms of input, representation, computation or processing, and outputs.

This way of conceiving mental processes has pervaded psychology more generally over the past few decades, and it is not uncommon to find cognitive theories within social psychology, personality, abnormal psychology, developmental psychology; the application of cognitive theories in comparative psychology has led to many recent studies in animal cognition.

The information processing approach to cognitive functioning is currently being questioned by new approaches in psychology, such as dynamical systems, and the embodiment perspective.

Because of the use of computational metaphors and terminology, cognitive psychology was able to benefit greatly from the flourishing of research in artificial intelligence and other related areas in the 1960s and 1970s. In fact, it developed as one of the significant aspects of the inter-disciplinary subject of cognitive science, which attempts to integrate a range of approaches in research on the mind and mental processes.

Question: What is major criticism of Cognitive Psychology?

Answer: Cognitivism has been criticised in a number of ways.
Phenomenologist and hermeneutic philosophers have criticised the positivist approach of cognitivism for reducing individual meaning to what they perceive as measurements stripped of all significance. They argue that by representing experiences and mental functions as measurements, cognitivism is ignoring the context (of contextualism) and, therefore, the meaning of these measurements. They believe that it is this personal meaning of experience gained from the phenomenon as it is experienced by a person (what Heidegger called being in the world) which is the fundamental aspect of our psychology that needs to be understood: therefore they argue that a context free psychology is a contradiction in terms. They also argue in favour of holism: that positivist method cannot be meaningfully used on something which is inherently irreducible to component parts. Hubert Dreyfus has been the most notable critic of cognitivism from this point of view. Humanistic psychology draws heavily on this philosophy, and practitioners have been among the most critical of cognitivism.

In the 1990s, various new theories emerged that challenged cognitivism and the idea that thought was best described as computation. Some of these new approaches, often influenced by phenomenological and post-modernist philosophy, include situated cognition, distributed cognition, dynamicism, embodied cognition, ecological psychology and critical psychology. Some thinkers working in the field of artificial life (for example Rodney Brooks) have also produced non-cognitivist models of cognition.

The idea that mental functions can be described as information processing models has been criticised by philosopher John Searle and mathematician Roger Penrose who both argue that computation has some inherent shortcomings which cannot capture the fundamentals of mental processes.

Penrose uses Gödel's incompleteness theorem (which states that there are mathematical truths which can never be proven in a sufficiently strong mathematical system; any sufficiently strong system of axioms will also be incomplete) and Turing's halting problem (which states that there are some things which are inherently non-computable) as evidence for his position.

Searle has developed two arguments, the first (well known through his Chinese Room thought experiment) is the 'syntax is not semantics' argument - that a program is just syntax, understanding requires semantics, therefore programs (hence cognitivism) cannot explain understanding. The second, which he now prefers but is less well known, is his 'syntax is not physics' argument - nothing in the world is intrinsically a computer program except as applied, described or interpreted by an observer, so either everything can be described as a computer and trivially a brain can but then this does not explain any specific mental processes, or there is nothing intrinsic in a brain that makes it a computer (program) - both points, he claims, refute cognitivism. Finally it is not clear to what extent cognitivists can respond to the problems of Ryle's Regress or the homunculus fallacy.

Introduction to Six Basic Elements of Design

2008-10-08T00:09:00.005-04:00

Not all of the highest-quality equipment in the world can guarantee that you take great pictures. Even knowing how to use the camera effectively, setting exposures, depth of field, etc., will not necessarily give your photos the description that all photographers strive for: art. Certainly, these things help, but capturing that elusive artistic quality requires special skills that every photographer worth his tripod must possess. For this, we turn to what are called the Elements and Principles of Design. These are a few basic concepts that anyone can learn and will allow you to lay out your photos in an eye-pleasing way, or even snare that rare beast we call art.

The six Elements of Design are the more basic set, so we will start with those. Within the Elements, we have Line, Shape, Form, Space, Value, and Texture. Remember, each of these, or several used together, can help improve your photos. Still, it requires an experienced eye to put these ideas to their best effect. Do not get discouraged if some photos you take, even those containing these concepts, still do not look quite right.

LINE - Line is one of the simplest concepts to describe. Basically, it is including things with strong, defined lines in your photo. Examples are things like the edge of buildings, train tracks, road lines, and sidewalks. Line is usually used to either portray a sense of Movement (One of the Principles of Design), or to lead the viewer's eye to the subject of the photo, though it can also imply Shape. It is not limited to simply solid objects like buildings, or even to straight lines. Light and shadow, with a clear edge between them, can create Line. Many photos have curved lines, such as roads as they bend to the right or left, or a footpath that winds between the roots of large trees, as well.

SHAPE - Shape refers to including things that appear two dimensional, and have a specific form to them. The most common Shape used is the circle. We can see that in tapestries, or in arched doorways. The wave is another strong shape, found in almost any coastal photograph. Other shapes include the triangle, and square, though those are less commonly used in photography. Shape can also lend to other Elements and Principles, just as line does. Usually, Shape is used to create a sense of Space (Again, arched doorways are a good example), though it works well with Form, Value, and Line.

FORM - Form is very similar to Shape, but different enough to create a different feeling in your photographs. This is also probably the least used of the Elements of Design. Basically, Form is a 3-dimensional object. Spheres, cubes, and cones are good examples. It's difficult to portray a 3-dimensional object with film, which is by nature 2-dimensional. Still, Form used well creates a very interesting photo. The idea behind Form is to show each indentation, each curve, each bulge, and each edge - the object's Form. Space is the most commonly used Element in conjunction with Form, allowing us as viewers to recognize the different objects as being in different places, instead of overlapped right on top of each other. Line and Value play a large part in Form, as well.

TEXTURE - Perhaps the most self-evident Element, Texture is simply the tactile quality of an object. This ranges from glass-smooth to as rough as sandpaper. Texture is an extremely good way to capture a viewer's interest, as it invokes more than simply their sense of sight. It appeals to the sense of touch very easily, thus adding another dimension of interest to the photo. Texture can also be easily used with Value and Repetition (A Principle of Design), with very good effect. When taking photos where Texture is the main concept, you should light the object from the side or from the back. These positions will emphasize the Texture. Axis lighting, or lighting the object from the front, will produce the least Texture. Some ideas of things to photograph with good Texture would be a wrinkled cloth, a piece of wood, the bark of a tree, or a pitted stone such as pumice.

SPACE - My personal favorite, Space refers to the area of unused or unoccupied area in a photo. Basically, the space between objects. In general, Space helps lend a sense of 3-dimensionality to a photo. By itself, Space can create beautiful photos, such as a photo of clouds, but its real strength lies with using it in combination with Line, Form, or Value. Perhaps the most stirring example of using Line or Value with Shape would be a photo looking down a long road, with tall buildings on either side. This is not to say Space must be a large, open expanse. A set of carefully arranged small objects, such as pebbles, can use both Space and Form very effectively.

VALUE - This element requires a somewhat practiced eye to implement successfully. Basically, Value is the organization and magnitude of light and dark in your photo. The deep shadow, the bright whites, and all the gray tones in between are what make up Value. It can be used to highlight certain aspects, such as a bright subject against a dark background, or to obscure unpleasant features in dark shadow. In most photos, the Value is roughly balanced. The number of strong white areas and strong dark areas are about equal. We do this by instinct. However, Value can be tipped out of balance in order to provide meaning and visual interest. A photo taken by Harry Callahan is a perfect example of this. It is simply a person standing at the bottom of a long well of bright light, while everything around them is near black.

That is it for the Elements of Design. Keeping these in mind while you take your photos will hopefully improve them quite a bit. Remember to examine your subject from every possible angle to find that fitting composition. Good luck, and I hope this article has been helpful. I will cover the Principles of Design in a future article. Have fun with your photos! --original article by Dan Farmer

Introduction to Elements of GAZE Theory

2008-10-07T00:19:00.005-04:00

What is “GAZE”?

The term gaze is a technical term which was use in the film theory in the 1970’s but now it has been used by media theorists as it refers to the way people gaze at an image.

Gaze can be defined as the way people look at subjects or objects in a given text.

The concept of gaze (often also called the gaze or, in French, le regard), is in analyzing visual culture, is one that deals with how an audience views the people presented. The concept of the gaze became popular with the rise of postmodern philosophy and social theory and was first discussed by 1960s French intellectuals, namely Michel Foucault's description of the medical gaze and Lacan's analysis of the gaze's role in the mirror stage development of the human psyche. This concept is extended in the framework of feminist theory, where it can deal with how men look at women, how women look at themselves and other women, and the effects surrounding this.

Forms of Gaze

Several key forms of gaze can be identified in photographic, filmic or television texts, or in figurative graphic art. The most obvious typology is based on who is doing the looking, of which the following are the most commonly cited:

the spectator’s gaze: the gaze of the viewer at an image of a person (or animal, or object) in the text;
the intra-diegetic gaze: a gaze of one depicted person at another (or at an animal or an object) within the world of the text (typically depicted in filmic and televisual media by a subjective ‘point-of-view shot’);
the direct [or extra-diegetic] address to the viewer: the gaze of a person (or quasi-human being) depicted in the text looking ‘out of the frame’ as if at the viewer, with associated gestures and postures (in some genres, direct address is studiously avoided);
the look of the camera - the way that the camera itself appears to look at the people (or animals or objects) depicted; less metaphorically, the gaze of the film-maker or photographer.

In studying social interaction, Michael Watson (1970) found cultural variability in the intensity of gaze. He distinguished between three forms of gaze:

Sharp: focusing on the other person's eyes.
Clear: focusing about the other person's head and face.
Peripheral: having the other person within the field of vision, but not focusing on his head or face.

Angles of Gaze

While taking about the angles of gaze, the most common ones are the front or the oblique angle wherein the subject or the person is in front of you or parallel to you. This comes under the category of horizontal angles. But the vertical angles are widely noted.

High angles (looking down on a depicted person from above) are interpreted as making that person look small and insignificant, and low angles (looking up at them from below) are said to make them look powerful and superior. Kress and van Leeuwen modify this standpoint slightly, arguing that a high angle depicts a relationship in which the producer of the image and the viewer have symbolic power over the person or thing represented, whilst a low angle depicts a relationship in which the depicted person has power over the image-producer and the viewer.

Apparent Proximity

We have learnt about the different forms of gaze. Now we are to discuss the look of the camera in detail. The look of the camera is the gaze which is done by the photographer or the film maker. While we gaze we tend to build up a certain relationship in the text. The relationship varied according to the kind of shot that has been taken. We have learnt about the different kinds of shot. In a long shot we hardly focus on one subject since there are more than one to focus upon. In the mid shot if you see the person in the picture , he is not looking at you. This looks as if the person doesn’t not know you. But in the close up shot the lady is looking at you. You then build up a personal relationship with the lady. The various kinds of shot give a different meaning when gazed upon.

When it comes to “gaze” there is certain relationship with the person in a text and the viewer.In relation to camerawork there are different kinds of shots.

Long shots
· Extreme
· Medium
Medium shots
· Mid shots
· Medium close shots
Close up shots
· Medium close up
· Big close up

Male and Female “GAZE”

Male “GAZE”

Before starting the topic MALE GAZE, let us first understand the concept of gaze. As I mentioned earlier gaze is used for analyzing visual culture that deals with how the audience views the people presented in a given text. The whole idea of male gaze was given by Laura Mulvey in her essay “narrative cinema and visual pleasures”, 1975. She says that narrative cinema manipulates visual pleasures. Mulvey also states that in film women are always portrayed as an object of gaze and not the possessors of the gaze because the control of the camera (gaze) comes for assumptions that men are the default targeted audience of film genres. Coming back to the definition of male gaze, it means how men look at women. The look can be decent or indecent. But in some societies women welcome male gaze. Models and actress have no problem with the male gaze. Male gaze is divided into:

Scopophilia: [pleasure in looking (Sigmund Freud 1905, in ‘Three Essays’)] This means the pleasure of looking or the love of looking at something. The term refers to the predominantly male gaze of the cinema which enjoys objectifying women into mere objects to be looked at. The most pleasurable looking is looking at the human form or the human face.
Fetishistic scopophila: This term revolves under the idea that female figure is represented simply as a beautiful object of display. This also represents women as powerless and insignificant. The best example of a male gaze film would be “FATAL ATTRACTIONS” (1987).

Female “GAZE”

The female gaze is similar to the male gaze. It deals with how women look at men. Their objectifications of men are done through advertisements and teenage magazines. Woman would be objectifying the man to the subject of their desires and pleasures of looking.

Effects of “GAZE”

When you look at an object, you are not only seeing the object itself but also building up a relationship with it. Gazing provides us with a lot of information about our relationship with the subject or the relationship between the subjects upon whom we gaze or the situation in which the subjects are doing the gazing. The mutuality of the gaze can reflect power structure or the nature of the relationship between the subjects. This is proposed by Catherin Lutz and Jane Collins. Gazing can often reflect emotions without speech. For examples in some culture continuous staring can be at times unsettling to the subject.

Although gaze is just merely looking at something Jonathan Schroeder states that “Gazing signifies a psychological relationship of power, in which the gazer is superior to the object of the gaze".

The gaze characterizes and displays the relationships between the subjects by looking.

Aristotle's Unities

2008-10-06T10:25:00.010-04:00

Greek and Latin plays were very different from the native traditions of drama that the young Shakespeare might have come across if he had seen a mystery cycle, or watched the travelling troupes of actors who came to Stratford, performing moralities or the various types of drama which developed from them. (Picture on Left-above: Roman theatre, Kermessos. Photograph Peter Smith.)

Greek and Latin drama were strict in form. The stage represented a single place throughout the action; the plot recounted the events of a single day; and there was very little irrelevant by-play as the action developed. Aristotle described the drama of an earlier age in his important work On the Art of Poetry; those who followed his precepts called this disciplined structure the three "unities": unity of place, unity of time and unity of action.

The "Rules"

Neo-classical Renaissance critics codified Aristotle's discussion, claiming that all plays should follow these three precepts:

Place. The setting of the play should be one location: in comedy often a street, in Oedipus Rex the steps before the palace.
Time. The action of the play should represent the passage of no more than one day. Previous events leading up to the present situation were recounted on stage, as Prospero tells Miranda of the events which led to their abandonment on the island.
Action. No action or scene in the play was to be a digression; all were to contribute directly in some way to the plot.

Compare this structure with the episodic, wide-ranging plots of romantic comedy like Shakespeare's Winter's Tale.

The classical unities or three unities are rules for drama derived from a passage in Aristotle's Poetics. In their neoclassical form they are as follows:

The unity of action: a play should have one main action that it follows, with no or few subplots.
The unity of place: a play should cover a single physical space and should not attempt to compress geography, nor should the stage represent more than one place.
The unity of time: the action in a play should take place over no more than 24 hours.

Aristotle dealt with the unity of action in some detail, under the general subject of "definition of tragedy", where he wrote:

Now, according to our definition, Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is complete, and whole, and of a certain magnitude(Aristotle's Poetics, XVII.) … As therefore, in the other imitative arts, the imitation is one when the object imitated is one, so the plot, being an imitation of an action, must imitate one action and that a whole, the structural union of the parts being such that, if any one of them is displaced or removed, the whole will be disjointed and disturbed. For a thing whose presence or absence makes no visible difference, is not an organic part of the whole.(Aristotle's Poetics, XVIII.)

His only reference to the time in the fictive world is in a distinction between the epic and tragic forms:

Epic poetry agrees with Tragedy in so far as it is an imitation in verse of characters of a higher type. They differ, in that Epic poetry admits but one kind of metre, and is narrative in form. They differ, again, in their length: for Tragedy endeavours, as far as possible, to confine itself to a single revolution of the sun, or but slightly to exceed this limit; whereas the Epic action has no limits of time.(Aristotle's Poetics, V.)

Unlike his prescriptive attitude regarding the plot (unity of action), Aristotle here merely remarks on the typical duration of a tragedy's action, and does not suggest any kind of imperative that it always ought to be so. He was writing after the golden age of Greek drama, and many Greek playwrights wrote plays that do not fit within these conventions.

Even more tellingly, Aristotle does not mention the neoclassical unity of place at all. So Aristotle suggested only one unity -- that of action -- but the prevalent interpretation of his Poetics during the Middle Ages already inclined toward interpreting his comment on time as another "unity".

Any discussion of Aristotle's Unities of Time, Place and Action must start from the acknowledgement that his Poetics from which we receive his ideas about the drama deals only with tragedy: we do not know whether he recommended the same canon of rules for comedy [1], or indeed for history plays, of which he would certainly have known at least one, namely The Persians by Aeschylus. I shall also be proposing that, as a man of his times, his concepts arose from, and pertained to, the Greek drama of the 5th-4th centuries BC, and accordingly they do not represent necessary and universally applicable rules. I shall argue moreover that the plays with which Aristotle was familiar, and on which he based his views, were themselves products of the performance conditions that prevailed in his era. His Unities, in short, are the unacknowledged children of ancient Greek economics and theatrical technology.

Theatre in Aristotle's day typically had a civic and/or religious significance: theatrical performances were presented to honour a god or a city or a city's god, and they were therefore state occasions. Everybody turned out for the day, even slaves and (for the tragedies at least) women. Moreover, entrance to the shows was by and large free, albeit it was possible to purchase or hire cushions from quick-off-the-mark entrepreneurs. Who paid for it all? Well, although the temples and city magistrates might put up prize money if plays were presented in competition, it was not generally the god or the city that financed the productions. On the contrary, each show was under-written by a single wealthy sponsor who hired a troupe of two (later on three) actors and also coughed up for the chorus, the choreographer, the singing teacher, the pit musicians, the costumes, the stage machinery and the set. With no prospect of getting his money back, the sponsor's motivation was 1) to accumulate heavenly brownie points, 2) to accrue some kudos as a devout and civic-minded patron of the arts, and 3) by so doing, to establish a lead over his rivals at the next election.

Besides the economic factors I have just described, other features of Greek production tradition also need to be taken into account when evaluating the origin and validity of Aristotle's Unities. Chief among these are the fact that plays were presented in the open air against a permanent architectural background, and were illuminated only by sun- or torchlight. I believe that these characteristics, taken together, are sufficient to explain Aristotle's stress on the Unities of Time, Place and Action.

Unity of Place is straightforward enough: there was only a single permanent set, and obviously it could not be subjected to the quick scene changes that are familiar to us in modern theatre. Equally obviously, it would have been impossible to suggest changes of locale by lighting changes (as we can do today), even if the script called for it. At this point in my argument, however, an astute critic will instantly object that Shakespeare too had to work with a fixed architectural background a limitation that did not prevent him from changing location from scene to scene. Clearly, a permanent set is by no means as inflexible as I seem to imply. To this objection I observe that Shakespeare could persuade us he had changed location by virtue of the fact that each new scene would begin with a new grouping of characters sweeping onto the stage. Ancient Greek casts, by contrast, were too tiny to allow that. And the size of the cast also accounts, I suspect, for Aristotle's stress on Unity of Action. With only two or three actors (who were in any case doubling up to play all the characters), there would not have been much energy left over for subplots.

In this connection it is not clear whether the small cast was merely a matter of convention, or whether it too was demanded by the economics of production. For my own part, I am inclined to suspect that money spoke as eloquently in the fourth century BC as it does in the twenty-first AD. I rather fancy that Greek sponsors simply balked and told the playwright, "We was pushed enough to pay for Aeschylus's Actor Number Three, there is no way we are going to pay for a fourth or a fifth or a sixth bleedin' poncy thespian, not even if you was bleedin' 'Omer 'imself, which you are not!" Impresarios of West End or Broadway productions will be familiar enough with the economics of mounting a show, and they too will go for a single set, small-cast plays over an epic any day contemporary capitalism's own bow in the direction of Aristotle's Unities.

Alternatively, the economic impetus may have come inadvertently from the actors themselves. Theatrical productions, as I've hinted, were seasonal, and were mounted to celebrate some local religious festival. So when the Athenian shows were over, the actors had to go on the road to cities that had different calendars of festive days. And since, however good the plays were, or however outstanding the cast, there was only the one performance (revivals apart), whatever fees the actors earned had to be stretched pretty thinly to cover the "resting" and rehearsal time (Actors Equity please note!). Under those conditions it's easier to keep a small troupe of two or three on the road than even a moderately sized repertory company [2].

We come at last to Unity of Time - an Aristotelian stricture that was almost always more honoured in the breach than the observance, even by the Greek tragedians themselves. I for one, at any rate, find it impossible to believe, for example, that the action of Aeschylus's Agamemnon can be compassed by a single span of twenty-four hours. The play opens in the early morning, with beacon fires announcing the end of the Trojan War in Asia Minor: it takes the most rigorous suspension of disbelief to accept that Agamemnon returns the 500-odd miles to Greece and gets himself bumped off in the bath before nightfall! No; what Aeschylus did was to create an illusion of Unity of Time a feat that was accomplished, as it is today, by focussing on the central story. The playwright does not show us the victorious Greeks embarking for home at the port of Tenedos, the gangplanks that collapsed, the horses and men that slipped and fell into the sea, the four or five days of tedious rowing, the squabbles at mealtimes, or Agamemnon's dusty ride up from the sea to Argos.

What I am saying, in effect, is that theatrical time was not then, and is not now, "real" time; on the contrary, it was and is "speeded up" time. But the illusion of Aristotelian Unity of Time was promoted then, as it is today, by the familiar technique of "cutting to the chase," i.e. omitting all distractions, which is another way of understanding Unity of Action. The illusion was perhaps also fostered by a dramatic structure in which five acts were punctuated by choral odes that implied the passage of time. Whether the passage of time represented by the choral interlude represented minutes or months was never stated, however [3].

Aristotle, it seems, further believed that observance by the playwright of the Dramatic Unities contributed to the intensity of the audience's experience and particularly to the strength of their cathartic response to the play. The spectator, in Aristotle's view, came away wrung out by the emotions of pity and fear he or she had undergone in the theatre - and they probably did. In fact you can get wrung out by a Greek tragedy in less than an hour, as I recently discovered at a stripped-down production of Euripides's Trojan Women, that ran a mere fifty-five minutes! But (pace Aristotle) who is to say that the intensity of feeling you experience at a classical Greek tragedy that obeys the Unities is greater than what you experience at a good production of the very un-classical Richard II that doesn't?

If there were any European plays in the thousand years after the Christians took over the Roman Empire, we don't know of them. Theatre, it seems, died out or went deep underground. It only began to re-emerge in the Middle Ages, when it took the form of small-scale religious dramas, and later developed into large-scale cycles of Mystery Plays. But a sequence of episodes that re-tell bible stories from the Creation to the Resurrection is not a form that lends itself to being structured by Aristotle's canon of Unities, and it was not until the rediscovery of ancient learning during the Renaissance that Aristotle's ideas began to influence playwrights once again. Even then, however, his impact remained indirect, via the tragedies of Seneca that became models for the earliest dramatists of the sixteenth century.

Then came a fork in the road. The most exciting drama of the Renaissance was undoubtedly the theatre that developed in England and Spain during the late sixteenth and early-to-mid seventeenth centuries and there, writers like Shakespeare, Marlowe, Webster, Tourneur, Jonson, Cervantes and Lope de Vega were busy disregarding the Unities all over the place. All that remained of the Greek tradition was the five-act structure. It was only in France where the drama was intended more for court than courtyard that Aristotle ruled supreme. For a brief, shining moment the Unities were rescued from oblivion by Corneille and Racine. Their tightly-structured five-act plays, their method of telling stories by means of scenes involving only two or three characters, and their elegant, formal alexandrines are still capable of delivering a powerful emotional punch to this very day as anyone who saw the recent productions of Phèdre and Britannicus with Diana Rigg will testify. But the new model English and Spanish drama was winning the day, and Lope de Vega and Cervantes were even abandoning the five-act structure in favour of three acts (the English didn't get round to that innovation till the Restoration).

It is, of course, still possible to write dramas that adhere to Aristotle's Unities [4], but developments since the Renaissance have completely put paid to any notion that it is obligatory to do so, while the evolution of a brand new dramatic narrative form in the shape of the motion picture has undermined the Unities still further. We have become so accomplished at telling and understanding stories visually that we could probably make a film of War and Peace that ran no longer than the 17 minutes of the 1812 Overture soundtrack, we could do an average 80,000-word novel in no more time that it takes to run an MTV video, and we routinely pack soap opera episodes into the 30 seconds of a TV commercial. This is so commonplace that it doesn't even register, but if you scrutinise a few good commercials with the eye of a playwright you'll see what I mean and you'll be astonished.

And yet, despite filmic narrative techniques (brief scenes, multiple locations, jump cuts, flashbacks, flashbacks within flashbacks, etc) techniques which are also impacting on writing for the stage there is no question but that we still experience even a non-Aristotelian movie or play as a unity. This phenomenon, which would doubtless have set the Greek philosopher scratching his head in perplexity, stems from the fact that the sense of unity does not arise from some set of Aristotelian rules imposed on the play from the outside, but from within ourselves. If we hadn't known this intuitively, we were persuaded of it by a number of ingenious experiments on visual perception that were carried out by Gestalt psychologists in the 20s and 30s of the last (i.e. twentieth!) century. Unities 'r' Us. And this means that the Aristotelian Unities, when we do encounter them in a play, do not create but only enhance the sense of a whole, complete experience.

Now all this has led me to ponder the question: If Aristotle is indeed wrong, what would a modern Theory of the Unities look like? My initial impulse was to attack this question negatively, by asking what factors created a sense that a play or film is incoherent and at sixes-and-sevens. To which the first answer that popped into my head was that a mixture of genres would be confusing in just this manner. On second thoughts and after a few heated arguments with friends, I hasten to add I have to confess to being in error. Shakespeare had his own genres “comical, tragical, historical and pastoral” but that didn't stop him mixing them sometimes. Plays like The Merchant of Venice, Measure for Measure and All's Well That Ends Well the so-called "problem" plays in other words are tragi-comedies, a mode that developed into a genre in its own right, in which "many come close to death, but none die [5]." Nowadays, what's more, we are familiar with comedy-thrillers, comedy-westerns, science fiction-noir, comical-historical-romantic-adventure (The Three Musketeers) etc, while one of the most glorious operas of the twentieth century Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos even succeeds in mixing tragi-romantic drama with high camp commedia del arte farce!

So if not mixed genres, then what? - for it is still the case that most dramatic productions, in the theatre as well as the cinema, carry a subliminal label, "Unities At Work". One factor contributing to the sense of unity, albeit a relatively minor one, is a coherently and consistently designed show: there is something very satisfying about a production that simply looks as if it's all of a piece. Far more important, however, is the contribution made to the sense of wholeness by the story arc. Call me old fashioned if you like, but I only respond fully to stories with a beginning, middle and an ending a sequence I experience as a unity. And more important still than the movement of the plot is the sense of unity that comes with a traditional emotional arc for the story. By this I mean that the drama should end with the resolution for the protagonist of some kind of internal conflict.

The elements sketched out in the last couple of paragraphs seem, if I'm not being unduly immodest, to constitute at least the beginnings of a modern Theory of the Unities. I would be interested to read other people's contributions to the topic.

Footnotes:

It will be recalled that the rediscovery and subsequent destruction of Aristotle's lost book on comedy forms the background to the monastic murders in Umberto Eco's novel, The Name of the Rose.
Those interested in a lively fictional account of the Greek actor's life can do no better than turn to The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault.
We reverse this illusion in our own practice of experiencing theatrical and cinematic spectacles in a darkened auditorium. The period "in the dark" exists outside normal time, and so can encompass years, if necessary, of dramatic time.
A play by Ian Mandleberg, Passover, posted to MontageShowcase is a case in point.
Still, not even Shakespeare mixed genres to the extent that the Players in Hamlet did, with their "tragical-comical, historical-pastoral, and comical-tragical-historical-pastoral."

Film Noir-3 (Neo-Noirs)

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Modern Film Noirs: Neo-Noirs (or Post-Noirs)

Film noirs have recently been released in the modern era and have been refashioned for present-day sensibilities. A number of them in the 70s were hard-boiled policeman-hero films that contained film noirish characteristics. Most neo-noirs attempted to re-establish the moods and themes of classic noirs. Some examples follow:

maverick Robert Altman's The Long Goodbye (1973), a revisionistic update of Raymond Chandler's novel, with Elliott Gould as worn-out private eye Philip Marlowe in 1970s Los Angeles
Roman Polanski's noirish detective thriller Chinatown (1974) starring Jack Nicholson as an ex-LA cop turned PI; followed by the sequel The Two Jakes (1990)
Arthur Penn's Night Moves (1975) with Gene Hackman as a doomed private eye in Florida
the twisted, sexy noirish Body Heat (1981) with a marked resemblance to Double Indemnity (1944) - the directorial debut film of Lawrence Kasdan about a lawyer (William Hurt) enticed to murder a sultry femme fatale's (Kathleen Turner) husband (Richard Crenna)
the feverish, low-budget debut film of the Coen Brothers', Blood Simple (1984) about a murder plot gone awry; with M. Emmett Walsh as an amoral PI hired to kill a honky-tonk bar owner's (Dan Hedaya) unfaithful wife (Frances McDormand) and her bartender lover (John Getz)
David Lynch's Blue Velvet (1986) about the seedy under-side of suburban Americana
Bob Rafelson's Black Widow (1987) with a murderous and charming gold-digger femme fatale Theresa Russell
Alan Parker's stylistic post-noir Angel Heart (1987), based on William Hjortsberg's novel Fallen Angel - a religious-themed film noir/supernatural horror mixture set in the world of New Orleans voodoo, starring Mickey Rourke as a seedy, Mickey Spillane-type of 1950's Brooklyn private eye who is hired by a Satanic client Louis Cyphre (Robert De Niro); more remembered for its notorious sex scene between Rourke and Lisa Bonet (in her film debut) than the plot
Stephen Frears' The Grifters (1990) featuring three lowlife con artists (John Cusack, his estranged mother Anjelica Huston, and his girlfriend Annette Bening)
David Mamet's-penned Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), a dark modern film noir about corrupt real-estate salesmen
Howard Franklin's The Public Eye (1992), set in a 40s NYC, is a modern film noir character study and crime thriller told from the perspective of Joe Pesci's character - Leon "The Great Bernzini" Bernstein
John Dahl's Red Rock West (1993) with Nicolas Cage caught in a twisting plot and Dahl's dark, erotic follow-up feminist noir thriller The Last Seduction (1993) starring Linda Florentino as an amoral, evil femme fatale
the contemporary, twisting neo-noir China Moon (1994) with Ed Harris as a straight Florida cop, femme fatale Madeleine Stowe as his unhappily-married, irresistible love interest, and Benicio del Toro as a rookie cop
Steven Soderbergh's The Underneath (1995), a loose derivative of the film noir thriller Criss Cross (1949), starring Peter Gallagher
Bryan Singer's convoluted thriller The Usual Suspects (1995), a cleverly-written tale (with an Oscar-winning screenplay) and with a Best Supporting Actor Oscar-winning performance by Kevin Spacey as a club-footed con man Roger "Verbal" Kint - and the unseen mobster Keyser Soze ("And like that, he's gone.")
Curtis Hanson's recreated early-50s Hollywood, Technicolor, retro-noir crime drama of scandalous sex and corruption, L.A. Confidential (1997), with an Oscar-winning screenplay, featuring three antagonistic police detectives (Guy Pearce, Russell Crowe, and Kevin Spacey) in a corrupt LAPD investigating a mass slaying at a diner, and Kim Basinger in a Best Supporting Actress Oscar-winning role as a Veronica-Lake look-alike femme fatale/prostitute; a screen adaptation from several of James Ellroy's crime novels
writer/director Christopher Nolan's Memento (2000), a confounding, mind-bending tale told in backward-jumping reverse, featuring a hero (Guy Pearce) without short-term memory, and Carrie Ann Moss as a potential femme fatale
The Man Who Wasn't There (2001), the Coen Brothers' semi-parody of film noir with impressive b/w cinematography from Roger Deakins, starring Billy Bob Thornton as a deadpanning, unassuming cuckolded barber Ed Crane, and his scheming wife Francis McDormand
David Lynch's complex and unconventional Mulholland Dr. (2001) with two femme fatales, each with two personas: the light Betty/Diane (Naomi Watts) and dark Rita/Camilla (Laura Elena Harring), both caught in a nightmarish, Los Angeles web of corruption after opening Pandora's Box

Tech-Noirs:

Tech-noirs are modern-day noirs set in futuristic settings. Ridley Scott's sci-fi thriller Blade Runner (1982) set its film noirish story in a decaying, tech-noir LA society of the future, with Harrison Ford as a 'blade-running' detective intent on killing androids. Steve de Jarnatt's chilling apocalyptic film noir Miracle Mile (1989) told about a musician (Anthony Edwards) who intercepted a phone booth call from a panicked missile silo operator and accidentally learned that a nuclear war had just been initiated. Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days (1995), a Millenium-New Year's Eve story, featured a hustler (Ralph Fiennes) who sold sexy and violent digital content fed directly into the brain. And Alex Proyas' labyrinthine tech-noir Dark City (1998), a combination of science fiction (inspired by Metropolis (1927)) and crime melodrama with the motif of a whirlpool, was also set in a futuristic, post-modern, and dark urban locale with a story about a malevolent alien race.

Documentary-Style Noirs

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Film Noir-2 (Documentary Style)

There are numerous, pseudo documentary-style film noirs, often set in dark, rain-swept, crime-ridden urban areas, which were made in a realistic, semi-documentary fashion:

Henry Hathaway's The House on 92nd Street (1945) about Nazi spies scheming to learn the atom bomb formula
Call Northside 777 (1948) with James Stewart as a Chicago reporter who uncovered a police cover up that sent a wrongly-convicted, innocent slum boy to jail for killing a cop eleven years earlier
director Jules Dassin's great crime drama The Naked City (1948) with Barry Fitzgerald as a New York City cop investigating a murder over six days, and climaxing with a suspenseful chase and shootout on the Williamsburg Bridge
Crane Wilbur's crime drama Canon City (1948) - a re-enactment of a 1947 prison escape in Colorado
The little-seen Abandoned (1949), from director Joseph Newman, about a late 1940s LA newspaper reporter (Dennis O'Keefe) pursuing a missing girl, along with her sister (Gale Storm known for the TV series My Little Margie), into the sordid black-market baby adoption racket, while encountering a corrupt private investigator (Raymond Burr)
Also, Joseph Newman's moralistic urban crime drama 711 Ocean Drive (1950), about the rise and fall of an organized crime kingpin (Edmond O'Brien as a telephone company repairman turned bad); the film capitalized on various book-making scandals at the time sensationalized and exposed in the newspapers; with on-location settings of L.A., Palm Springs and Nevada, particularly at Hoover Dam
Alfred Hitchcock's true-life story The Wrong Man (1956) with Henry Fonda as a musician framed and wrongly-accused of committing armed robbery - and undergoing a nightmarish ordeal

Primary Characteristics and Conventions of Film Noir

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The primary moods of classic film noir were melancholy, alienation, bleakness, disillusionment, disenchantment, pessimism, ambiguity, moral corruption, evil, guilt, desperation and paranoia. Heroes (or anti-heroes), corrupt characters and villains included down-and-out, conflicted hard-boiled detectives or private eyes, cops, gangsters, government agents, socio-paths, crooks, war veterans, petty criminals, and murderers. These protagonists were often morally-ambiguous low-lifes from the dark and gloomy underworld of violent crime and corruption. Distinctively, they were cynical, tarnished, obsessive (sexual or otherwise), brooding, menacing, sinister, sardonic, disillusioned, frightened and insecure loners (usually men), struggling to survive - and in the end, ultimately losing.

The females in film noir were either of two types - dutiful, reliable, trustworthy and loving women; or femme fatales - mysterious, duplicitous, double-crossing, gorgeous, unloving, predatory, tough-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative and desperate women. Usually, the male protagonist in film noir wished to elude his mysterious past, and had to choose what path to take (or have the fateful choice made for him). Invariably, the choice would be an overly ambitious one. Often, it would be to follow the goadings of a traitorous femme fatale who destructively would lead the struggling hero into committing murder or some other crime of passion. When the major character was a detective or private eye, he would become embroiled and trapped in an increasingly-complex, convoluted case that would lead to fatalistic, suffocating evidences of corruption and death.

Film noir films (mostly shot in gloomy grays, blacks and whites) showed the dark and inhumane side of human nature with cynicism and doomed love, and they emphasized the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and sadistic sides of the human experience. An oppressive atmosphere of menace, pessimism, anxiety, suspicion that anything can go wrong, dingy realism, futility, fatalism, defeat and entrapment were stylized characteristics of film noir. The protagonists in film noir were normally driven by their past or by human weakness to repeat former mistakes.

Film noir was marked by expressionistic lighting, deep-focus camera work, disorienting visual schemes, jarring editing or juxtaposition of elements, skewed camera angles (usually vertical or diagonal rather than horizontal), circling cigarette smoke, existential sensibilities, and unbalanced compositions. Settings were often interiors with low-key lighting, Venetian-blinded windows and rooms, and dark, claustrophobic, gloomy appearances. Exteriors were often urban night scenes with deep shadows, wet asphalt, dark alleyways, rain-slicked or mean streets, flashing neon lights, and low key lighting. Story locations were often in murky and dark streets, dimly-lit apartments and hotel rooms of big cities, or abandoned warehouses. [Often-times, war-time scarcities were the reason for the reduced budgets and shadowy, stark sets of B-pictures and film noirs.]

Narratives were frequently complex, maze-like and convoluted, and typically told with foreboding background music, flashbacks (or a series of flashbacks), witty, razor-sharp and acerbic dialogue, and/or reflective and confessional, first-person voice-over narration. Amnesia suffered by the protagonist was a common plot device, as was the downfall of an innocent Everyman who fell victim to temptation or was framed. Revelations regarding the hero were made to explain/justify the hero's own cynical perspective on life. Some of the most prominent directors of film noir included Orson Welles, John Huston, Billy Wilder, Edgar Ulmer, Robert Siodmak, Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, and Howard Hawks. Titles of many film noirs often reflect the nature or tone of the style and content itself: Dark Passage (1947), The Naked City (1948), Fear in the Night (1947), Out of the Past (1947), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), etc.

Derivatives of Film Noir, and Post-Noirs

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Oftentimes, noir could also branch out into thrillers (i.e., Samuel Fuller's Pickup on South Street (1953)), horror, westerns (i.e. The Gunfighter (1950)), science-fiction (i.e., Kiss Me Deadly (1955)) and even film-noir tribute-parodies or comedies (i.e., Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid (1982)). It has been noted that a sub-category of film gris (or 'gray film') exists, according to writer Jon Tuska, meaning film noirs that have happy denouements.

So-called post-noirs (modern tech-noirs, neo-noirs, or cyberpunk) appeared after the classic period with a revival of the themes of classic noir, although they portrayed contemporary times and often were filmed in colour. (Three well-recognized neo-noirs include Chinatown (1974), Body Heat (1981), and L.A. Confidential (1997).) Tech-noir (also known as 'cyberpunk') refers to a hybrid of high-tech sci-fi and film noirs portraying a decayed, grungy, unpromising, dark and dystopic future. 'Cyberpunk' was first popularized by William Gibson's book Neuromancer, and best exemplified in the late 70s-90s with the following films: Alien (1979), Outland (1981), Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982) with Harrison Ford as a futuristic LA replicant-killer, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1984), The Terminator (1984), Robocop (1987), Total Recall (1990), Kathryn Bigelow's Strange Days (1995) set on Millenium New Years Eve, New Zealand screenwriter Andrew Niccol's directorial debut film Gattaca (1997) about futuristic genetic engineering, Alex Proyas' visually stylistic sci-fi Dark City (1998), and David Cronenberg's twisting eXistenZ (1999).

Film Noir

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Film Noir (literally 'black film or cinema') was coined by French film critics (first by Frank Nino in 1946) who noticed the trend of how 'dark' and black the looks and themes were of many American crime and detective films released in France following the war. It was a style of black and white American films that first evolved in the 1940s, became prominent in the post-war era, and lasted in a classic "Golden Age" period until about 1960 (marked by Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958)). Strictly speaking, however, film noir is not a genre, but rather the mood, style, point-of-view, or tone of a film.

Roots of Classic Film Noir:
Film noir is a distinct branch, sub-genre or offshoot of the crime/gangster and detective/mystery sagas from the 1930s (i.e., Little Caesar (1930), Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932)), but very different in tone and characterization. The themes of noir, derived from sources in Europe, were imported to Hollywood by émigré filmmakers. (Noirs were rooted in German Expressionism of the 1920s and 1930s, such as in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919) or Fritz Lang's M (1931), and in the French sound films of the 30s. These films, from German directors such as F. W. Murnau, G. W. Pabst, and Robert Wiene, were noted for their stark camera angles and movements, chiaroscuro lighting and shadowy, high-contrast images - all elements of later film noir.)

Classic film noir developed during and after World War II, taking advantage of the post-war ambience of anxiety, pessimism, and suspicion. These films counter-balanced the optimism of Hollywood's musicals and comedies during this same time period. Fear, mistrust, bleakness and paranoia are readily evident in noir, reflecting the 'chilly' Cold War period when the threat of nuclear annihilation was ever-present. The criminal, violent, misogynistic or greedy perspectives of anti-heroes in film noir were a metaphoric symptom of society's evils, with a strong undercurrent of moral conflict.

The earliest film noirs were detective thrillers, with plots and themes often taken from adaptations of literary works - preferably from best-selling, hard-boiled, pulp novels and crime fiction by Raymond Chandler, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, or Cornell Woolrich. Very often, a film noir story was developed around a cynical, hard-hearted, disillusioned male character [e.g., Robert Mitchum, Fred MacMurray, or Humphrey Bogart] who encountered a beautiful but promiscuous, amoral, double-dealing and seductive femme fatale [e.g., Mary Astor, Veronica Lake, Jane Greer, Barbara Stanwyck, or Lana Turner] who used her feminine wiles and come-hither sexuality to manipulate him into becoming the fall guy - often following a murder. After a betrayal or double-cross, she was frequently destroyed as well, often at the cost of the hero's life.

Genre Categories

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They are broad enough to accommodate practically any film ever made, although film categories can never be precise. By isolating the various elements in a film and categorizing them in genres, it is possible to easily evaluate a film within its genre and allow for meaningful comparisons and some judgments on greatness. Films were not really subjected to genre analysis by film historians until the 1970s. All films have at least one major genre, although there are a number of films that are considered crossbreeds or hybrids with three or four overlapping genre (or sub-genre) types that identify them. The auteur system can be contrasted to the genre system, in which films are rated on the basis of the expression of one person, usually the director, because his/her indelible style, authoring vision or 'signature' dictates the personality, look, and feel of the film. Certain directors (and actors) are known for certain types of films, for example, Woody Allen and comedy, the Arthur Freed unit with musicals, Alfred Hitchcock for suspense and thrillers, John Ford and John Wayne with westerns, or Errol Flynn for classic swashbuckler adventure films.

Main Film Genres

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Main Film Genres: Iconic symbols represent the different genres of films.

Action Films
Action films usually include high energy, big-budget physical stunts and chases, possibly with rescues, battles, fights, escapes, destructive crises (floods, explosions, natural disasters, fires, etc.), non-stop motion, spectacular rhythm and pacing, and adventurous, often two-dimensional 'good-guy' heroes (or recently, heroines) battling 'bad guys' - all designed for pure audience escapism. Includes the James Bond 'fantasy' spy/espionage series, martial arts films, and so-called 'blaxploitation' films. A major sub-genre is the disaster film. See also Greatest Disaster and Crowd Film Scenes and Greatest Classic Chase Scenes in Films.

Adventure Films
Adventure films are usually exciting stories, with new experiences or exotic locales, very similar to or often paired with the action film genre. They can include traditional swashbucklers, serialized films, and historical spectacles (similar to the epics film genre), searches or expeditions for lost continents, "jungle" and "desert" epics, treasure hunts, disaster films, or searches for the unknown.

Comedy Films
Comedies are light-hearted plots consistently and deliberately designed to amuse and provoke laughter (with one-liners, jokes, etc.) by exaggerating the situation, the language, action, relationships and characters. This section describes various forms of comedy through cinematic history, including slapstick, screwball, spoofs and parodies, romantic comedies, black comedy (dark satirical comedy), and more.

Crime & Gangster Films
Crime (gangster) films are developed around the sinister actions of criminals or mobsters, particularly bank robbers, underworld figures, or ruthless hoodlums who operate outside the law, stealing and murdering their way through life. Criminal and gangster films are often categorized as film noir or detective-mystery films - because of underlying similarities between these cinematic forms. This category includes a description of various 'serial killer' films.

Drama Films
Dramas are serious, plot-driven presentations, portraying realistic characters, settings, life situations, and stories involving intense character development and interaction. Usually, they are not focused on special-effects, comedy, or action, Dramatic films are probably the largest film genre, with many subsets. See also the melodramas, epics (historical dramas), or romantic genres. Dramatic biographical films (or "biopics") are a major sub-genre, as are 'adult' films (with mature subject content).

Epics/Historical Films
Epics include costume dramas, historical dramas, war films, medieval romps, or 'period pictures' that often cover a large expanse of time set against a vast, panoramic backdrop. Epics often share elements of the elaborate adventure films genre. Epics take an historical or imagined event, mythic, legendary, or heroic figure, and add an extravagant setting and lavish costumes, accompanied by grandeur and spectacle, dramatic scope, high production values, and a sweeping musical score. Epics are often a more spectacular, lavish version of a biopic film. Some 'sword and sandal' films (Biblical epics or films occuring during antiquity) qualify as a sub-genre.

Horror Films
Horror films are designed to frighten and to invoke our hidden worst fears, often in a terrifying, shocking finale, while captivating and entertaining us at the same time in a cathartic experience. Horror films feature a wide range of styles, from the earliest silent Nosferatu classic, to today's CGI monsters and deranged humans. They are often combined with science fiction when the menace or monster is related to a corruption of technology, or when Earth is threatened by aliens. The fantasy and supernatural film genres are not usually synonymous with the horror genre. There are many sub-genres of horror: slasher, teen terror, serial killers, satanic, Dracula, Frankenstein, etc.

Musicals (Dance) Films
Musical/dance films are cinematic forms that emphasize full-scale scores or song and dance routines in a significant way (usually with a musical or dance performance integrated as part of the film narrative), or they are films that are centered on combinations of music, dance, song or choreography. Major subgenres include the musical comedy or the concert film.

Science Fiction Films
Sci-fi films are often quasi-scientific, visionary and imaginative - complete with heroes, aliens, distant planets, impossible quests, improbable settings, fantastic places, great dark and shadowy villains, futuristic technology, unknown and unknowable forces, and extraordinary monsters ('things or creatures from space'), either created by mad scientists or by nuclear havoc. They are sometimes an offshoot of fantasy films, or they share some similarities with action/adventure films. Science fiction often expresses the potential of technology to destroy humankind and easily overlaps with horror films, particularly when technology or alien life forms become malevolent, as in the "Atomic Age" of sci-fi films in the 1950s.

War (Anti-War) Films
War films acknowledge the horror and heartbreak of war, letting the actual combat fighting (against nations or humankind) on land, sea, or in the air provide the primary plot or background for the action of the film. War films are often paired with other genres, such as action, adventure, drama, romance, comedy (black), suspense, and even epics and westerns, and they often take a denunciatory approach toward warfare. They may include POW tales, stories of military operations, and training.

WesternsWesterns are the major defining genre of the American film industry - a eulogy to the early days of the expansive American frontier. They are one of the oldest, most enduring genres with very recognizable plots, elements, and characters (six-guns, horses, dusty towns and trails, cowboys, Indians, etc.). Over time, westerns have been re-defined, re-invented and expanded, dismissed, re-discovered, and spoofed.