Archive
Movie Poster
Movie: THE DARK KNIGHT
Poster:
- The Dark Knight (2008)
This particular movie poster is for the movie The Dark Knight, the major blockbuster released in 2008. The movie itself was amazing, and I think that this poster also is quite effective. The poster is effective and sells the movie well. In fact, I plan to watch the movie again after writing this post because this poster is making me want to do so.
The poster is effective because it instills fear into the viewer. If not fear, then it gives off a feeling of uneasiness. There are many symbols and semiotics that create this uneasiness and fear in the viewers’ mind. First off, to see a hero’s face in this state makes the viewer of the poster uneasy with the blood, the cards, the smile, and the knife. The cards themselves show that the Joker is well involved with the plot, along with all the quotes written on Batman. The cards create the shape of our hero, and the chaotic way it is taped together could represent the chaotic mind of the villain. The knife, however, gives off the most fear, because the knife itself has blood on it. We can infer from this that the blood-smile and the blood-stains were made by the knife, and the fact that it is on Batman means that Batman himself may be the main target. There are also words all over Batman, most likely written by Joker (and most likely his thoughts). These lines also epitomizes the twisted mind of the Joker, and how he has a plan to kill Batman. The “ha ha…” that make up the Batman symbol illustrates how the Joker is mocking Batman and taking what he does as, well, a joke.
The elements and principles of design involved in this poster also helps to make it effective as well. The lines and borders of the joker playing cards create the form of Batman. This could represent an important idea that is revealed in the movie (although this is sort of a spoiler, but this post isn’t a review anyway), which is the idea that “Batman and Joker complete each other.” Joker explains this during the movie, and how Batman “completes” the Joker. Without Batman, Joker would be doing nothing with any worth, and he needs Batman for him to have any worth. At the same time, he says how Batman is Batman because he is the Joker. The villain completes the hero, and vice versa, and can be seen in this poster. This adds to the principle of unity, because all the objects in the poster come together to create one entire idea. Every object has its meaning and plays an important part in the overall theme and picture. Aside from lines and form, there is also the emphasis of the color red. The poster throughout has a dark tone, with the dark Batman and the desaturated colors of the playing cards. These colors are coherent with the title: The DARK Knight. However, the color red stands out boldly. The red represents blood, but it draws attention because of its boldness compared to the rest of the poster. It emphasizes the amount of blood shed that will be involved in the movie, and the knife helps to make the viewer understand that the main weapon will be this knife.
I wanted to turn the attention back to the phrases, and their relation to the picture itself. The juxtaposition of the knife and the phrase “lets put a smile on that face” means that the Joker will most likely use that knife to carve a smile on the victim’s face (as he actually does in the film). The phrase “why so serious?” is also written near the smile made from blood on Batman, also emphasizes that action. He is going to carve the smile on his victim’s face because he doesn’t know why they are so serious.
Overall, I think this poster is a great poster. It sells the movie well, and I think that part of its selling point is the conflict between the Joker and Batman. It’s selling that it won’t center around Batman fully, but it will also focus on the Joker and his “plan” against Batman. The poster is surrounded with mystery, fear, and uneasiness that makes viewers want to know more, which is what the artist wanted when he/she created this poster.
Now that I’m done, I will excuse myself because I am now going to go watch this movie.
Photo Manipulation Critique
Critique
After reading the two articles, I certainly have more intense views on photo manipulation in the media. I already knew that there was photo manipulation in magazines and almost every other form of media today, but I didn’t know that it existed in history. It was interesting to look at the Abraham Lincoln picture and the Kent State University picture in the “Photo Tampering Throughout History” article. I didn’t know photographs were being manipulated by world leaders to show that they no longer have connections with certain people.
There certainly is a problem with photo manipulation in media. It could be used to sell images that are not necessary to young adults, outlined in “The Illusionists” article, but it can also hurt people’s images as well. The photo of Sarah Palin holding a gun half-naked can definitely hurt Palin’s image and her popularity. Invoking emotions of viewers with photographs are fine, but I don’t think it’s the right thing to do manipulate photos to invoke a certain emotion. It seems like manipulating not just images, but also people’s emotions. There is also a problem of an identity loss. Photoshopping a person’s head on a body that isn’t his/her own forces him to lose his identity. That picture is no loner a picture of that person, but a whole new individual; someone who doesn’t even exist.
What we can do to possibly combat this problem is to hire more people to check these photos that appear in magazines. We need more people like Professor Hany Farid, who decides whether photos are fake or not. The more people we have in this industry, the more “innocent” photos get, and it also allows for the technology to tell fakes and reals apart to advance and be up-to-date with the advances of photoshopping.
However, I highly doubt that we can do anything more to help this problem. Airbrushing and manipulation has been in the works since the 1800s, and nothing has changes two centuries later. We are still doing the same altering of images, and even further now with computer generated images enhancing hairs in shampoo commercials and skin on babies. Those who spend their lives altering images will always find a way to get around the experts who spot the mistakes. They will learn, and they will improve with photo manipulation as technology advances. There is also the “disclaimer” method, where in a small caption, they actually say that the photo is digitally altered, except it’s so small that no one notices.
But most of all, we viewers ourselves are getting so used to digitally altered images that we can’t tell apart the real and fake unless it is so drastic. Our eyes are now so used to the idealistic and fake hair in the shampoo commercials, that even if we see them on the television, we don’t see anything wrong with it. Perhaps, even if technology advances enough that we can easily tell apart fake images and real ones, our eyes will be too manipulated already that we will not notice anything anymore, no matter how fake. By then maybe the news agency won’t even care about “faith”, because our brains will be also be manipulated so that we will basically anything.
My Graphic Advertisement
Advertisement for Portable iPod Speakers
Graphic Advertisement Critique
Advertisement for Sony Headphones
Critique:
This particular magazine advertisement was for new Sony headphones that claimed to deliver great, studio-quality sounds. The first thing that comes to my attention is the Moai (the “Easter Island Head”) in the foreground with the Sony headphones on. It catches my attention first because it’s in the front of the picture, and is also drawn the largest out of the rest of the Moai. In addition, the Moai that Sony wants the viewer to focus on also is the only head that has a smile on its face, therefore standing out even more and grabbing the attention. Because of that smile, it gives a more lightened mood to it, and a feeling of a peaceful yet entertaining night (to the head with the headphones).
The ad uses different elements and principles of design to help project its message. It uses the elements of point and gestalt in order group the heads through similarity and proximity. It illustrates the Moai in a realistic form, with realistic scenery and also using texture to show the roughness of the rocks that the heads are made out of. In terms of principles, there is a balance between the four heads, although unequal sizes, and that balance creates a certain unity throughout the overall picture. There is also certainly a lot of emphasis on the foremost head, with the headphones and smile and all the things I listed earlier that grab the viewer’s attention. The quite yet happy mood, as explained before, is created by the lack of movement in the facial expressions of the heads. It is at night, with no living creates and just four stone carvings of heads staring somewhere outside the borders of the drawing. It creates a very peaceful mood, yet the smile makes the one Moai in front have that sense of happiness and a sense of being entertained without disturbing the peace around it.
I think that there are a couple different messages that this work shows. One is the effect of the headphone itself (as said before), and its ability to deliver great-quality sounds without disturbing the peace around the listener. The other is the satisfaction that one can get from using headphones of Sony’s quality. The semiotics that I can see is the smile on the one Moai’s face using the headphones versus the lack of expression on the others that don’t use the headphones. By putting the phrases next to the head – the words reading “Your head will thank you for it” – the advertisement connects the idea of “thanking” with “smile” by using the headphones. It encodes within the ad that wearing the headphones will make one happy and thankful that he/she chose Sony.
Although it may not be the best ad out there, I believe it does a good enough job in communicating the positives of the headphones in such a simple way. To someone who uses headphones to listen to music and sounds often, like me, it would definitely have a positive effect, because the serenity and happiness that comes out of the art shown in the ad makes the headphones quite attractive. Even if it may not matter so much to some that it would not disturb the people around them, the fact that these headphones deliver studio-like quality makes it attractive, enough to make them think that if they buy the product, then they might just do what the ad predicts and thank themselves for buying Sony’s product.
Visible Knowledge 