Blog 7

For our two joke videos, we took different interpretations to a joke about a young boy using foul language and upsetting his mother.  For the first joke, we decided to take the old school silent film approach, and with the second video, we used dolls and did voice-overs for the dolls.  We used several line and rhythm techniques to contrast the two videos.

For the silent film version, there were several line techniques that we used to emphasize certain elements of the visuals.  The establishing shot of the video depicts the mother and two relatives in the kitchen.  The lines of the windows are what separates the mother and the two relatives.  When the young boy runs out of his room and sits on the ground to play with his new train, the table that the two relatives are sitting at behind him is used to frame his body.  By putting the line from the table above the boys head, he was given the appearance of being small, even though he was actually the same size of the relatives since we didn’t have any younger actors.  Another line technique used in this video is when the mother is yelling at the boy.  The lines of the doorway are used to frame the two characters to put the emphasis on their actions, instead of the actions of the two relatives.  When the boy comes running out of his room after being punished, the doorway again frames him to focuses his excited approach.  When he sits back down, there is a more confused use of framing, which creates the tension that builds up to his final line, the release.  All of these techniques used “actual” lines, while the second video used more “virtual lines.  These virtual lines were created through the eyes of the girl and her dolls.  The dolls would be looking up at the girl, and the girl down at the dolls.  This created the idea of the girl being much larger than the dolls.

We also used a contrast rhythm.  The rhythm of the first movie is more fast paced.  There are faster cuts in this movie, and the clips are slightly sped up to give it the old silent film feel.  Also, the fast-paced music of this film gives it a much more upbeat feel.  In the second film, we did not speed up the clips or use any music.  We also chose to use longer cuts to increase the awkwardness of the girl having a tea party with her dolls.