Assignment #3: Formal Analysis

Due Sunday Oct 3 @ Midnight

Last week was show and tell, I asked you to pick 5 pieces of visual rhetoric and tell me why they interest you. This week your assignment is to do a FORMAL ANALYSIS of the advertisements that you’ve posted.

Definitions:

Formal: “of, pertaining to, or emphasizing the organization or composition of the constituent elements in a work of art perceived separately from its subject matter: (for example: a formal approach to painting; the formal structure of a poem.)”

Analysis: “the separating of any material or abstract entity into its constituent elements. (The opposite of synthesis)”

The Assignment

For TWO of the pieces that you’ve selected, create a list, as comprehensive as possible, of all the visual and language elements in ads/pieces of visual rhetoric that you’ve selected in the last post. Please be as detailed as possible. Also, where relevant, indicate the position of the detail in relation to other details.

Then write a final list of the elements that the other 3 pieces that you have selected share in common with the first two.

Your analysis need not tie the details together to produce a synthesis (since analysis is the opposite of synthesis), or to talk about the meaning of the pieces. That’s your job in the analytical paper that this assignment leads up to. This assignment is interested entirely in the signifier and not the signified. Your lists should read something like a transcript of every meaningful word and image that an advertisement is trying to give to you, without attempting to translate what each word/image means.

Please repost your initial advertisements so that the rest of us can see more easily what you're talking about. 

Let me give you an example from class—let’s return to the soap ad that I’ve shown twice already.

-         Camera focuses on a silver shell on white sand

-         Cuts to another shell, which forms a brown spiral, filmed from the top, in the center of the screen

-         Two cuts to a pinkish flower close up, from two different perspectives

-         Immediately cuts to a woman with brown hair wearing a grey dress, from the upper waist up. She’s standing slightly off center on the screen, arms crossed. Hair covers left eye. She opens her eyes slowly and looks at the camera with half open eyelids.

-         Background is a small room with many cross-shaped light holes.

-         Cuts again, she’s standing diagonal facing camera. Smiling.

-         Cuts again, she turns suddenly to face the camera. Hair whips around her shoulder.

-         Few more cuts. It looks as if her hair is blowing in the wind.

-         Cuts to slight hourglass shaped bottle in close-up. Says Palmolive Naturals. Delicate Fresh. 24h deodorant. An image of green olives in the lower left, and a curved line underneath.

-         Note: Bottle is occupies the same place on the screen as the woman did before.

-         Fast cut to woman applying deodorant in her armpit. The cuts to close-ups of green olives.

-         Then cuts to white fluid splashing.

-         Cuts to green leaves flying around against white background

-         Cuts to woman. This time she’s seen through the aperture of one of a cross-shaped opening. She’s dancing to the music.

-         Close up of her armpit

-         Waist-up shot of her looking back at the camera. Smiling.

-         Two more cuts. One of her inside the cross shaped opening dancing. Another of her looking out, at a position left of camera. These cuts are done to the beat of the music.

-         Cuts to her outside. Man wearing white shirt and grey slacks. They’re looking at each other. The front of her body is aimed directly at the screen. The man’s body is diagonal. She takes his hand and pulls him closer. The camera moves down a bit so that only what is below the neck is showing.

-         Cuts to an embrace. Man embraces her from behind. Arm around the waist. This is happening off center to the left. Same place on the screen as the Product Bottle, the Flower, and the first shot of the Woman. Her arms reach across around his neck. The lighting is coming from the upper left corner of the camera and from behind the characters (as shown by the shadows). The shot shows the characters chest and above.

-         The two turn toward the camera. Man looks at the camera sideways with his one visible eye. Woman doesn’t look up, her eyes are looking down and sideways

-         Cuts to upper chest and above close-up. A white light bathes the scene from behind the characters.

-         Cuts to product. Left off center, same place as the woman and the initial shot of the deodorant. We see the blue cap to the bottle this time. Blue background with shadows. Probably the longest shot in the ad.