Winter Commercials 09 pt.1

It's time to get back into the swing of things here on the Mixed-Media section of the Critical-Gaming Network. Even though the posting has been slim to non existent over the past year, I've been planning essays and keeping track of my ideas offline. To keep things short and simple I'll start by highlighting some winter commercials. 

The following are two gap commercials in the order that I first saw them on TV. 

This commercial is excellently cut and wonderfully choreographed using the space of the cabin and the 2D framing of the camera to create interesting, artistic energy. The commercials starts compact, fans out, moves to the right, back to the left, all before coming back together again in the center. Triangles and circles are used throughout from pyramids, to bent legs, arched backs, spinning in circles, and clock formations. The commercial is cut into quick snippets constantly flowing back and forth between large and small groups. In this way, a sense of individuals building the whole is made. 

The message of the commercial fits the theme and choreography. "Tis the time to liberate." "You 86 the rules, and do whatever feels right." Everyone is free to join in the festivities, which in this case is dancing. Professional dancers and kids alike are welcome. Notice there are 5 kids in the commercial. Though I don't know enough to properly critique the choreography, I can say that it is far from classical dance like ballet. The moves look very modern, jazzy, and free. It's liberation in motion.

Finally, the grunt at 0:15 and the fall at the end build a casual realism and credibility for the commercial. Instead of redoing every dance step until perfect and editing out all the mistakes /sounds to create a very clean presentation, the grunt and fall are like bloopers intentionally left in the final cut.  The isolated grunt sound makes it seem like for a moment you're just watching a group of people in an empty cabin messing around. And using a buddy as a surfboard can only be described as goofing off. These fun loving people are free from the ordinary style of dance and commercial. 

Almost everything about the grown up commercial applies to these little girls but on a smaller, more child like scale. The direction and editing are the same. The choreography and lyrics are much simpler. Instead of addressing freedom of expression and celebration like in the first commercial, these girls simply want new, cool clothes. They address "mom and dad" directly and claim that they're not going to wear their old clothes anymore. The bottom line is that the boots they're sporting are cute and if the parents have a problem with buying some, they can "talk to the moose." Such innocence and insolence only comes off as as being more adorable when paired with song and dance.

The colors in the first commercial are fashionably acceptable for grownups. The blues and grays help the outfits blend in to the stark white and gray winter cabin walls. The bright candy colors of the little girls practically explode off the screen. Such vibrance, and complex/contrasting lines and shapes can only be sported by the youth who are even more carefree than the adults in the first commercial. Perfect for little girls.

A great deal of credibility is built from the scream at the beginning, the repositioning of the girl in the blue penguin sweater at 0:10, the scream at 0:20, and the dancing at 0:21. From these elements, we know that these girls aren't professional dancers with many years and hours of experience. They're girls who love to scream, dance, and be themselves despite the rolling cameras. Instead of forcing kids to present poorly acted lines written by adults that think they know how kids talk, in this commercial it seems that the kids were free to be themselves; hyper, demanding, and kinda brattish. How wonderful. 

Slowly Building Something Worthwhile cont.

At the end of my article titled Slowly Building Something Worthwhile, I pondered what the video game equivalent would be of a song (or any other work) that slowly and steadily builds up to its grand climax. I noted how there's an inherent problem with finding a video game equivalent because of the interactive nature of video games. When players input, the output is quick to follow and from there we move on with the rest of the game making many more inputs and witnessing many more outputs.

I proposed that the gaming equivalent would have to have core mechanics that are inputted over an extended period of time before repeating the action or processing and reacting to the results/output. Some of the Wii Fit exercises and games instantly came to mind. But it wasn't until recently that I came up with the perfect example.

Back when I was in high school, I had created 3 short films to be shown during one of my orchestra concerts. One of the songs for that concert was Adagio for Strings by Barber. While rehearsing this song I, along with many others in my class, grew very impatient. After all, it took us about 14 minutes to get from the start to the finish at practice speeds. Just before the concert, I developed a great appreciation for this song that seemed to take all the time it needed with good reason. But I was worried that the audience might become impatient, or worse; bored.

So, to match Adagio's long, culminating impact, I crafted a short film around one continuous camera shot of a person who stands up in his room and starts walking out his house and across the city with an art pad in hand. As this character walked, he drew a picture on the art pad, which I sped up in editing. In tiny little sketch marks, the character slowly etched out the image. At first it was impossible to tell what it was. Then a few distinct features became recognizable. A shoulder. An ear. A nose. Soon, everyone realized that the picture was of a praying girl with angel wings. And before anyone realized it, 14 minutes had passed, and the character in the film placed the picture at a grave having walked from his house all the way to a cemetery.

If you've ever watched anyone draw, paint, or create anything slowly right before your eyes, you know what a time lapsing and mesmerizing effect they can have. Thinking back on how the elapsed time drawing in the film matched so well with Adagio, it hit me all of a sudden. Slowly etching out an image in Picross is the video game equivalent of a slowly building work like Adagio for Strings. In the free modes of Picross in particular, there is no instant positive or negative feedback for making a move. Instead, players are free to mark up the squares however they want. Only when every space is marked or unmarked correctly does the puzzle end and the image is revealed. In this way, solving a puzzle in Picross is like one drawn out, continuous action that has a response at the end that's the culmination of all the steps you took to correctly uncover the picture.

So if you're curious, try listening to Adagio here while watching any or all of the videos below. Be sure to turn off the sound on the videos below.