It's not technology, it's what you do with it.

Without sounding like a fraggle, technology scares me a bit.

I was so reluctant to sign up to Twitter for fear of getting tangled in yet another social network, and I resent all the 5-year olds that can effortlessly navigate through an iPhone when I can't.

But if I really want to be in this industry, I need to embrace it. And in contrast to the constant pressure of keeping up with what's new, this vid gives me back the twinge of excitement about technology that I think I'd replaced with frustration.

Intuitive art direction

Of late, possibly because after Chris met with the headhunters IndigoMile who told him that if we walked into an agency proclaiming us both as copywriter's they'd laugh us out of the door, I've taken more of an interest in art direction.

During our One Day in January event, I visualised 4 storyboards within a couple of hours, when usually it would take me around two hours to visualise just one due to my complete rut in confidence when it comes to drawing. And if I'm honest, I didn't think they were half bad. I think my increasing interest in art direction is mainly due to necessity, partly curiousity but mostly my downright OCD drives me towards it. But I still believe a certain degree of good art direction is down to pure intuition.

The following ad is a brilliant demonstration of what I perceive to be intuitive art direction. Each frame is so beautifully shot that they could make still photos; a very Stanley Kubric-esque style of film-making. I have no idea how the art director, Shishir Patel of DDB London, knew what shots to film and how they'd come together to bring out such emotion, but he did, and they do.

Seminar 3: The Gaze

Extra diegetic gaze - we are being addressed directly by the subject although she is in quite a provocative position so we may experience a feeling of guilt. Not me.

 

Intra-diegetic gaze - we are looking at one subject looking at another.

Suture - we are looking at the subject through the perspective of someone who's laying next to her. She appears relaxed in our company so we do not experience a feeling of guilt.

Scopophilia - the pleasure of looking at others bodies as objects. Like cheeky little bunny rabbits for example.

Looking at these different forms of the gaze was interesting in that it made tangible the connotations and feelings that are evoked each time we see an image, but are rarely conciously aware of. Such a high exposure to imagery in the media means that, after time, the emotions we feel towards each image become so ingrained that they become a natural response. This autonomy lessens our awareness of these emotions. Therefore, the lecture helped us to take a step back from the image and realise what it is that makes us feel a certain way. Especially beneficial for our understanding of art direction, which so often seems that it can't really be taught.

It's clear that from my selection of images, most types of gaze are evident in fashion and fragrence photography. 'The gaze' is not to be confused however with 'male gaze' which is shown in my choice of images. Although they link, the gaze as a concept can be related to any image. For example, the clearest example of where suture is used is in the comedy series Peep Show (below).

Peep Show - filmed entirely through suture gaze

Although there are different types of gaze, that is not to say that only one type is visible in any given image. They can overlap. I scoured through http://www.genderads.com/Gender_Ads.com.html for ages trying to find images that most coherently showed only a single type of gaze. To me, extra-diegetic and suture forms of gaze both seem pretty much the same, the only separation being a feeling of guilt which I still find a bit ambiguous. Also, if referring to the 'male gaze', I think the different names for ways of looking merely rename what we already have words for e.g.  extra-diegetic = perving, intra-diegetic = voyeurism, scopophila = fantasising.

One of the most interesting points I heard about ways of seeing is the idea that,"men look at women, whereas women look at themselves being looked at". I had never considered this outlook and discussing this with a couple of girls, after a bit of 'umm'ing and 'ahh'ing, they reluctantly agreed that there is an element of truth in it. This lecture will definately help me as an advertising creative to understand one way of portraying 'emotion' in advertising, but the idea of how women look at men is more relevant as a whole to advertising. Our industry strives to understand what people should really see when they see things. When you look at an Audi, you don't imagine yourself driving it, you imagine people looking at you driving it.