Draw your own conclusions.
As founder of The Warren Report, Warren Etheredge hosts over 250 events every year,
a podcast and television series. The Warren Report promotes "slow culture" through commentary, outreach,
events and education. Our principle: Smarter audiences make a better world!
Film is a visual medium. And yet, I see more and more efforts to make it a textual one. As a passionate logophile, not just cinephile, I am delighted by these hybrid presentations. A. Jonathan Benny‘s hilarious documentary, OUTDOORSMEN, was one of the first films to make an impression for the emphasis established by short snippets of dialogue being repped on screen in varying sizes and colors. Of course, there have been many such experiments since and some before. (But you never forget your first time, right?)
Music video explores the lyrical marriage of picture and text regularly. Look back to the cue card screed of Bob Dylan‘s Subterranean Homesick Blues
“Text” me your thoughts?
Death Cab for Cutie – Little Bribes from Ross Ching on Vimeo.
* I discovered this gem on http://www.chrisbrogan.com/. Thanks, Chris!
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September 2nd, 2009 at 1:49 pm
Great video, and nice post!
Instead of a marriage of visual + text (which is like abstract visual), I think another strong component to the mix is the audio track. Though one might think that the audio and its text transcript is conveying the same message redundantly, it seems that layering those on top of each other kind of reinforces the message being conveyed. Beyond my area of knowledge, but I’m positive that some cognitive psychology study would guide us whether we are able to perform a closure (the mapping from input to intrepreting, and understaning in our minds) better with audio or textual content, and how a combination of both changes our perception. My feeling is that the experience is almost always enhanced. I love reading the lyrics of a song when listening to it.
btw, love dylan’s subterranean homesick blues track! and this post reminded me why I like this music video so much: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt67VwgH014
In this case, the text is the translation, making the video more accessible. There’s something about text intermingled with the video message that makes it a much better experience, compared to closed-captioniong or sub-titles.