Comparing Clips

Visual and Audio enhanced writing provides new perspectives and ideas for typical viewers of simple, typed writing pieces. Through the start of this semester we have looked at both ‘movie’ animated writing and writing that is visually interesting but on a flat page still. I have become entirely fascinated with both forms of poetic writing, but the pieces with audio files that move about and make noise on my screen naturally catch my attention the most, because they are so beyond anything I have seen done before, and I am not sure to what extent I will eventually be capable of reproducing such pieces, but I would like to try. Recently I ventured into two animated pieces of poetry that both tell very moving and inspiring stories through words, pictures, music, sounds, and moving bits. These two pieces are “Blue Velvet: Re-dressing New Orleans in Katrina’s wake, and “Ask me For the Moon,” by John Zuern.

Both of these pieces are very interesting and tell stories within themselves. I would say that in their own methods, the creators are trying to inspire people to take action and to embrace reality and life. The Katrina piece is very real and actually a bit harsh, in that the topics the piece displays are tough realms to accept and to talk about. Words such as racism and control and catastrophe are harsh realities that the people of New Orleans are and have been learning to cope with. The other piece, is really in my opinion a story of an adventure and of a real place and time in the author’s stream of life experiences. Ultimately both of these pieces of animation were created to catch a viewer’s eye and to invoke a great deal of realism, and emotion.

A very crucial decision to look into is the choice of which each author had to make to produce these animated pieces of writing instead of just writing this poetic realism onto a white piece of paper for anyone to read. The truth is that with animated literature people are given the chance, not only to read amazing pieces of creativity and emotion, but to see it, hear it and to really feel it. I think that animated writing allows viewers to actually connect with the piece and the creator at a deeper and more personal level than if the same pieces of work were typed up just like this. This very piece of writing probably does not invoke very much emotion or entertainment but as the creator I made the valid choice to leave out such opportunities to stick to the facts and analysis of other works that do invoke emotions and entertainment factors for any viewer(s).

I think that in order to understand the moon poetic piece very little background information is needed to enjoy the piece but a patient attitude is probably needed to understand the piece. In addition, with the Katrina piece, some background knowledge of the natural disaster are helpful to understand the work in its’ entirety. I can also see that as the contexts of each piece are quite different, the animated pieces are still both thoughts and realities streaming across a screen with sounds, and visual effects to expand the possibilities for the reader.

After viewing and trying to analyze each of these pieces of work I would most like to imitate the poetic passion and influence they were able to hold on to in their work, for my word piece. I think that the use of words to express something specific to anyone while not explaining oneself is really exciting and educating. I would like to use the inspiration each of these pieces drives into me to create a word animation that displays emotion and the very beauty that it represents through the thoughtful use of words and poetic inspiration.