Stage 2 Part 2
- Tami
- Jan 7, 2021
- 6 min read
Updated: Jan 14, 2021
Thursday 07th January 2021
It's a new year and the stage 2 part 2 project started a while ago so I thought that I should probably start evidencing my work here, on my blog. Today, I am just really covering the research and other aspects of this project will be evidenced in other posts to come.
Firstly, I will talk about my plans for this project but I will be using text and images already typed and resourced from before so things might not be exactly the same but it shows growth.
Seminar Record
Firstly is the seminar record, I have already made a post about the previous seminar but this is about the most recent seminar which took place on Tuesday. Honestly, I didn't explain my ideas or anything because I wasn't asked to and I am not a particularly proactive person so it is good to show what I had here. It isn't everything I wanted to say but it is some of it. The things are mixed and matched throughout the different activities that I have been doing.
I believe this quote has so many different things about it that are worth talking about however, I will just briefly talk about the communication aspect. It is about making a connection through communication and although communication in this quote is language, it doesn’t really have to be. But to be clear, this quote seems to be a misquote and was not actually said (in those words) by Nelson Mandela. Through some research, I found that what he had said was “Because when you speak a language, English, well many people understand you, including Afrikaners, but when you speak Afrikaans, you know you go straight to their hearts” which might not exactly mean the same thing but that isn’t relevant to this.
The material processes and techniques that I chose "close ups", "abstract" and "setting up scenes" because I want to set up abstract close ups that explore "movement" and "colour". The way it relates to Altered States is that I want to see how all these, and languages might possibly affect or change one's mood or mind. There will be no results to collect from this experiment, but I am going to plan it to produce a specific outcome.
Most things I say are vague but that is so that I can easily change my projects direction if needs be since the various lockdowns have made some things a bit difficult.
Project Brief
I think I made it quite vague so that I could have the flexibility to do different things with it. I didn't know how to get it here so I just took a screenshot. Funnily enough, even with how vague it is, I still differentiated from what I had originally said and especially researched about different things. I should probably adapt it to be more like what I had said.
Research
The research may not have been exactly what I had said it would be but it is what I think I need.
I am interested in communication, language and psychology and their relationship in affecting people subconsciously. A chemical altered state could be a metaphor for how people are made to change without them really realising that they are not fully in control. In a lot of cases, chemicals are mixed by outside forces and a reaction occurs. They change because of innate features that when mixed together cause a particular reaction, like magnesium reacting with sulfuric acid. In specific situations, an experimenter might mix them together so that they change states, but the metal and chemical have no choice but to fuse and react with each other. Similarly, in an advert setting, a person might be more likely to buy for example let's say tissues if there is a baby shown in the advertisement. This could be because we find them cute and for some reason they are associated with soft and pure things and so we take these presumptions and may also associate them with the product.
“In a recent study published by Oxford University in the journal Trends in Cognitive Sciences, researchers have found proof that said "cuteness" is evolutionarily designed to appeal to all of our senses, whether we're men, women, parents, or childless. The most powerful trait a baby can have, is cuteness — the cuter the baby is, the more it appeals to our senses, the more it appeals to our senses, the more we're willing to offer care.”(1)
This all makes me want to explore subliminal messaging. What I want to make is not something that is meant to be understood but it is what I want to create and means something to me.
To start my research, first I had to remind myself what subliminal messaging was and generally how it worked to see if I could actually do it. “Subliminal messages are defined as signals below the absolute threshold level of our conscious awareness,”(2) this means messages that are sent to us that we don’t know or can’t tell are being sent to us because they are “designed to pass below the normal limits of perception.”3 Subliminal is often confused with supraliminal, however, they are quite different. “Supraliminal is the opposite of subliminal. While both evoke neural responses and consequently influence our behaviour; supraliminal stimuli can be perceived by the conscious mind.”(2) The whole topic is very psychological, and it really interests me, so I enjoyed researching about it.
Subliminal messages can appeal to either one of our five senses but the two that are most targeted are our visual and auditory senses. “Subliminal messages appeal to our subconscious mind. They work through a process in which external sensory stimuli work to trigger reactions without us noticing the signals. Subvisual cues are flashed so quickly - usually a few milliseconds - that viewers don’t perceive them, and subaudible messages are low-volume messages inserted into louder audio files so that they cannot be heard.”(2)
It’s interesting to know how it works in theory, but I also needed to research whether subliminal messaging actually works. In short, most research is inconclusive due to so many uncontrolled aspects, laboratory experiments do seem to work but outside of controlled environments, it is not really known whether subliminal messaging works and its impact. But “it appears that subliminal messaging works best when it taps into an existing desire. When subliminal influences do occur, they don't last long. In other words, subliminal ads trying to get someone off the couch and into a store probably isn't effective."(4) This means that to make an effective short film, I need to think about what messages I want to send and what impact I want to make. If an impact isn’t made, it doesn’t matter too much, I believe this is really all about the process of making this.
I also need to be mindful of the difference between “being unaware of stimuli being present at all and being unaware of the effects of stimuli. In many priming studies individuals are consciously aware of the prime but are unaware of the ways in which it affects their behaviour,”(5) and consider what approach I would like to take. True subliminal messaging may be more challenging than just supraliminal, and I may be incapable of properly attempting the former.
Where we usually hear about subliminal messaging happening is from advertisements and propaganda which is where I really started the whole idea from. Thinking back to Year 1 when we did a lot about propaganda it is interesting to continue off from there, however I will not be doing that. I would like to take the more advertisement approach but really, it’s abstract so my influences won’t really show with the way I want to present it.
I also watched some tutorial-type videos to try and improve my technological skills. I watched the video "If Education Videos Were Filmed Like Music Videos" and though it is primarily supposed to be comedic it is quite informational about how videos for different purposes are filmed differently and the type of shots that are taken but specifically for education and music videos.
And I also watched a tutorial on how to make 3D Text Animations in Adobe After Effects, although it may not necessarily be useful for this project, I think it is still very good to know as it was something I didn't know before.
Bibliography
(1) Wylde. K, 2016, "The Science Behind Why Babies Are Cute", in Bustle
(2) Wang. L, unknown, "Are You Being Manipulated by Subliminal Messages", in Visme
(3) Merikle. P, unknown, "Subliminal Advertising", University of Waterloo, in Psychologist World
(4) Santora. T, 2020, "Does Subliminal Messaging Really Work", in Live Science
(5) Hardin. E, 2019, "Myth: Subliminal Messages Can Change Your Behaviour", The University of Tennessee, in Association for Psychological Science
Comments