While brainstorming an idea for this week was quite difficult: should I add subtitles to a movie or song? Add background footage and subtitle a pre-existing poem? Create a new poem for this assignment? In the end, after scrolling through tiktok, I settled for something entirely different; a critique on consumerism.
With the rise of social media, I’ve noticed a startling amount of hidden and disclosed ads (it seems that no matter where you scroll, someone or some company will be selling you a product).
I took inspiration from George Orwell’s 1984 – throughout the novel ‘Big Brother’ is always watching, and cryptic and contradictory messages are distributed to the people, and I wanted to emulate the way in which the messages are written: choppy syntax with mirrored form. This is most emulated towards the end (19 seconds onward), wherein the sentence stem remains the same while the last word changes. I also, however, took phrases utilized specifically on TikTok, though they have diffused into younger generation’s zeitgeist’s, such as ‘Girl Math’, to emphasize how modern language/slang is utilized to perpetuate such behaviours.
I wanted the colours to be restricted to a simplified colour palette: white for contrast, green for greed, and red for power. I found the complimentary colours (as red and green are on opposite sides of the colour wheel) to be visually stimulating in a way that ensured the audience’s attention remained fixed rather than letting their minds wander.
In the future I’d possibly include background video, though I would be concerned about that drawing the audience’s attention away from the text, which is the main focus of the video. Overall, I’m extremely happy with this assignment, and there isn’t much I would change at the moment.