Visual Rhetoric- chancetoremember

 

Video: Never Give Up Until They Buckle Up

Seconds 1-10: The video starts out with a visual of what looks like a family home on a nice and sunny day.  There is a basketball net in the yard and the house is gray with white shutters.  A car is sitting in the driveway with three of it’s doors open.  This car happens to be an SUV which combined with the house and basketball net suggests that there is a family living at this residence.  The license plate on the car does not look like most do in the United States, which suggests that maybe the family lives in Canada.

The video then proceeds to show a young girl sitting in the back seat of the SUV. She is wearing pink headphones and playing with drumsticks, tapping them on the back of the seat in front of her.  She is singing with her eyes closed and seems to be oblivious to her surroundings.  In front of her are what one would assume to be her two brothers.  They are having a tug of war over an item that is not clearly seen yet.  We then jump to a visual of a man sitting in the driver seat of the car, most likely the father of the family.  He has a slightly distressed look on his face which appears to be due to his children being rowdy in the back seat.  The camera then jumps back to the daughter blowing a bubble with her gum, still oblivious to anything else that is going on.  We then see the boys yawning, and then a new person appears, which seems to be the mother.  She is wearing rectangular glasses, a yellow sweater, and a gold necklace.  She is only viewed from the neck up like everyone else in the vehicle.  The mother then appears to start saying something while the father looks in the rear view mirror at his children.

Seconds 10-20: It becomes clear what the boys were fighting over in the beginning of the video, a bag of cheese puffs!  The boys continue to fight over it which ends up causing the bag to explode open and puffs go flying everywhere.  In the background of the flying cheese puffs we can see the boys making faces at one another, their mouths wide open.  The camera then places its sights on the father, who gazes in front of him with a blank stare on his face.  There is a tiny smirk and a little eye emotion, but other than that he is relatively plain faced.  Maybe this kind of fighting is something he is used to with a house of kids.

We then see the boys starting to argue. Their mouths open and they raise their hands.  It seems that they both really wanted those cheese puffs.  Then the mother is shown turning around and sternly says something to the boys.  The boys immediately listen to the mother and stop fighting.  They then proceed to quickly put their seat belts on, as does the sister.  How quick all of their reactions were to their mother gives us a sense that the mother does most of the parenting in this family, while the father sits back silently.  She is most likely the stricter of the two parents.

Seconds 20-30: Everyone puts on their seat belts, and then we see the father and mother in the front seat.  The father smiles, most likely a sign of relief that all of his kids are behaving properly now, so he can finally start driving.  It appears as though the father was waiting to start driving until the children all put their seat belts on, giving us the notion that the parents put safety first.  The mother then proceeds to brush a cheese puff off of her shoulder and sighs, as does the father.  The SUV then pulls out of the driveway, onto a sunny road.  The road is surrounded with trees and houses.  The sun shining gives the viewer a sense of happiness, and that all is right with the family.

About chancetoremember

Women's rights supporter. Animal right's activist. Student. Artist.
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1 Response to Visual Rhetoric- chancetoremember

  1. davidbdale says:

    This is very impressive, Chance. I’m particularly happy to see you interpret the father’s facial expression as you do. Your classmates do not seem to have captured his bemused acceptance that this is the way things are and that he has no power to change them. You do a nice job of describing the family dynamic, in other words. Yawning? Where did that come from? Watching with the sound off, how do you think sound might contribute to the scene? I ask particularly because the daughter’s headphones force us to consider what she can hear or not hear. I notice she immediately reaches for her seatbelt at mom’s command though she might not have heard what she said.

    Provisional grade at Blackboard

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