Child Car Safety | I Come Correct:30 – YouTube
0:01
A family of four, consisting of a mother, a father, and two children; one girl and one boy with both appearing to be between the ages of two and five, are standing on their front porch peering off to the lefthand side of the frame. They appear to be gazing at something important while also taking in the sights of the outdoors ready to start their busy day. The mother then quickly turns to face the forward and starts to walk forward in step with her husband and daughter as she carries her son and a portion of the supplies for the day in which her husband shares the burden.
0:3
A close-up of the mother’s face is then shown as she walks confidently toward her destination while still gazing at the lefthand side of the frame. Her head is pointed forward while her eyes are gazing intently into the distance at an angle. The destination is perhaps important enough to keep her eyes on the prize while the walkway itself needed to have some semblance of carefulness put on in the eventuality of tripping judging by the slight leftward peering eyes while the woman’s face is stalwartly pointed ahead.
0:4
The camera then changes to a wide shot of the entire family as they proceed down the walkway. The father slightly bent over perhaps at the weight of all the items he is carrying but more than likely because he is talking to his daughter who he is walking right next to. The daughter head panned to the left with wide eyes that seem to sparkle with joy is anticipating something, their destination more than likely. The mother struts forward with a purpose carrying the rest of the items that her husband is not as well as their son who is starring into space itself.
0:05
The camera then quickly cuts to a height level shot of the daughter gripping her toy hanging off the bag her father is carrying, it then cuts to chaos as her pulling on the toy causes the stroller her father is carrying to come careening off his back. The importance of this frame in my opinion is to show how this family is a stand in for all families in America, representing the ideal family in the American Dream. Not all families are perfect and that is alright as they each have their own qualities.
0:06-0:12
The father after loosing the payload on his back causes a slight hiccup in the family unit’s cohesion as both the mother and father nearly drop the items in their care. They are both able to quickly readjust their burdens as the mother readjusts her hold on their son while the father reshifts his weight from both the left and right one time each to get a better hold on the stroller and backpack looking holder on his back. He then quickly stuffs the piece of food that he was holding in his left hand into his mouth, which conveys both the hurridness of the situation as well as the struggle he is feeling with the weight of his burden.
0:14
The daughter is once again foreground of the frame moving towards her destination, the family car, without regards as to what is happening behind her. In the background we can see the father getting up of the ground due to his poor footing from carrying so much weight. The giddiness in the daughter’s eyes as she journeys to her parents’ car unconsciously endears her to the audience.
0:16-0:18
The daughter quickly releases the tiny backpack and stuffed animal she has had with her as her family prepare to board the car. The mother places her drink on the roof of the car as she reaches to open the car door and the father walks around to the other side of the car to help his daughter in on the back-driver side. This scenario is something that almost every parent is familiar with hurriedly helping your kids into the car while dealing with the mountainous weight load of items. This further endears the entire family to the viewer as almost everyone can relate to situations like this.
0:20-0:23
The daughter is sitting in her car seat eating a bowl of some sort of snack, cheerios perhaps, as the the father reaches under the bowl safely fastening the daughters carseat buckle. There is then a jump cut to the buckle being fastened the proper way and then another jump cut to the daughter in the midst of a tantrum as her cereal is flying all over as the father looks on in shock. Even though freaking out the daughter is safely buckled into her seat and ready for departure.
0:24
The camera then cuts to the mother doing the same for her son, safely buckling her charge into his rear facing car seat and then cutting to a view of the buckle being safely fastened. This again has the same effect as the daughter’s seatbelt view conveying that proper safety measures had been put in place by the parents before departure.
0:25-0:30
The camera then cuts to a blue screen with a rear facing car seat, a car seat, a booster seat, and a normal seatbelt all aligned in the center of the frame. Right under these four images is a white banner with the text NHTSA.gov/TheRightSeat and under the NHTSA logo. Judging by the four images and the final five seconds of the clip the video is about seat belt safety and the importance of proper safety measure taken when buckling your children in their proper car seats.
Counterintuitive Fall 2024 
I feel that I’ve achieved the visual aspect of the assignment pretty well, but it’s the rhetorical I’m not entirely sure about.
Let’s get started, TheFrogSprog.
This assignment is more complex than most students think at first look. You say:
I have questions:
—1. You didn’t mention seasonality or weather but you did suggest morning with your “start their busy day” comment. The details could be relevant to a narrative about a day excursion.
—2. I note that you identified the group immediately as a “family of four,” but there are SOOO many conjectures in that claim. How do we come to this conclusion?
—3. You further claim that they’re in front of their own house, on the porch actually. I don’t see a porch, but maybe you just mean at their front door. Interestingly, seeing what follows, it would have been amusing to see them navigate down a set of steps with all they carry.
—4. Surely all four of them are not gazing at the same something important? But are they? They have two young children. Are they “right age” for such children? Is that in fact part of how we CONCLUDE not KNOW that they’re the “parents” of these “kids”?
—5. Race? Apparent income? Age-appropriate to each other? We don’t know what’s essential to the “ad” yet, but we DO START TO FORM JUDGMENTS based on what we’re shown, and that’s perfectly appropriate. The creators know how to use our judgments to help us draw “the right” conclusions.
—6. How do you know it’s their house?
—7. How do you know it’s their kids?
—8. The creators are playing on norms and stereotypes here and counting on us to go along. One male and one female of the same race and age with two kids also the same race will be reflexively identified as a family. No viewer should have to explain why they took the image to mean exactly that. But it IS in fact how you decided to call them a family of four.
—9. They might have come to visit his parents, and this is their house. Or hers. Or they could be taking someone else’s kids on an outing. I’m not saying you have to worry about those possibilities. I’m saying the creators know exactly how to keep us FROM WORRYING about those wrong conclusions. They do so by showing us the images MOST LIKELY to elicit the conclusion: family of four leaving their house for the day. But your job in this assignment is to tell us WHAT THEY SHOWED US (Visual) to make us DRAW THOSE CONCLUSIONS (Rhetoric).
—10. Are they good parents? Really. I want to know. In that first second, is there any hint that the parents are anything but devoted to their children’s well-being?
—11. How’s their marriage?
—12. We assume they’re a family of four. If they were two men, we wouldn’t be so sure. If they were very different ages, we wouldn’t be so sure. You need to explain HOW we know they’re a family and WHY these actors were cast to fill these roles.
—13. We assume they’re leaving their own house, but they might have arrived at this house to visit relatives and found them not at home. Maybe they’re departing from someone else’s front steps.
—14. I’ve watched the first second of video. I’m intrigued by the slow motion that starts the show. Both Dad and Mom look skyward in sweeping gestures as if taking in the massive crowd assembled in the stands to watch them take the field. What the hell are they looking at? I’m not listening to the soundtrack, but I’d make the music triumphal!
—15. The children are relatively young. She is seen with a smile on her face as her parents are walking out the house. The youngest child looks about a year old. Both parents look ready to tackle the long journey ahead. The mother flips her hair back as they walk toward the viewer, away from the house. She seems confident about something.
—16. That CONFIDENCE gets at what I’m suggesting. In that first long tracking second, Dad looks like the masterful king of all he surveys. 🙂 I sense a comic tone, and the setup for some clumsiness.
—17. If you watch enough “public service announcements” like these, you recognize a humane theme: you may not be perfect, but you’re more than good enough to . . . adopt a pet, foster a child, raise a teenager, talk to your kids, model good choices, etc.
—18. Every character, whatever their other purposes, is cast for their age, body type, race, gender, social status, and attractiveness. You’ve identified ages for the kids. Are the parents age-appropriate for kids these ages? You’ve indicated gender but not much else: race, fitness, dress, social class. What about their house? Does it put them in a class? Does it matter? [Answer: it always matters; those are the rules of the assignment.] What’s the weather like? Season? Time of day? Can you tell from what they’re carrying whether they’re headed to the beach? A camping trip? To the in-laws? The zoo? How’s their marriage?
—19. Fortunately, our brains help us jump to conclusions about all these questions and countless others. Filmmakers manipulate what they know will be our reactions. If the “ad” is successful, WHAT WE FEEL is what THEY WANT US TO FEEL.
Helpful?
Every reflection I’ve shared here is an example of either a Visual or a Rhetorical analysis.
Provisionally graded. Revisions are always welcome and Regrades are possible after any substantial improvements.