McCloud's Visual Styles and Transitions in a Title Sequence
We will discuss two of McCloud's primary ideas from Chapters 2 and 3:
- Visual Styles (52-53)
- Transitions and Editing (70-74)
I will ask you to work in pairs to analyze of 3 to 4 screen shots from one of the title sequences you provided via the forum "McCloud Transitions in a Title Sequence."
See my sample entry using four shots from the Mad Men Title Sequence at the at of the forum.
1. Take 3-4 screen shots from a title sequence, selected as examples of the sequence's visual style and of a variety of transitions, and insert the screen shots as visible images in a reply to the original message
To do this, you'll need to
A. save the screen shots as .jpg of .gif images on your USB in a folder "www/4260/exercises/mccloud3". Try using Photoshop's Help > Resize Image command. Make the screen shots 400 pixels wide.
B. upload the "mccloud3" folder to the web via the "My Web" icon (save it inside of "exercises")
C. visit the images with your browser
D. copy the first URL from your browser's location bar
E. paste the first URL via the Insert Image icon at the top of the Moodle message window.
F. space down in the message and then repeat for the next image.
2. With your partner, discuss how these screen shots use (or maybe fail to use) McCloud's principles/techniques of
A. visual styles and
B. transitions/montage.
Be specific about what kinds of transitions your selections are demonstrating: that is, Moment-to-Moment, Action-to-Action. etc. How do theses transitions produce meaningful effects in the "story" of the sequence, in the "narrative" experienced of the viewer?
3. Be prepared to talk the class through your analysis of both visual style and transitions/montage, pointing to examples from McCloud with page numbers.