A moment of realization...

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My fiancee and I were watching Futurama tonight (~2am, actually) and saw the Halo3:ODST commercial where there is a military funeral and a young boy. Upon seeing it, she began telling me about how much it upset her - the use of propaganda; the encouragement of young men to enlist, knowing they would die; how it targeted core beliefs instead of the superficial that most marketing ploys use, and how excessive that was for a video; the emotional impact and imagery of using the changes in the boy's face to affect the audience. I was startled - the first thing I noticed was an improvement in graphic quality (have a degree in digital production), and the best I could gather in the facial animations is that he went from sad, to a moment of thought (realization?), to anger in the last shot. It was a really telling moment in how differently she and I connect to the world, and what we pick up from something. Just thought I would share, and see if any other couples had experienced something similar.


M.

Well, I'm not part of a couple but all the things your fiance noticed are kind of a special interest of mine. Once you know that in the world of advertising every little detail is excruciatingly thought out and planned it becomes kind of a game to spot things. I am much more adept at spotting emotional manipulation from an observational point but not so much so when I'm in the middle of it.

Ad swerve topic

There was another thread about this on a related topic by Anxiety25, and it was concerning being able to spot social blunders but not able to avoid them.

I like commercials, too, and find them a sort of sub interest, and I have had this interest since I was a little kid. The ads repeated, and then I would memorize them and analyze them in a daydreamy sort of way.

I can only "see" exaggerated emotional responses, and even here I am not good at deciphering them. I did not know anything about digitalizing them, except for the "rubber faces" cartoony photoshop manipulation I have seen on TV, video and print.

There's a site I like that analyzes the visual subtext of photos in the news-particularly the photo-op. I tried to link it before but couldn't. I'll try again.


http://www.bagnewsnotes.com/

Some of that difference is because you are a man and she is a woman. We precieve things differently. Marketing professionals know all about this and use it to their advantage when trying to sell their products to us.

How many times have you watched a show or movie with her and the two of you come away with different opinons or interpertations of the show/film? You might have focused more on the action and effects where she might have been focusing more on the relationship of the characters.

The same advert is being shown here in France too. It is quite a striking ad. The things that stood out to me were the gammy eye of the Sergeant and the way the boy flinched when the first shot was fired. Nothing really stood out after that other than the sound track. I couldn't help but think of IRA terrorist funerals that used to be shown on the British news.

Spouse often sees adverts differently to me. We both are quite cynical but she reads more social content into some adverts than I do. She understands the body language that is being portrayed better.

That was my realization - she inferred so much from that advert that was simply imperceptible to me. I am cognizant that different people, genders, cultures, will all see different things; it was just stunning as she was very... intensely affected whereas I was left analyzing the images and thinking back to my production classes and studying facial expressions.


M.

I've seen the ODST ad several times now, and missed everything mentioned in it, except the improved graphics quality. I long ago decided that advertising simply cannot work on me, since I apparently don't get the messages that are being encoded/transmitted in the adverts.

I also know from many experiences that I often miss much of what goes on in movies or TV shows, as well as adverts, since friends or family make comments that mystify me. I ask for clarifications, but even if I go back to watch again, I can't really understand how they got the message.