Hello Everyone!
This week we have been learning about all of the factors that are a part in the communication process. Things like nonverbal cues, gestures and facial expressions are just a part of the communication process as speaking and listening. This week we were asked to watch a show we had never watched before without volume and see if we could figure out what is going on.
Now interestingly, I don't watch a lot of TV due to my own personal beliefs. However, when my family does watch TV we are really only watching cartoons for our children. So in keeping with that theme, I chose to watch a little cartoon called Sanjay & Craig. This little show is a quirky little show for adolescent children involving a young boy and his pet snake.
Here's what I learned:
1. Animation has gotten extremely advanced in portrayal of emotion and expression since I was a kid. I could clearly see when a character was upset, happy and even merely thinking.
2. Based on what I was seeing I could tell that Sanjay and Craig were close buddies who repeatedly would get themselves into trouble somehow.
3. The enlarging of the eyes and raising of the eyebrows gave me huge insight into what may have been going on.
4. Hand gestures and body language was also very telling in the mood of a character.
5. The limited movement of the mouth made it hard for me to tell what they may have been saying. Despite this, I still think the animation was rather advanced.
In hindsight, I may have violated the rules of my assignment somehow by not watching a live action show. However, I still found value in using a cartoon. After further research, I found out that animators are now in fact using live people to base their animation of off. Through the use of highly advanced cameras, they can have an actor act out the part of the character and capture every tiny movement and relay that in the cartoon. Due to the simplistic and often predictable plot lines of various cartoons, I was able to have an idea of what was going on. When I read the plot line, I wasn't too far off. This exercise showed me how important the nonverbal things that we do while we are communicating are in relaying the message properly.
