I decided to do this visual assignment, which asks to take pictures of yourself making the expressions of 3 emojis and then use those emojis to tell a story. I added a little twist to it, and framed the emojis & my recreation of them as my most common reactions to watching The Wire.

I used my iPhone 5S to create this. I typed the 3 emojis and “Emoji Reactions to The Wire” onto a blank page in the Notes app and then took screen shots of the emojis and words. I zoomed in on the screenshots and took new screenshots. The emoji selfies were pretty easy, as I just used the front-facing camera on my phone to take the pictures. For the crying emoji, I stuck strips of light blue Post-It Notes to my face to mirror the tears. Once I had all the pictures I needs,  I used the Frametastic app to put the pictures into one of the frames available. This app also allowed me to zoom in on the photos as much as I desired. I then uploaded the finished picture to Flickr.

I think these three emojis really represent the emotions viewers experience while watching the show (or at least I have these reactions). The crying emoji is felt in moments like when Kima is shot or Wallace is killed. The emoji pictured in the middle is representative of my reaction to a lot of the depressing, inescapable circumstances many of the characters are in, which is an idea the final episode of season 1 seems to cover. The teeth clenched emoji is something I feel when strenuous/ dangerous maneuvers are being pulled, such as the police apprehending various members of the drug ring or when all the players are moving in on each other and something bad is about to go down.

As far as my execution of this assignment, I think my biggest error was in the teeth clenched emoji, as I didn’t execute my recreation of it well. A lot of my recreations fell short because I was too busy looking at my phone, trying to see if I was doing it right or not, and thus my eyes did not match the emoji. On that same note, I think it might have been better if I had chosen the emoji where the teeth are clenched and the eyes are open rather than shut, because that seemed to be the face I was making and seems to better represent that reaction I have to watching the series. I also should have taken my earbuds out, but I also usually have my headphones in while watching The Wire, so maybe that’s a more accurate representation.