Hiya! The Video Essay (5 stars) was an interesting assignment. Instead of using what ever film or TV show we wanted, we were tasked with using the Wire. I decided to use season 4 episode 1 for this. And at first I was really excited to do this assignment and I saw some great themes throughout the episode but when I got ready to create the voice over, I just couldn’t get what I wanted to say out. They were good themes throughout the episode but I just couldn’t figure out what I wanted to say, fortunately I was able to after countless takes with the voice overs.

The Color Green:

I saw the color green a lot throughout the episode. In particular I saw green a the color of money. In the beginning of the episode, Snoop gets into a green Nissan Armada after she buys the nail gun. In this case the green means wealth because an Armada isn’t a cheap car. It seems to be a newer model so he definitely would need a good amount of money to buy the car.

The next snippet of the color green I saw was in the cupola of city hall. This also represents the use of money, especially since it is city hall, and the government needs a lot of money to run.

I noticed Dukie’s shirt was green but not in the way of wealth. Its almost like he’s the odd ball out. And you can see that when he gets picked on by the group, they are wearing plain white t-shirts.

Other Things:

So while watching the episode I wrote down things that I saw that I thought were interesting.

I noticed that after the Mayor finished tying his tie, it was crooked. I thought this was interesting because its almost like he’s stuck in this rut, where its a cycle of the same things day after day. The crooked tie shows that he’s tired, everything is starting to weigh him down. I also noticed this cycle with Carcetti, I noticed that he’s always in the cycle to get to his next appearance and this weighs him down too. He becomes frustrated because he’s not where he wants to be in the campaign.

The next scene is where the two groups meet for a revenge plot. However that revenge plot goes south quick. I thought this was interesting because they worked so hard on this but by just one mistake it totally turned around, and for the worse too.

 

The final scene I talk about is the one where the teachers are sitting down in a presentation. They seem completely bored, they definitely don’t want to be in this presentation. Then it cuts over to the police in a presentation as well. They are bored as well. I thought this was a cool mirror in the episode. Both groups had to be in this presentation but I’m sure they all could think of better things they could have been doing with their time.

Over all I thought this assignment was interesting. Besides the fact that the voice over was a little wonky I really enjoyed picking out different things to talk about from the episode! Here is the final product!