Just like how last week focused on sound, this week focused on the visual aspects of art. My prediction was right! As a result of this focus on visual art, I had loads of visual assignments to work on:
Each one of these I used GIMP as my main tool. As a free alternative to Photoshop, I’m very impressed at the level of versatility GIMP offers. I’ve fiddled with it for fun for years, but this was the first time I got to use it for actual school work. I have to say I’m pretty proud of my little projects. I even utilized GIMP for one of my daily creates, an old style pay phone blueprint. My other daily create was just a simple radio recording, so no visual editing required. Last in terms of assignments, I had to make a photoblitz. This time my tool was a simple cell phone camera and my immediate environment.
To put this visual focus on The Wire, we watched an episode without any sound and livetweeted our views on lighting, color, perspective, and so on. I live tweeted my views on episode 8 of season 2, which can be read here under the #wire106s2e8 tag. I also took 2 screenshots of my favorite clips from the episode:
I chose this picture with McNulty because of not only the choice of lighting, but because of how McNulty himself looks. It’s not captured too well in this quality of a screenshot, but he looks really sweaty and almost sickly. I thought this was a nice way of showing how off he was feeling with his relationship with Elena going down the hole. Plus the lone spotlight in the background set a nice ambiance for the entire scene.
This photo taken towards the last few seconds of the episode depicts The Greek. I chose this picture because of how it seems to illustrate his character. Just a few seconds prior to this he was very amicable with Frank and Nick Sobotka, ensuring them with a smile that he wants to continue doing business with them. And yet we know that The Greek is a dark character at heart. The way the shadows plays across his face, and his stern expression seem to belie his true nature.
The sort of focus on these sort of elements is what makes a truly good show. When a team of artists is able to not only come up with different ideas of lighting, sound, writing, and acting without one aspect overpowering the others, then that is what separates their creation from the rest. It’s all about maintaining a good balance. I can definitely appreciate the work put behind The Wire, as so many different things can be noticed on rewatches of each episode. This show is really taking off now as the dock plot, the police force plot, and the Baltimore drug plot seem to be entwining with each other. I’m looking forward to the impending ending of this season.
And so we trudge on to week 6. The mountain that is wire106 still has a lot of distance to cover.
