1. Visual Literacy
Rhetoric for the eye

2. Watch this video! It’s an ad by Spike Jonze!

3. That video works on the same level as any written work, but employs a variety of visual techniques to communicate its appeals.

4. COLOR
uWarm (red, orange, and yellow) are exciting, communicate passion, energy, love, warmth, and comfort, and other generally vibrant emotions.
uCool (blue, green, and purple). Cool colors communicate tranquility, melancholy, reservation, stillness, and other generally introspective emotions.

5. Moulin Rouge!

6. Light
uHigh key is characterized by bright colors, more light than shadows, clearly visible details. This suggests happiness, comedy, energy, and life.
uLow key is characterized by dark colors and shadows, directional or single-source lighting, and hidden/obscured details. This suggests mystery, melancholy, danger, and the unknown.

7. The Maltese Falcon

8. Composition (Where is the camera?)
uTop of the frame (bird’s eye/high angle) communicates dominance, power, importance, and influence.
uBottom of the frame (low angle) communicates subservience, powerlessness, submission, and weakness.
uCenter of the frame (eye level) communicates importance, neutrality, stability.
uSides of the frame represents instability, imbalance, or insignificance.
uVisual weight refers to where the eye is drawn the most and is created by warm colors, contrast between sizes, rough and fine textures, light and dark, collection and separation, and repetition.

9. Consider...

10. Kindergarten Cop

11. Music!

12. Humor!

13. Parody!

14. Assignment: Analyze the appeals.
Consider the following video. How does this video use visual rhetoric to appeal to ethos, pathos, and logos? What is the argument?

15. Portlandia “Social Bankruptcy”