Assignment Two

For our second assignment for Semiotics Studies, we are required to acquire a second image to compare to our previous assignment which required us to study the connotations and denotations of said image. The image we have chosen from our first assignment was an American movie poster which was The Dark Knight whereas the second image we opted for this assignment (with a requirement of the image to be locally established) is also a movie poster which was Dukun.

As you can see in both movie posters of Dukun and The Dark Knight, they have similar design layouts. Though the quotes from Dukun, “I will never die…” and from The Dark Knight, “Why so serious?” are written in different types of styles but equally allocated at the top fraction of their respective images. Other than that, the titles of both films are at the bottom of the image. On the other hand, the point of attraction or the focal point of the image is the character. The positions of both characters are at the center of the image which attracts the audiences’ eyes.

Another aspect to these images is their colors and their natures. In the Dukun image, the character is wearing a Red outfit whereas in The Dark Knight image, he is wearing purple. In the Dukun image, the Red outfit which may suggest character’s personality. Though both images are monotonous, but they have different lighting. The Dukun image has low brightness whereas The Dark Knight image is the opposite. Their different lighting still creates contrast over their monotonous surroundings.

The background usages and surroundings also play a part of both images. In the Dukun image, it contains old medicine or drugs and they way it is decorated may suggests it is traditional. Meanwhile in the Dark Knight image, it goes into a more modern style with tall buildings in background which my indicated it to be a metropolis. Both images imply that the backgrounds are the place of their dark deeds or doings.

Another element of semiotics we can discuss on both images is the character’s posture. In the Dukun image, though the character may look soft and gentle but this sweet facial expression suggests she may be very deceiving from the looks of her smile. She is holding a skull which entails her to be some sort of witch or shaman of a tribe or a village. In the Dark Knight image, the character looks psychotic yet playful. Though the character physicality is blurred out in the image, we can still see his devious smile which had a similar element to the other image. Just by looking at their posture we can imply of their true intentions too. We can suggest that in the Dukun image that the character is malicious and has a hidden agenda. Meanwhile in the Dark Knight image, his psychotic factor entails that he is pleased with himself or just wants to have some dark and evil fun.

Other than that, their props and make-up play a role in both images as well. An element of cruelty can be found in the two imageries. In the Dukun image, this aspect can be found in the skull the character is holding whereas in the Dark Knight image, it can be found through the quote which is supposedly written in blood. The old traditional medicine and drugs in the Dukun image implies that the character’s expertise in black magic. The character’s thick eye liner, red lipstick and kebaya show her lady-like personality as well. Meanwhile, the image’s character, on the other hand, has a white face and dark colors around the eyes which may be excessive amount of make-up to point up the character’s behavior.

After all these studies, we can conclude that every symbols and signs are very helpful to delivering the message of a text or image. Just like these two images from Dukun and The Dark Knight movie posters, they have some similarities and differences on the way they use symbols and signs to strengthen the message they want the audience to get. Layouts, colour, background usage, posture and props and make-up are the elements that the artists used in both images to make us; the audience to feel the intention of the characters.

Assignment One

This is an official poster for the film call 'The Dark Knight' based on the DC comics character, Batman. It is filmed in year 2008 but the superhero was first appeared in a comic called 'Detective comics#27' in may 1939 and gained his own comic book, titled 'Batman' in 1940. This film is directed, produced and co-written by Christopher Nolan.

By observing the intended message of the image, we conclude that it is for the audience of the age from 13 and above due to the word spelled 'Why So Serious?' and the unanimated smile are drawn with blood which boost the feeling with death and instability of the character in it. Most of the audience would be those who likes to think and loves genre like uncovering mysteries.

Thus, there are messages behind it also. With the colour scheme, it is as if the image are telling that the character are in a calm state and the contrast which are coloured red on the word 'why so serious?' are used to show the true intention that he will perform. The image gives its colour to show that the story are a story full of uncertainty and mysteries, Also, we concluded that the intention of making the image looks as it is now is because to promote the antagonist as a psycho character.

As you can see in the image, what we can typically assume that film may have an element of psychology. Moreover, the typeface of the written quote on the image suggests that the character may be a psychopath. Culturally, we immediately presume that the blurred figure in the image is an antagonist because of the character’s posture. On the other hand, we can conclude that the character’s evil intentions by looking at the quote, 'Why So Serious?' which is visibly written in blood. Furthermore, by observing the color tone of the image, we can suggest that the film’s nature may be dark.

After some further observation on the image, I can conclude that an important element that contains within the image is the character. The character, Joker is shown to have a slight blurriness to his entire body except his hands. This also has an element of mystery and surprise as we, the audience, are not sure what his full intentions are. Through further research, the actor who plays the Joker is Heath Ledger died before the film’s release. His death had received wide media coverage and this created a controversy to the film. Was he a truly devoted actor and may have been a little too faithful to the character?

Reality means something exactly exists and where it can be. The image can be interpreted as someone mystery and psycho ; based on the outfit, stands in the middle of town in a mist. The character mostly covered the entire image and located in the center of it to highlight the importance of the character. The signifier of the buildings in the background shows the location of everything happen. The buildings (Metropolitan city) certainly signified to the dark world and as it represents evil, corruption, misbehaved and prejudice. The signs between the buildings and the character mixed well and blend together and by adding one more sign 'Why So Serious?' written with bloods, give it more tense and make it perfect.

The image obviously shown the dark side and bad things which depart from dominant cultural values. The image shows a character doing some nasty jobs with the bloods and creates uneasiness to audience. The image is a vice-versa from dominant cultural values. There are sure some people doing evil things but people will always pick a truth path. Dominant culture often represents the norm for the society as a whole. Most in the society being educated with pureness, innocent and good values.

Alternately, we can assume that the characteristics of this villain character is mysterious and subtle. The sharp image of the hands shows that he is very good in planning strategy and he is very good in playing games with his opponent. The words 'Why so serious?' that written by blood and end with a very contented and confident smile shows that he loves to play games and play around with people emotions. The smile also shows that he is very confident with his evil plans.

This image has been read extensively outside the intended audience which is the audience under 13 years old. From their point of view, they read the image quite same with what we have discuss above. This is because of the image main message can be read clearly but there may be some different interpretation of the image where the kids think that the character in the image is a ghost because of the blood looking words and the cold colour of the image.

As we can see, the concepts that the designer applied on the image are the signs of horror and thriller. Maybe the designer refers to the "Saw I (2004)" movie poster as the concept of simplicity in design but gives hardly impact to the people. The simple background design is applied from the poster into this poster and the presence of quote gives deeper impact to people. Next, how this poster affects other posters? As we can see, the concept of simplicity and deeply impacts are applied on the "Mirror (2010)" movie poster. In the "Mirror" movie poster, this concept of simplicity is applied and they added the expression of the character to represent the feel of the movie. As a little conclusion, simplicity in design gives more impacts to people with the presence of quotes and expression.

The image's meaning will never change over time. This is because any image in any media will influence the surrounding and also the feeling of the audience who have seen it. As an example from the image, the character's pose create an intense mood. Thus, the image also play the same role in order to generate the intense feelings to the audience. As a little conclusion, the image's meaning will never change at all as to generate feelings for any situation, certain word's meaning is needed.

The influence that people might get within this image is, they will started to think back about their attitude, whether they can be manipulated by threat or maintaining to be noble person every second.

The image divided into two, the overall picture can be count as "text or message" and the caption within the image itself. The caption basically provoke the value of feeling which is interference, harassment, and disturbance. The way the designer placed it on poster already give negative perception with using different kind of medium or typeface sort of blood handwriting rather than usual typeface or font. The other value that been portrait in the image is the man writing the caption behind the glass, image on the man is not that clear. This created a lot of confusion and an issue on how the hero "Dark Knight" deal with this kind of situation or people. Even the caption sounded 'Why So Serious?' , it is more to questioning people, why do they so focus on something, for example in a particular part in the movie, the 'Joker' said, "Nobody panic if things goes according to plans, but if something will happen to someone importance (mayor or president), then everybody will start losing their mind". Within this caption, it bring a theory that whatever people do, they are bound within that situation.

As a conclusion, symbols and signs are very useful in order to delivering the message of a text or image towards the audience. Every symbol or sign have their own meaning. By connecting each of them with creating a relationship will produce the best way to deliver the message. All artists, directors or designers should have the sense of understanding on the meaning of every symbols, signs or icons. This is the most important thing to create a message by using text or image.