Lecture with James S

MID UNIT REVIEW!!!!! Each year when we have completed one of these I have been rushing trying to get my work up-to-date. For the first time in forever I'm actually feeling pretty confident and hope that I would have achieved a better mark than I have within the previous two years. However there is always room for improvement and I understand that at this stage I should probably have even more done. Oops! The project that I'm currently working on is motivating and I'm enjoying it which is great. There has been moments where I am stuck and wondering what to do next. But instead of stopping everything and thinking too much about it I've just kept shooting the subject and it has made a big difference in my usual work flow. 

Visual Analysis

So we went back to the image that we spoke about during the previous lecture... Love Is A Drug by Richard Moss. James presented to us more complex questions to what we had previously been shown to consider when analysing an image.

• Is it colour or black and white? What colours are present?
• What form is it in? Size, form, medium, colour description? What roles do they have on the image?
• What is that image about? What does it say? Is there a purpose to sell something? Does it have another purpose? Does it portray something or someone?
• Is it meant to entertain or educate the viewer? Is it a decorative function?
• Aims: What does the artist aim to achieve/what do you think they're trying to achieve? Has this worked? Why did it work/didn't?
• Audience: Who is it aimed at? Was it praised or criticised those who were not the target audience? What impact did it have? Was there controversy? Did it win prizes? Was it copied?
• Context 1: Where was it placed? What is it placed next to?
• Context 2: Where does it fit into categories such as historical, social, political, aesthetics, etc?
• References: What does the image imply?
• Manipulation: Is the image changed or manipulated?
• Editing & Selecting
• Words

Lastly we spoke about the research report and some important things to consider. Quotations must be no more than 20% of the word count. If we do want to use a quote try and re-write it yourself into the essay. Quoting must be word for word and used sparingly throughout the essay. If the quote is interesting to your subject or well expressed so that it's impossible to reinterpret then that is a reason to add in a quote. 

Remember when using reporting verbs such as states, claims etc that they are used correctly. If it is not a statement then DO NOT use the word state. There is more help for this on the Library page.