So yeah my blog for the most recent lecture, I can’t actually wait to talk about this. I missed last week lecture, which I’m not sure if that gave me more motivation to enjoy this lecture. But the atmosphere just felt different. Anyway I thought of doing a Vlog, a video blog. I was talking to a few guys a couple of 2D another 3D guy and a games art guys, and they also felt quite keen on the idea. Not being the best person to explain ideas, I thought a debate/discussion on camera would be quite interesting. Not only would it be naturally more personal and casual, it would probably get more ideas as I tend to forget idea very quickly and normally sketch them out before they go. So I think a live discussion could be helpful, not only for me but everyone one the media building as we are all creative thinkers. So plan to ask Ivan next week to see if that’s possible to do or drop an email.
Okay so let’s get down to business. Binary opposites. When I heard this I dreaded it the first think that came to mind was 10101001010000101 thank god it wasn’t. What it was was much better, actually opposites. As Ivan said we understand things by both what it is and what it is not. Good and Evil for example, we know what good is as we know what evil is. We know someone who does good deeds is not evil. However the world is just “white and black” as the expression goes. There are shades of grey in between everything. Good and evil is things of fiction, everyone sometime if there life has debated whether to do something bad. This would automatically make them a little bit bad. And evil people also have feelings and have most probably done a nice act and therefore are not just evil. Most “evil” people had visions, Hitler for example probably considered one of the most evil men to live, his ideology’s may not have been evil it just wasn’t normal and the means of getting the results were also not humane. The same is true of good this time I will use a character as an example instead of real person. Batman for example, batman is good. He fights crime, puts away the bad guys. However the reasons for batman to do what he does are not good, he fight crime to avenge his bad parents. His physical appearance and his name also mirror this darkness of the batman.
He where black, a cloaked figure of the night, named after a “creepy/evil” creature. Everything about batman physical look is evil. And if you made a similar character without the logo. And showed this to people and asked them if this was a hero or a villain. I would presume the most common response would be villain. However due to batman’s acts and what we already know about him we known in fact that he is actually a hero. Although is considered an antihero, as James Cordon demonstrates in the film and comic.

We took this a step further with Malcolm today in the seminar he made us work in a group and to discuss binary opposites. Eventually we had to choose a genre of film or of media or choose a character or two to compare. And as a group we found the binary opposites of the things. We for example did Disney Pixar’s Up. We compared Carl Fredricksen and Russell. We compared there attitudes, and physical appearance and found some interesting links. We also looked at how they interacted with each other. We found a range of similarity between the two characters especially as we considered the younger Carl, I thought it was interesting how Pixar had used a physical appearance to mirror the personality difference. However we also discussed how they grew as characters together and compromised their own beliefs and made each other see the world in a different way. Carl ended up more warm hearted and adventurous as he once was when we a boy. And Carl taught Russell how to be brave and that there is more to the world. I think together as character they both really work, and although I have no doubt that these characters could exist without each other they wouldn’t serve much purpose and wouldn’t change and there would be no growth or development.