UNIT 1: BRIEF 3: WEEK 6
I chose the film Moulin Rouge (Baz Luhrman, 2001) as my material to investigate translating.
Spectacular Spectacular
Rhetoric: I took the song Spectacular Spectacular from Moulin Rouge and translated the rhetoric language by injecting images for each word in the style of Associations by John Smith 1975 with the intention of sharing. This was interesting to watch with and without the sound and how this influenced meaning.
Top Boy
Culture: I took a section of dialogue from Moulin Rouge and translated the culture by parodying the script in the style of Top Boy with the purpose of analysing. Through this method I found a huge number of parallels between Moulin Rouge and Top Boy. Which led me ask questions about narrative and medium, both fact and fiction, and if narrative and medium is homogenous, what is different, is it the graphic communication design of the content?
Grazia Cover
Use: I extrapolated the overall themes of the film and translated them into a magazine cover, possibly with the intention of circulating. Through this method I found a lack of women, which made me think of bell hooks and representation and raised questions around representation, gender, patriarchy and capitalism.
Silent Movie of Experienced Emotions
Duration: I wanted to translate the duration of the film to evaluate through paraphrasing, so I reduced the film down into a series of lived emotions and created them in a form of the era the film was set (1899). I presented them on-screen inter-titles of the silent movies. This method highlighted that the film, the play within the film and the dance, the tango, within the film all have the same narrative arc / lived emotions.