Task 6: An Emoji Story
When composing this emoji story, the work I chose was very intentional. Many other options that I could have chosen felt very complex and I felt I would be even more limited with how much emotion, history, and/or context I could provide with only emojis. With that, I also chose the work based on how much I liked the work itself, as well as the plot, as I figured liking it would also help me to visualize and retell the story more easily.
I started with the title because it is quite simple and was easy to find an appropriate emoji for it. With the plot being fairly limited in its depth, it was fairly easy to find emojis that represented what was happening. There are a number of characters and the story bounces around between the characters, so I utilized and incorporated the diversity options within the people emojis to represent the characters.
I relied mostly on ideas and characters, rather than syllables or words, when selecting the emojis, and I enjoyed the process of trying to find emoji combinations that would best capture the ideas and who and what the characters were doing.
The biggest limitation was relaying the elements of humour and satire within the work itself. All throughout the work, humour and satire are cleverly conveyed with dialogue, body language, and camera interaction. For many, it is what makes this work most appealing. It was fairly easy to share the plot, but I felt emojis alone weren’t enough to capture the layers of what makes this work great.
However, even with such a limitation, I found the process of this task enjoyable and creative, and that it especially highlighted how many layers are at play when creating and re-creating meaningful text.
I have no idea what this movie/show is, so here is my attempt at decoding it. I tried my best, but I know it is probably nowhere close, so I hope you get a laugh!
Skyscraper
A man eats breakfast while his wife sleeps in.
The man drives to a skyscraper, but hits a woman with his car.
A man is on a video call with another couple.
This couple is thinking about having a baby.
The first man drives the woman he drove into to a hospital.
Another woman with a cat on drugs wonders if the cat got the drugs from a guy she knows.
At the hospital, every character mentioned so far (including the baby that was being wished for), plus some others, arrive with flowers and balloons to wish the injured woman well.
At home, cat-drug dude finds the cat dead. He freezes the cat. Cat lady is sad.
Guy who ran over the injured woman thanks everyone for coming.
Couple who has a baby wonders if their kid loves peanut butter and jam sandwiches.
The mother drives to the skyscraper and walks in on a romantic movie being filmed.
She thinks of how to make money by running, and has an idea!
Meanwhile, cat lady is still sad about her cat and wonders if cat-drug dude killed and froze the cat.
On tv, the romance movie is played and it stirs feelings in the couple who has a baby.
Cat lady is now very mad at drug-cat dude.
Everyone goes for a run while… two people lay down in front of a taxi to stop a drunk driver, forcing someone else to walk?
The man who drove at the beginning of the story eats spaghetti and becomes sick.
Someone I don’t think has been mentioned yet wins first place in the race that everyone was running in?
The man who drove at the beginning of the story returns to the hospital and brings a lollypop to the woman he ran over, who is now in a wheelchair.
Yes, I did have a laugh. And I was quite impressed with the accuracy of many of your interpretations. With the areas where you were off, I also easily understood how my choice of emojis would have led you down another path entirely. The work that I chose was from Season 4, Episode 1 of “The Office”. Are you familiar with this?
Oooooohhh haha that makes sense! I’ve seen a few episodes here and there but I don’t think I’ve seen this one yet, I’ll have to go watch it now to see how all the pieces fit together.