Task 6 – An emoji story

Did you rely more on syllables, words, ideas or a combination of all of them?

When completing this assignment, I would say that I relied more on the combination of words and ideas. I did not consider syllables, as this may have been harder for the viewer to guess the title and plot. However, when I thought about the ideas and words, I attempted to view them in combination, as I would consider this task like a game of charades.

This task reminded me of rebus books I would read to my children when they were beginning to read (Bolter, 2001).  I appreciate that the universal symbolism can be understood by many, regardless of language, and that the stylistic nature that comes with formal writing can afford “designers a new typographic freedom” (Bolter, 2001, p. 49).

Did you start with the title? Why? Why not? Did you choose the work based on how easy would it be to visualize? 

I started with the title. I wanted to think about a title that I would be able to translate into emojis. My first attempt would be ⚫️||||oO|||| (this is meant to be black widow) simple enough, but I decided it would be too easy to use. Instead, I decided to nix that idea and came up with my choice, as expressed in emojis. The plot of the film is not overly complicated, as it seems is the case with most ❒busters (this is meant to be block busters). I wanted to keep the emojis simple enough, like a game of charades, where the individual guessing would be able to come close to guessing without growing frustrated. In charades, the game’s object is to guess the clues that are being acted out by your teammates. To maximize chances of success, the clue guesser should try to keep it simple and use words and terms in their simplest form. I did this while also considering that I am not good at interpreting emojis, and it seemed reasonable that others may struggle as well. In addition, I considered that those who may come from different countries may have had the title released in different words than the English version.  Accordingly, it occurred to me to present the universal basic symbols of the title that would likely capture it, regardless of what it may have been called in other languages.

Reference

Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Mahwah, N.J: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. doi:10.4324/9781410600110

*It was my hope that you were able to guess this movie not only by working through the emoji but also by recognizing the subtitle clues I gave in the body of my writing. ????????

Please consider that my original post was attempting to insert emojis into the written portion, however, I have just realized that UBC blogs does not recognize emojis as text and instead inserts question marks.  That is a good example of irony for this assignment.