https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FvGg7jBVpd3nNFqi49BmANw5mgHegEf6X1BoQj3SjO0/edit?usp=sharing
I was overwhelmed by this assignment when trying to translate the last film I truly enjoyed into emojis, and it ended up taking me a lot more time than I would care to admit. However, the last hour or so working on it was greatly enjoyable, and I shall attempt to explain this. For the title, I attempted to represent a complex idea through a combination of emojis. At first I was daunted by having to represent the complexities of the plot using only emojis. This challenge seems to exemplify what Bolter describes as the tension between textual and visual modes of representation – how do you translate a rich narrative into purely visual symbols?
To tackle this challenge, I needed to develop a clear approach. I initially thought I would take a thematic/symbolic approach, but I quickly became daunted by that task. What enabled me to get my head around it was realizing it was only ever going to be a partial description of the plot of the movie. I decided to structure my emoji narrative around key moments, allowing myself to use multiple emojis for key characters (who needed that complexity to be properly represented), while being more economical with other story elements. This approach let me distill the plot down into certain motifs, whether these were oriented toward audience reaction or the character’s emotion in sequence. I found myself habitually placing these emotional reactions at the end of each line to bring out the patterns that existed in the film.
Most times I used the emojis to represent their commonly accepted meanings (like red exclamation marks to signify danger) while in other instances I had to make use of combinations in order to portray an idea that wasn’t easily represented by a single emoji (without giving too much away, gas pump paired with the swimming MASK, and not GOGGLES). What began as a daunting task transformed into something deeply satisfying as I discovered the internal logic of my emoji narrative. There was particular pleasure in repeating certain complex sequences verbatim, and in realizing that removing emojis could sometimes make the story stronger – a kind of addition by subtraction. So while it was a gross simplification of a brilliant and complex film, the partiality of the description became, in some way, the purpose. It was like I was creating my own story here – not just simplifying the film, but finding its essential rhythm and patterns. In this way, perhaps what I created wasn’t just a translation but what Bolter might recognize as a remediation – a new form that both rivals and incorporates elements of the original.
References
Bolter, J. D. (2001). Writing space: Computers, hypertext, and the remediation of print (2nd ed.). Lawrence Erlbaum.