Coming up with the emojis to tell the plot of this movie was a fun, yet difficult task. I started off with the title as it provides a framework for my colleagues to guess the rest of the plot. If I gave the plot and then the title, I think it would be hard to guess as the plot may be harder to decipher and I tried to show the most memorable parts of the movie. I chose to use solely ideas because I think having syllables or words would make it more confusing to guess. By staying consistent with one style, the reader can just decipher the message as ideas/images instead of trying to guess if its supposed to be a syllable, a word, or an idea.
The saying “a picture tells a thousand words” comes to mind when completing this activity as I found that I could tell a story with much fewer emojis than I could if I had to type it all out in words. In previous chapters we learned about how digital technology reduced the effort needed to write manually and increased efficiency. Emojis, if we can all come to an agreement to what each of them means, could further increase this efficiency although it may look less professional. However, as questioned in Kress (2005), do the conventions that we are accustomed to really matter that much or is it more important for the correct message to be communicated to the receiver? I’ve mentioned in previous posts about how sarcasm can’t be conveyed properly through text, but with the use of images and emojis, could that change? I know that if I add a smiley face emoji to the end of a statement, my friends know that I am joking but without it, they may not be sure. Even if it looks less professional than what we are currently used to, isn’t it more important that the message is clear and interpreted exactly how we wanted to communicate it?
References:
Kress, G. (2005), Gains and losses: New forms of texts, knowledge, and learning. Computers and Composition, Vol. 2(1), 5-22.
Hey Juliano,
I don’t think the title was actually even needed to decipher which movie you were talking about. Maybe it’s because I love it so much that I’ve visited several of the filming locations (his old apartment from the beginning of the film is about 8 or so blocks from where I live), or because there are only so many movies that involve golfing, an alligator, and fighting with an old man. I definitely think that in a case where so many elements of the movie were unique, it was a smart decision to focus on the ideas presented in the movie rather than try to incorporate syllables and form words – I think they would only have detracted from what you were trying to express.
It is such a classic Adam Sandler movie and I’ve come to appreciate it more now that I’m older (I was 8 years old when it first came out). Not that there was a lot of deep thinking that was needed to watch the movie but some of the jokes make more sense now and also I picked up golf so some of the rules makes more sense now too. Last summer I played at the course where some of the movie was filmed and where he fought Bob Barker so that was a pretty cool experience! I agree that since the film had so many unique and iconic moments, trying to use syllables or words would only confuse the audience.