9 – 9 – 12
RTF 344M Blog Prompt #2
I took an analytical view of the
Korsakow project “The Way I Saw It” because of it's sorrowful
rhetoric about working for a corporation feels like it strikes a
common cord among corporation employees today. I've watched each SNU
and have viewed the project in it's entirety. What I have found is
that this project succeeds in presenting an overarching theme and
non-linearity but fails in making a clear narrative arc.
The theme here is easy to determine;
the project revolves around how corporations exercise their influence
and control over their employees to achieve maximum efficiency and
profit. Using training videos reveals the propaganda that a company
may use to make their employees cooperate. Voice-over monologue does
most of the interpretive work for the narrative while imagery takes
on a support role by merely being Costco or Starbucks related B-roll
in most cases. The hierarchy infrastructure insures everyone has
power over 'something', and employees are rewarded more territory
based on seniority in the Hierarchy SNUs. Rat race mentality is
encouraged in the Profit and Checker SNUs where checkers compete for
better performance numbers for bragging rights. Mission and Ideas
SNUs exemplify the problems with top-down management when policy
enforcement is different between the corporate and individual store
levels while innovation is discouraged. Keaner, Lingo, and Family
SNUs give the impression that the company tries hard to get the
employees to be cooperative by indoctrinating them. 18-23 sec. and
Taste SNUs highlight the arbitrary rules put forth by the company as
the 'correct' way to do things whether or not they are always right.
Buggies, ReBrand, and Trophy SNUs visit the rebellion of the
employees and the resistance to the inception of corporate ideology.
BUY, SELL, and WORK serve to illustrate the environment that the
narrator is placed in; the pull of the corporation and the push of
the consumer work to degrade the employee. Jim, Snap Shot, and
Monkeys SNUs explore the relationship between employees and superiors
where superiors are treated like royalty that spy on the performance
of the workers to adhere to standards.
These SNUs together create a nice
non-linear mesh of a theme, casting a wide net individual units where
two or three are virtually different ideas fulfilling the same
purpose. An average audience will not go through every single SNU, so
the author intentionally used a scatter-shot method of delivery for
his theme. In this way, an average user will get the gist of the
depth of the project without needing to view every SNU. The
connections between each SNU do not seem important; there are always
three choices to move on (until you have exhausted all options) and
they appear randomly. Narrative links between SNUs are completely
interpreted by the participant due to this randomness and are not
intentional bridges. My guess is that there is very little use of
keywording in this project.
However, this random approach to
non-linearity assures that there is no clear narrative arc to be
experienced. The first SNU, the introduction to the narrator, can
even be skipped over, killing that SNU for repeat and assuring that
the participant will not even have a clear expository introduction to
the project. The Quit SNU is the only pass at a project-wide
narrative thread, but it is weakly supported by the random SNUs
before it and often comes as an abrupt transition. I think this
project could have benefited from a reorganization of SNU progression
where the narrator's transition between happy employee to resentful
prisoner was clustered in two halves. A participant should not
progress to resentment without first experiencing the elation of the
narrator, or else you lose the contrasting effect between the two.
So, for example, SNUs like Keaner, Jim, Family, Lingo, BUY, and SELL
are presented before SNUs like ReBrand, Trophy and Ideas, so that we
get a chance to see the narrator going from excited to disenchanted,
thus becoming a project-wide narrative arc. I feel that this
opportunity is missed in the random approach that the author has
taken.
SNUs in The
Way I Saw It -
Coffee employee training video as
intro.
Monologue on Costco and Starbucks,
gives options even before the end of the intro
Keaner revisits archival, praises
coffee. Narrator standing in front of store with uniform as frame
gets larger. He talks about his Starbucks training and how at first
he enjoyed it. He realized that the company imprinted ideals onto
him.
Checker revisits archival, checker
training video, checker competition. Narrator explaining the
surveillance over checker performance and how employees would
compete.
BUY forms a bar-code with shopping
carts. Narrator explains buying power and customer agency.
Cover Up talks about the public image
of Starbucks and the urge to hide the coffee cup.
Snap Shot explains the process of
secret shoppers testing a store.
Hierarchy shows that seniority trumps
everything within the company. Visual progress of the narrator moving
up as his time there lengthens.
Mission shows how corporations
encourage talking to superiors. Conflict between company mission and
actual policy enforcing.
Lingo explores the arbitrary language
and code of the employees that gives them a sense of community.
Hierarchy2 is the caste system within
the corporation and who possesses control over operations. Employees
setting their own standards.
Ideas explains that innovation is
quashed and they own anything you suggest.
Profit revisits training video.
Highlights rat race mentality.
Waiting shows the crowds outside the
doors in the morning.
Hierarchy3 highlights the void between
people in the employee/consumer relationship.
Buggies is the hell of rounding up
carts, a mindless physical task.
Monkeys are inferior to machines
scanning.
Trophy recounts the Starbucks book
published that the narrator never read.
18-23 sec. Is about the arbitrary
standards passed off as very important, all about image.
Jim, Mr. Costco visits throw warehouse
into magical order.
Taste training presents the image of
perfection in coffee brewing.
Family generic card from Costco signed
by the manager on anniversaries. The corporation tries to build a
false sense of family.
SELL is the corporate mindset of
efficiency.
ReBrand about narrator defacing logo.
WORK finds the conflict between
consumer demand and company policy.
Quit is the end of the project, a
narration of the letter he sent notifying of his departure from his
employment.
Group 1
Project Theme
We first considered the theme of
Hands. These hands would be at work, or at play, doing everything
from the exciting to the mundane. We liked this idea because of the
variety of results we would get from it and it sounded interesting
enough to work, but we had concerns about having our projects all
look similar in style and execution carrying out this theme. I
suggested in lab that a better theme would be a Day in the Life of
'Play', which seems to have sparked more interest. I feel the concept
of Play is more interpretive and will give more creative freedom to
each group member. Kids pretending in a park, students at a
volleyball court, squirrels chasing each other, dogs quarreling over
table scraps, a poker game; these images are varied and test the
ideas of what we consider to be 'play' and what 'play' means, either
socially or culturally. This gives a great expanse to explore without
being too ambiguous and also gives us access to archival video should
anyone choose to use it. I'm still thinking about what kind of play I
want to film; my instincts say to do one simple video and one complex
video. I thought the concept of cats playing from their POV would be
interesting, but working with animals is difficult and I would need
to make a camera mount for the cat (and borrow a GoPro). I have also
considered some sort of video game montage of all the different
multi-player and competitive games I know of, but I do not think I am
the only one with that idea in our group.
