Entry 2

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.