Stirring Up Trouble on the American Frontier
April 17, 2000
Finding Your Flash Chi:
|
Did you ever notice that movies are better than TV? Why is that?
Imagine your favorite Hollywood blockbuster movie that enjoyed
some critical and financial success. Imagine what the movie would
be like if the already-paper-thin story were even less substantial.
The film would become little more than hardcore porn without the
hardcore.
Imagine that the actors were ugly. Or plain - they looked like
actors instead of the characters. Not only that, but the scenes
were not artfully composed and the camera angles and lighting were
bad. Imagine that when you watched the movie you were continually
conscious of the process by which the film was made.
"Then you would have TV," you'd say; and you would be right.
The relationship between movies and TV is a good analogy for the
relationship between good and bad multimedia design. Think of
data as your story and visual tricks as your aesthetic values.
Let's belabor the analogy a little more.
|
| Movies |
TV |
|
Characters look at each other over long, drawn out silence,
(carefully composed orchestration complements the already-clear meaning
and draws out the emotion for exactly the right amount of time). |
Characters look at each other over long, drawn out
silence, (every scene is filmed with a full two minutes of characters
staring blankly at each other. Scenes are later edited based on the
amount of time required to fill the space between ads for potato chips). |
|
Story unfolds on multiple levels simultaneously. |
Story is one of three standard "I Love Lucy" formulae,
as mandated by the international TV writers' treaty of 1947. |
| Original Score by a gifted composer |
Synth Bass Slap and Pop |
|
Every detail - down to the brand of bottled water that
appears on a character's desk for 2 seconds - is carefully weighed for
its aesthetic beauty and significance to the story on all levels. |
Gotta sell those potato chips! |
|
Historical references abound. The screenwriter and director use the
power of shared experiences to focus complex meaning into intensely
focused images.
|
Tries to cover up historical "references" to "I Love Lucy" |
Now let's try to focus this nonsense into a few statements that
will help us make some web pages:
- Movies in general demonstrate a good feel for the balance between
data (story) and tricks (aesthetic values).
- TV does not demonstrate this talent.
- We want to make web applications that are more like movies, (and
less like TV).
- We want to find a good balance between data and tricks.
Conclusion of the Conclusion:
You must learn to make text twirl. You must know how to make a
mouse trail, should it ever offer the potential to add meaning to
your design, (imagine a site advertising a product for urinary
incontinence and you wanted to make it look like someone smelled
really bad). These things are all etudes that lead you down the
path to a skilled level of craftsmanship. These are studies in
light and lenses. They are not "Saving Private Ryan".
As you learn Flash, try to balance your study between data and
tricks.
Flash Resources:
PERL Resources:
JavaScript Resources:
When You Can Cut-and-Paste the Pebble From My Hand
Tricks & Data, Flash Yin & Yang
|
