Class Notes, November 1 & Reaction

CSI:

Music is lively much like the people appearing in the first scene are
The Wallflowers! :)
Casino scene seems very,very realistic with noise level, crowd, lighting
Women compared to food
The tempo of the music really keeps up with the action of the opening act
Music stops, murder discovered
Slow, creepy music starts when "party stops" and detectives arrive
All pictures change quickly as images flash different words, characters, and colors
View from the car
Sound of traffic
People taking pictures on the side of the road
View of eyeball (up close)
Sound of wharped voice
Surveillance tape
Image of land (open) as we return from commercials
Like "victory" music at the end


After watching an episode of CSI: Las Vegas in class on Thursday, I have a new-found appreciation for the visual effects of such shows. It's amazing what kind of impact that light, sound, and takes after and before commercials can have on a viewer. It makes me realize that a lot of people do not understand what goes into making the visual appearance of a show what it is, especially a show like CSI. The visual aspects of each scene have such a large effect on the way that the viewer interprets what is going on, and what might happen next.

I noted several things as I watched this particular episode that I thought contributed to the overal visual effect of the show. The music throughout the entire episode almost always matched the action that was going on. For instance, when the episode begins the characters are in a club. The music is real happening and lively, much like the activity in the scene. Then, when the scene shifts to the characters in the crime lab, the music gets more melodramatic and low. This change in music helped me to put into perspective what was happening and follow the action more closely. The tempo of the music conveyed a sense of movement, too.

I've always noticed the lighting in CSI. Like we talked about on Thursday, one of the main colors that seems to help viewers identify with CSI is the neon green that is used. In other cases, the lighting in the club is real dark, whereas when the scene shifts to the crime lab, the colors are more fluorescent and bright. In some scenes the light even appears to glow, putting more emphasis on what it is that's glowing. At other times, the sun was shining when the characters were outdoors, or like when the scene from commercials started with a shot of the desert.

The way that the camera moved during each scene also caught my attention. I don't know much about camera movement, but from what I could tell, instead of moving the camera slowly from one person to another, the camera person shot one person's head and then switched completely to another person's head as the people were conversing. It was real quick movement, but it intensified the moment. Another example of camera movement was when the female investigator was sitting at the table, reading over something, and the scene opened with a news report on the television and then faded backwards into the woman sitting at her table. I thought that was neat because the camera never focuses on the television in the background, but merely zooms in on it, but then it focuses on the woman. Weird choice, but it was certainly effective. This idea goes along with the way that the camera zoomed in to the eyeball at one point.

Everything else that I noticed was relatively minor, but I noted each in the list above.