Cruisin' Down The Street in my 6-4

Ker-Splat

The Many Hues of Popeye the Sailor Man

In the still of Bluto (what a punk) from the Popeye cartoon, he is standing at the corner of the boxing ring, trying to look tough before his face-off with Popeye.  The hue of his skin tone is a fairly average tan for portraying a Caucasian in a cartoon.  His skin tone however is a bit more saturated and bronze than Popeye’s.  Aside from that, black seems to be his overall color scheme.  His black boxing shorts in conjunction with his thick black beard and black hat send the message that this guy is a crook.  The background is fairly bright and very plain, with the floor of the boxing ring and the background sporting the same tan-ish green-ish color.  The dark area obstructing view on the left side adds contrast to the overall picture.  The image contains no shadows.  The mood of the photo is fairly positive as it contains many bright neutral colors, but Bluto’s dark colors portray some darker feelings.  This relates to his deceptive character and how the boxing match to come is highly unfair because Bluto has sabotaging any of Popeye’s chances of winning on the way to the fight.

In the image of Olive Oyl feeding a disheveled Popeye some trusty spinach, the overall image has a much darker hue.  This is probably due to them being underneath the boxing ring that Popeye just fell through.  In the background, contrast is made between the brightness and saturation of the floor and the dark underside of the ring.  As the outside walls of the ring are totally black, to allow for a sense of space and shape, their “ceiling” is a dark gray.  As far as the characters, Popeye and Olive Oyl both sport a red hue of different saturations.  This continuity links the two characters as a team or partnership.  Olive Oyl’s dark skirt and heels allow for a very conservative look.  Popeye’s bright white hat lets the audience know that he is the loveable protagonist.  This image contains some shadows as it takes place in a dark crevasse with little light.  The green spinach represents hope and a release from the tension in the episode because it gives Popeye the power he needs to defeat Bluto.  The mood is one of hope.  It is somewhat dark and scary where they are, but brightly colored Olive Oyl has a big smile on her face as she assists Popeye to his victory.

Dental Hygiene Dilemma Dissected

In the “Dental Hygiene Dilemma,” the art director certainly followed all of the basic rules for setting up shots and scenery.  At no point in the entire scene does the audience’s view cross over the 180 degree line.  For the most part, the angles are fairly squared off and keep a consistent perspective of the room.

The artist did, however, make good use of the rule of thirds throughout the scene.  In the intro sequence with the scholarly duck, the dental equipment is placed in the left third of the shot.  With the bouncing duck small and centered in the shot, the focus is on the right third of the shot where his screen is flashing sporadic dental-related images.  After entering Jeff’s room through the mouth on the duck’s screen and zooming out from the close-up of the television, the view of the entire bedroom is set up using the rule of thirds.  The main focuses in this shot are on the television and on Jeff lying anxious on his bed.  Dividing the shot into thirds, the brightly colored television is in the upper right third and Jeff is lying down on his bed, centered in the lower horizontal third of the shot.  When Jeff stands up, he ends up vertically in the left third of the shot.

All the cuts, pans, or zooms obey the 30-rule as they change at least by 30% or 30 degrees.  Most of the changes are from a wide shot of the room to a close-up of an object in the room.  For example, in the intro the shot zooms in at least 30% to get from the view of the duck in the dentist’s office to the screen on the wall, as well as zooming from a wide view of Jeff’s room to the close up of the television.

The shots in this scene are very simple and straightforward, as they obey all the basic rules without cutting any corners.  The directing of the scene is well done but it certainly does not jump out at me as being especially artful and creative in setting up the shots.  However, I feel that more artful and creative focus was put into the content of the scene and the avant-garde morphing of the objects within, such as everything going on in the television.

Eleanor... Eleanor Rigby

Eleanor Rigby by The Beatles

Rhythm
Source - Orchestra
Time/Tempo - Moderately uptempo ~135 bpm
Groove - Somewhat sinister, heartfelt empathy
Arrangement
Instrumentation - Orchestra, vocals
Structure/Organization - Intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/etc
Emotional Architecture - Simple stoccato driving force during verse, slight build-up for reoccurring hook
Sound Quality
Height - Artfully uses simplicity and silence - has a relatively small frequency range yet maintains a full sound with deep strings, tenor vocals, as well as higher stringed instruments
Width - Good broad width... has harmonies dedicated to either side, as well as melody + background on either side during hook
Depth - Not much depth, very simple... vocals + strings

Eleanor Rigby as performed by Aretha Franklin 

Rhythm
Source - The rhythm section... drums/percussion, bass + keys
Time/Tempo - Largely uptempo feel ~ 140 bpm (somewhat surprisingly close to The Beatles)
Groove - yes.   Very upbeat, incredibly soulful
Arrangement
Instrumentation - Vocal melody + rhythm section
Structure/Organization - Intro/verse/chorus/verse/chorus/etc, bridge/build-up section
Emotional Architecture - Starts soulful and upbeat, ends even more soulful and upbeat
Sound Quality
Height - Good range, bass/rhythm section + higher background vocals and horns (tambourine, too)
Width - Good division of various layered rhythms on either side, i.e. organ and guitar
Depth - Many layers of rhythms working together to make you move

            As far as The Beatles’ version of their tune, “Eleanor Rigby,” the overall sound is quite radically different from much of their other material.  The composition itself sounds fairly in-tune with the rest of their work being done at the time, but the instrumentation is drastically different.  The layers of sound as a whole are very simple, as the overall instrumentation consists of only the vocal melody and the string octet.  While this composition is free of any typical Beatles’ pop instrument backing, the strings have the duty of driving the rhythm and providing any and all support to the melody.  That being said, this turns out as a very simple and artful piece, highly recognizable in pop culture, even today.

While in England, The Beatles were certainly paying close attention to some of the early popular black music being made at the time in the United States.  This was the period when pop music was coming into being and much of the soul found in church music was making its way into the recording studio.  This becomes fairly obvious when listening to some of the vocal styling’s of The Beatles compared to black soul artists of the time.  As it happens to be, the favor was returned several years down the road when renditions of Beatles’ songs were being recorded by artists such as Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin, Wes Montgomery, The Jackson 5, Richie Havens, and many more.
Aretha’s version takes the same lyrics and structural framework of the Beatles’ version but totally builds it from the ground up.  In the arrangement from Live at Fillmore West, she has an incredibly stacked line-up of backing musicians (Cornell Dupree, Jerry Jemmott, Bernard Purdie, Billy Preston, King Curtis & The Kingpins, and more) playing a fairly standard instrumentation for the time.  Instead of artful simplicity with a string section, Aretha takes the path of electric guitar, bass, organ, drum kit, percussion, a horn section, and backing vocals.  Her studio version is rather enjoyable, but if you’re going to listen you might as well go for the version from 1971’s “Live at Fillmore West”.  This beefed-up, soulful version of The Beatles’ classic tune is more upbeat and really captures that hard-to-explain magical energy that is often found in live soul and R&B recordings.  Aretha’s version includes many rhythms working independently that when layered makes for a very full sound that tends to result in foot tapping, head nodding, or even dancing.  While I regard the original version by The Beatles as a great classic tune, the Aretha Franklin version just seems to rub me in more so the right way.