Orchestra Hero

 

When I try to visualize an orchestra, I usually end up thinking about something that looks along the lines of this image. As you can see, this is a very typical display of what an orchestra is composed of and how it is set up on the stage. Just by glancing at this image you can tell that it is composed of professional musicians based upon the looks of the players. They all have perfect posture and you can see that there is huge range in their age distribution. They’re also playing in a hall that is far nicer than most amateur orchestras play in. This picture appears to have been taken before the beginning of a concert because there is no maestro in front of the orchestra and the players are all sitting down. If they were standing I would probably assume they were standing for a round of applause at the end of the concert. Overall the image is very conventional. It makes good use of point of view by making you feel like you are in the audience at concert. If someone had never seen an orchestra before or didn’t know what one was, I would probably show them this image.

  

Now, here is the same image again, but this time I added in the guitar hero logo and made it an advertisement for the “next big video game,” “Orchestra Hero.” Just by adding in two words, I changed the entire meaning of the image. Before it was a beautiful photograph of a professional orchestra, now it’s a bad advertisement for an even worse video game. The image went from being pro music and art to being pro pop culture and technology. According to Faigley on page 53 in Picturing Texts, "The process of seeing a visual text is different from reading words. Words can be highlighted, boldfaced, capitalized, or italicized to draw a reader's attention to add emphasis where desired." For the added caption I decided to use the actual logo for the game "Guitar Hero." By doing so I added emphasis to show the viewer that I am parodying a popular video game. Had I simply written the words "Orchestra Hero" at the top, many people would probably not understand the reference.