Sng Ying’s Curation
Visual Content 1
Link to Visual Content 1, Don’t Leave Me, Sunshine, 5.13–5.49 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQB7ritn580
Technical perspective
The unconventional way of mashing various scenes by combining back and forth shots of swimming in the pool and various teachers teaching works. It illustrates how his deprived childhood and all his overwhelming commitments are slowly engulfing him. This draws inspirations because it successfully reflects how our society is too result-orientated by the bombardment of classes he attends. Also, his memory only included various shots of teachers’ reprimands, showing his disinterest in learning. This also signifies the amount of lessons and ‘burden’ that is weighing Justin down. In Shaky shots of swimming pool included the water constantly having some waves, shows how hectic his life is.
Cultural Perspective
This clip accurately portrayed the amount of burden most Singaporean parents had put on their children as they are often too ‘kiasu’ and afraid to lost out. Therefore they become too fixated with grooming their children to reach the ideal destination but neglect the joy of learning.
Visual Reference
Using Visual Grammer, Eye Line is shot where Justin is looking up, creating a sense of how Justin is being ‘pushed down’ to obey (his parent and societal pressures) and forced to follow the path to academic excellence.
This shot uses montage with various scenes, reflecting Justin’s hectic life. This mirrors stress and confusion Justin felt, where audience can easily relate to.
Visual Content 2
Link to Visual Content 2, https://www.pinterest.com/pin/489062840761080567/
Cultural Perspective
As a documentarian, the photographer is discouraging people from following the herd mentality of society as shown with the man shaving his sheep leg. From the long queues for Hello Kitty soft toys and the llao llao craze, Singaporeans are undeniably some of the most fervid subscribers of herd mentality. One example is Singaporean’s obsession for academic excellence. The man shaving off the fur of his sheep leg shows importance of Singaporeans to stop having the herd mentality of blindly pursuing an academic degree. Therefore such individualism inspired us to work on Paper chase & Rat race, a problem is so ingrained into Singapore’s society til the extent that many fail to not see this as problematic. Therefore, we need to raise awareness by encouraging the adoption of different attitudes towards learning such as enjoying learning.
Visual Reference
Persuasive appeals of individuality are used to illustrate importance of rejecting ideas of herd mentality by not succumbing into societal pressure, like achieving academic excellence. Interestingly, the man’s leg is being retouched into a sheep’s leg.
Metaphor is used , where it compares person’s leg to the sheep’s leg, emphasizing the widespread of herd mentality in our society.
According to cognitive theory, culture justify how we perceive the meaning that lies behind this photo. Singaporeans are known to always follow trends, therefore it is easy for us to interpret the importance of shedding off the herd mentality.
