[Miscellaneous] Armchair BEA 2015 – Day 2: Visual Expressions

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What’s Miscellaneous Today?
Armchair BEA 2015 —
Day 2: Visual Expressions

What is it?

Armchair BEA takes the essence of Book Expo America without actually being at the convention and makes the experience virtual. It’s hosted over at http://www.armchairbea.com from May 26-31 and the theme for 2015 is Diversity. Use the hashtag #ArmchairBEA on twitter to keep up-to-date.

Thoughts:

Day 2 looks at Visual Expressions & Social Media. Normally I’d combine the topics into one post—so as to not inundate you all—but I think both of these need to be separated into different posts. This post will concern Visual Expressions. For part 2, click here to be redirected to look at Social Media.

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Visual Expressions

There are so many ways to tell stories. Whether it’s comic books, graphic novels, visual novels, webcomics, etc, there are quite a lot of other mediums to tell a story. On this day, we will be talking about those books and formats that move beyond just words and use other ways to experience a story.

The list above really only focuses on the written word/image to convey meaning, and that’s great, mangas/comics have been a big part of my life growing up. From Calvin and Hobbes to Shingeki no Kyojin, there have been wonderful stories crafted over the years that really spread interest and awareness to the narrative it conveys.

But I’d like to step away from written word and talk about the feeling of expression from storytelling that isn’t strictly bound by text. I’ve tried to curate a diverse set of examples in a vast world of multimedia. The theme is diversity after all.

Whether it’s a one-minute short film:

Synopsis: A child asks his dad to check under the bed.

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A choreographed dance:

Synopsis: Facing illnesses brings everything back to perspective: love.

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A Wedding Speech (via singing/songwriting):

Synopsis: Tom Fletcher (of McFly fame) gives his wedding speech via song. (He literally hits the rollercoaster of feels. Dude’s legit.)

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A Fanmade Movie Trailer for Olicity (Arrow/The Flash)

Synopsis: MY SHIP. I would pay money to see this movie…holy shit.

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And perhaps arguably one of the most diverse experiences in the past few years is Frozen’s Let It Go. The Multilanguage-edition. Yes, I’m sure there are underrepresented languages in this, and the song has been overplayed to the extreme, but major props to Disney for making a musical accessible worldwide.

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Afterthoughts:

These are all stories; told through a million ways, not one of them being more correct than the other. They are emotion, power, and nuance; a visual expression of resilience. We expose our stories into theirs and come out different, and so I ask: what’s your story?

This is part 1 of today’s posts for Armchair BEA! For part 2, click here to be redirected to look at Social Media.

I’d like to hear what hits you right in the feels, whether it’s humour or sadness or anything in-between, in mediums of expression not limited to the written word!

Cheers,
Joey

connect: afterthoughtAn // twitter  |  anotherafterthought // goodreads