Friday, May 1, 2009

The Function of Gestures: a short film from 1950


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There is useful information inside, and the carnival organ music at the beginning is hilarious. You can see why they call George Johnson, “Old Stone Face”. Why is that ludicrous handkerchief erupting from his coat pocket at 1:30 though, as shown below?

They point out that if your gesture leads your audience to look off into the distance, then you may not get their attention back again.
The reference at 7:25 to $500,000 may strike modern audiences as silly. Back then it was a lot of money; now it would be equivalent to nine times as much or around $4,500,000!














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