Week 12 Blog Post

Dance, especially highly choreographed, synchronized dance is central to this music genre. I cannot think of a more dynamic form of non-verbal communication than dance, so P-Pop offers some excellent media content to evaluate for this course.

ALAMAT is a popular P-Pop group and their music video for the song, kasmala is an interesting example to use for looking at environmental elements as they relate to communication. This music video was shot in the Philippines. Color was used as a tool to help communicate a feeling or emotion for the video. The ‘story’ is set in the early 1900s so the director was going for a vintage film look with the use of a grain effect, scratches and desaturated color, giving some segments a sepia color cast. Warm colors like reds, and yellows are used but because of the desaturation, they are muted. In some clips, browns and rusts are the dominant color conveying an somber mood. The director introduces these pure white “humanoids” that have featureless faces that look like a mask. The white is a strong contrast to the sepia tone. It is not clear to me exactly what these characters represent but it gives and ominous, creepy vide. Overall, an effective use of color to communicate in my opinion.

The physical locations where the scenes were shot in famous parks and other locations that would be familiar to Philippineos living there, but otherwise interesting for the rest of us who do not. You can get a sense from the locations that they have some historical importance. Of course, the star of the video is the synchronized dancing.

As a side note, Asian rhythmic music has given birth to a whole segment of rhythmic gaming. My favorite is a game franchise called Pump it Up! which originated in South Korea and has become popular in the US and around the world.