Visualising the Point of (View of) Storytelling:
The Guardian’s Self-reflexive Video Commercials
Lena Möller
Abstract
The video commercial ‘Three Little Pigs’, which was produced for The Guardian
in 2012, has turned out to be an absolute audience favourite. Another commercial
for the same newspaper from 1986, ‘Points of View’, has in fact a very similar
argumentative structure; both are based on self-reflexivity, which refers to themselves as well as to narration in general. The stories they tell show how opinions
(points of view) can be wrongly formed at first sight. This is why the point of a
story – and journalism in particular – has to be an exact observation of facts, which
they imply The Guardian accomplishes. The more recent commercial, which advertises not just a newspaper but instead Open Journalism where print is supplemented with reader involvement through web, tablet, and mobile phone, understands something different by ‘the whole picture’ of a story. Both commercials
indirectly refer to Edward Branigan’s point of view (POV) theory on filmic storytelling. While ‘Points of View’ is looking for the greatest objectivity within a picture, the recent commercial is more closely related to Branigan’s observation of
how objective and subjective views both are important in enabling the audience to
see the film space through a character’s vision: a shot of a character looking at an
object off-screen is usually followed by a more detailed shot of that object from the
character’s point. This paper compares and examines the two commercials’ selfreflexive visualisation of ‘points of view’ in the double sense through close analysis of their POV structures. While the earlier commercial’s argumentation solely
wants to convince, ‘Three Little Pigs’ addresses the audience on two different
levels allowing for a direct experience of what the carefully constructed argument
also self-reflexively visualises.
Keywords: Storytelling – point-of-view shot – TV commercials – The Guardian –
self-reflexivity – visualisation – narrational theory – close analysis – time and
space structures.
„„„„„
1. ‘The Whole Picture’
Within three months of its online release ‘Three Little Pigs’, a video commercial produced by BBH for The Guardian, ‘generated 82,000 tweets and more than
2 million views online’ worldwide. 1 It furthermore won last year’s Gold Lion in
the category Film Craft of the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. 2
‘Three Little Pigs’ makes reference to another, however less successful Guardian
commercial: ‘Points of View’ was produced for The Guardian over 25 years ago –
2
Visualising the Point of (View of) Storytelling
two years after Edward Branigan’s landmark study Point of View in the Cinema
was published. Both videos take up point of view theory in illustrating how journalistic narratives in particular aim for ‘the whole picture’ 3 by considering more than
one position – in analogy to the creation of film space through different shots. Such
self-reflexive storytelling, however, is more a feature of artworks, 4 and is somewhat incompatible with the advertisers’ need ‘to sell their message’. 5 This makes
The Guardian’s ‘claims to have “largely offset” [its] ongoing decline in print revenue’ 6 with this campaign even more striking. Such a success cannot solely be that
of an artful video with the newly gained privilege of easy distribution – it must be
founded in the commercial itself. On the basis of a close analysis of the two commercials’ use and discussion of point of view shots, this paper seeks to reveal the
two videos’ different ways of dealing with self-reflexivity. While both succeed as
advertisements, the 2012 winner, by addressing the audience on more than one
level, additionally succeeds as both an aesthetic and critical comment on storytelling.
2. Storytelling: Self-reflexivity versus Subjectivity
Both in light of the jumble use of terms surrounding ‘self-reflexivity“ 7 and of
the two commercials’ complex referential construction, it is important to distinguish the concepts in question. The two forms of intertextual and intermedial selfreference 8 are very prominent in both commercials. While these devices underline
the advertisements’ fictionality (and thereby potentially challenge its effect), this is
much more the case with this special quality of self-reference where the ‘text refers
to itself from a higher level’. 9 ‘Metareference’, 10 or ‘metatextual self-reference’
include ‘comments on the text, its narrative form, its content and its structure, [and]
its plot…’ 11 Even more interesting for this study is the second of the cases which
Werner Wolf subsumes under ‘metareference’ – a reference ‘to the entire system of
the media’. 12 That way the mechanisms also of commercials are reflected upon
much more than by mere references, so ‘the concepts of metafiction and selfreflexive fiction are employed interchangeably as synonyms and refer to the phenomenon of self-reflexiveness that lays bare conventions of fictional representation
and tells us something about fictionality in general.’ 13 Since the term ‘metareference’ is not widely used in humanities, 14 this paper will keep the term ‘selfreflexivity’. The two commercials combine these different forms and qualities of
self-reference by reflecting on both their own and on journalism’s storytelling (and
narration in general), and refer back to themselves by celebrating the former as
demonstration of the latter.
When looking at references to storytelling in different media, it is important to
first of all distinguish their broad reference systems from each other, for some
media are per se based on reflexivity more than others. 15 ‘Journalism, e.g., claims
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to refer to “the reality” in an objective, reliable and authentic way; …. Advertising,
by contrast, refers neither to truth nor to objectivity but [it is] biased, one-sided and
prejudiced in favour of the items advertised for.’ 16 Literary and filmic texts, however, ‘refer to a fictitious world according to [their respective] aesthetic practices
and expectations’, 17 which means that associating journalism with their own, filmic storytelling is an imprecise equation. As Vsevolod Pudovkin phrases it, ‘if he
wishes to work filmically, [the film director] cannot and must not record reality as
it presents itself to the actual, average onlooker.’ 18 What he understands by ‘filmically’ is the selection and combination of both objective overviews 19 and (often
closer) subjective views on the events 20 adapting the position of an ‘ideal invisible
observer’. 21 This is related to Branigan’s point of view (POV) shot. He describes
how in classical editing film space is created by showing a character glance to a
point off-screen (‘point/glance shot’) and combining it with a view of the object,
taken from the character’s position (‘point/object shot’). 22 Filmic narration thus
works mostly through identification instead of self-reflexivity, so it is even more
interesting to look at how POV is used in the self-reflexive commercials.
3. The Guardian’s ‘Points of View’ (1986)
With its thirty seconds in length, the commercial consists of four different shots
of seven seconds each plus fades. There is a static long shot (Image 1) showing a
man who starts to run; the second shot (Image 2), also a long shot pans from behind the man to the right, thereby following his run and showing his collision with
an older man; only the third shot (Image 3) shows, from a higher position, the
falling construction material. Much more than is usually the case with storytelling,
therefore, ‘Points of View’ consciously delays the moment where the cause is
revealed and the whole action – a young man saving an older man from falling
construction material – can be understood. Formally this is stressed by freeze
frames and black transitions where part of the action is even shown doubled. Each
of the images is supplemented by one sentence of voice-over commentary: ‘An
event, seen from one point of view, gives one impression. Seen from another point
of view, it gives quite a different impression. But it’s only when you get the whole
picture, you can fully understand what’s going on.’ 23 The fourth shot (Image 4) is
a silent one. The point which ‘Points of View’ makes is that only an appropriate,
i.e. more objective, form of storytelling can give a true overview. By associating
the latter with The Guardian, the commercial clearly suggests to the audience to
buy that supposedly particularly objective newspaper.
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Visualising the Point of (View of) Storytelling
Image 1 24
Image 2 25
Image 3 26
Image 4 27
‘Points of View’ does everything to appear self-reflexive and reliable. The use
of voice-over to support the information on several channels is a frequent device
for video commercials 28 since professional sounding voices are associated with
authority and objective ‘instruction’ or evaluation much more than are obviously
sugarcoated images. 29 The storytelling also avoids relying on classical POV editing
in order to both withhold the crucial bit of information and to underline its demonstration character. Classically, the most important bits of information would have
been selected and put in a logical order – the young man glancing down the street,
the tilted tray with the loose construction material above the older man’s head,
probably a closer shot of running feet, possibly a shot of someone else staring in a
frightened way, and so forth. Yet in fact, the commercial does not objectively evaluate ‘the whole picture’ for the audience’s benefit – let alone deconstruct or even
challenge the commercial’s own mechanisms: its use of POV is no true visualisation of what the commentary discusses. On the contrary, there are three cleverly
designed ways in which POV is employed to suggest buying The Guardian.
First of all, even though the narration of ‘Points of View’ is marking its own
difference from normal storytelling, it heavily relies on the usual filmic mechanisms to such an extent that it is based on identification by adhering to the „invisi-
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ble observer“ principle: there are watching eyes in the video itself (Image 1). This
stresses the suggestion that the shots are ‘someone’s random gazes rather than the
properly searched for ‘whole picture’, and may be read as a metaphor for a newspaper’s need to question many eye-witnesses before reasons for the events can be
found out. The first shot (Image 1), even though it is not from her perspective,
nevertheless shows the same information which the woman with the crossed arms
must have. The second one (Image 2) moves (in fact most certainly pans) to the
right and thus can represent the point/object shot which follows the point/glance
shot of the person inside the car (a). Rather than being distanced by means of reasoned self-reflexivity, therefore, the audience identifies with the characters which
they hardly perceive since they do not act, just glance.
Moreover, the narration is simplifying and symbolic rather than purely logical
and instructive. Shot angle (height) and movement are used to visually support the
message about ‘the whole picture’ on what is in fact a very unconscious level. The
three shots supposedly progress towards showing more: while in the static shot
(Image 1) the young man would run out of the frame soon, the movement in the
second one (Image 2) allows for the whole running distance to be shown. Only the
slight top view of the events (Image 3) shows everything as soon and as objective
as possible. What is not completely convincing about that line of argumentation,
especially if tested against journalistic goals for storytelling, is that this third shot,
too, could be a subjective view: it is somewhat reminiscent of Pudovkin’s famous
description of ‘editing the scene’: he suggests that if two people meet in the street,
a good perspective could be the subjective view of a third person looking out of a
window. 30 The overlooking shot in the case of the commercial for The Guardian
was privileged; the other perspectives, however, might have been so as well had
the woman (Image 1) for example glanced to the right instead – a fact, which is
detracted from by the seemingly logical presentation.
What is probably most striking about the POV structure which ‘Points of View’
uses is that its highly persuasive strategies involve mixing several lines of argumentation. What is most obvious at first sight is probably the fact that the story
stops at similar, crucial points after the first two shots. Yet it is not the spatial position that restricts the knowledge in the first two instances but instead it is the fact
that only the first bit of the action is shown. Thereby the best position is wrongfully
linked to the most important part of the event; ‘the whole picture’ comprises both
of this. Despite its self-reflexive storytelling therefore, ‘Points of View’ does not
truly reflect on narration. It is simply a fairly manipulative commercial which
claims that its own perspective on the events is a superior one.
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Visualising the Point of (View of) Storytelling
4. The Guardian’s ‘Three Little Pigs’ (2012)
While both the argumentative structure and the overall message of ‘Three Little
Pigs’ is very similar to that of ‘Points of View’, its storytelling is very different.
Like the 1986 commercial, it successively presents several executable ways of
misinterpreting an event and thereby demonstrates the necessity for exact observations during storytelling (which The Guardian supposedly does). Its length of two
minutes, however, allows for several scenes and a more complex message. The
aftermath of the fairy tale of the Three Little Pigs is told in four alternated and
increasingly interconnected scenes of people discussing, investigating, and scrutinising the events of the centuries-old and furthermore well-known story. When it is
found out that the pigs ‘commit[ed] insurance fraud, framing the Wolf … as they
struggle to keep up with their mortgage repayments’, 31 the commercial ends but
makes it clear that story(telling) is an on-going process of discussions and further
events which needs to be supported by Open Journalism: the reference to ‘Points of
View’, the screen saying ‘the whole picture’, is complemented by ‘web, print,
tablet, mobile’ in order to underline the innovation of a much more flexible product, whose distribution via the internet is very fitting. David Pemsel, The Guardian’s new chief marketing officer, asked himself, ‘How do we portray ourselves as
being more than a newspaper?’ 32 The commercial presents examples of easy access through all these media – laptops, newspaper, online television or video
streams, mobile phone, iPad, telephone – whose combined rapidity is mostly represented by the storytelling’s pace of a bit over 1,3 seconds, 33 and all of which lead
to content created by The Guardian.
Image 5 34
That objectivity can only be achieved through the joining of several subjective
views is carefully constructed as an argument and at the same time can directly be
experienced through visual means. There are only few shots without a medium
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device or without translucent overlays of media content (Image 5), and not even
half of the 120 seconds are free of media reference. 35 That way The Guardian is
indirectly placed on the same level as twitter, youtube, and even CCTV. By presenting the audience with more information than can be properly seen, let alone
processed (Image 5), the audience, partly through disorientation, directly experiences what a difficult task it is to approximate objectivity and what an important
role Open Journalism therefore holds. 36 While ‘the film shows how the convergence of print, digital and broadcast news as well as social media can call into
question our assumptions about the classic tale’, 37 it also implies that the classic
tale needs to be told differently. In this modern form, story and storytelling have
become one and the same thing, which is involved and conscious at the same time.
On the one hand, the title already shows that ‘Three Little Pigs’ is less concerned
with self-reflexivity than ‘Points of View’; instead, its priority is immersing the
audience in a well-told story, where it identifies with characters which also lack
crucial information. On the other hand, the fairy-tale basis also makes it obvious at
all times how very conscious its narration is of its exemplary status and of its own,
new forms of POV structures. The latter follows three main principles, all of which
are overwhelming but also obvious at the same time.
Firstly, there are only very few classical POV shots in ‘Three Little Pigs’, nor
are shot size and angle particularly important. The POV structures in this commercial reflect the apparent changes in technique within the past 25 years: they rely
heavily on computer animation and thereby go far beyond what Branigan described
in 1984. This includes the simultaneity of point/glance and point/object shot
through multiple exposures (Image 6). That way the shot can depict the sender, the
message, and the channel all at once. It furthermore allows for double subjective
shots – an adaptation to the situations of the new technologies, in this case a laptop
which demand rapid shifts of attention. While this simultaneity is overwhelming, it
is at the same time very interesting and is used so frequently that its artistic nature
is displayed. According to Winfried Nöth, ‘[t]he digitalization of pictures and
films, which has liberated the media from the bonds of factual reference to a world
which they used to depict, has contributed to the increase of self-reference.’ 38 Yet
often, as is the case here, the result is not ‘subversive’ but ‘playful and aesthetic’.39
It allows bringing across on two levels the message of how omnipresent, dynamic,
and simultaneous storytelling can be through Open Journalism. The innovation
concerning POV, which abounds in computer animation, transfers this impression
on the product: as David Pemsel put it, The Guardian ‘needed to make sure the
brand campaign put The Guardian front and center of what we believed modern,
open and digital journalism is.’ 40
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Visualising the Point of (View of) Storytelling
Image 6 41
The audio level, too, is used very creatively in a way that supports the POV
both in terms of immersing the audience in each of the different perspectives and
of laying bare exactly these mechanisms. There is an unusual amount of blending
between the image, text, and the audio level – none of them is more dominant than
the other. 42 The relatively important role of the audio fits the fact that what can be
seen is not presented as the absolute truth, so that the emphasis is more on thinking
ideologically (justification of defence against intruders) and logically (the Wolf’s
asthma would have prevented him from blowing down the house). Instead of a
voice-over telling about facts, there are different overlapping voices which state
very opposing opinions. While these personal examples encourage identification,
the fact that many of these comments are in very different languages might lead to
Babylonian confusion and therefore greater distance. Their doubling by their written version, too, constitutes recognition of their presence. The music, again, has an
overwhelming effect, but the sounds definitely also work on two levels. The
soundscape of the episodes surrounding the main (pigs’) events, where subjective
voices and confusing and violent sounds of events (smashing of glass, loud gavel,
shouts) prevail, is very opposed to that of the quiet, positive reflection atmosphere
which characterises the episodes about The Guardian. This metaphor for The
Guardian’s professionalism and its important role of relativising information
works both by immersing the audience in the respective scenes and by emphasising
the scenes’ exaggeratedly pronounced difference at each abrupt transition.
The film’s very strikingly modern use of movement, finally, also addresses
both the audience’s conscious and unconscious perception. There is hardly any
image which does not move in more than one way: there are plenty of zooms and
pans; roll transitions; split screens with different, moving information; and text
either appearing whole or letter by letter, or moving around. The main movement,
however, is not a classical one – a pan or tilt – which would create the off-screen
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space as Branigan understands it; 43 the two major directions of movement are the
ones moving into and out of the picture, the overlapping and translucent overlays
between scenes, which are made possible by computer animation. Most importantly, the whole commercial is framed by a movement as if towards the source in the
beginning and by a movement back outside to ‘the whole picture’ at the end (Images 7-10). This is in accordance with the commercial’s self-reflexivity; such an
intratextual quotation, more precisely: ‘iconic self-reference’ 44 also ‘intentionally
reveals (by showing or hinting at) the enunciative apparatus of the film itself’. 45
Nevertheless, it also brings across in a very indirect way Open Journalism’s call for
audience participation, selected details of which The Guardian depicts.
Image 7 46
Image 8 47
10
Visualising the Point of (View of) Storytelling
Image 9 48
Image 10 49
5. Two Commercials – Different Points
At first sight, the two video commercials are very similar, yet the analysis
shows that while ‘Points of View’ is designed to classically manipulate only,
‘Three Little Pigs’ works in two possible and opposed ways, depending of the
degree of the audience’s awareness of the self-reflexive mechanisms. ‘Points of
View’ very much claims working through reasoned, logical and instructive argumentation; in fact however, it is based on simplified and cheated arguments which
address more the audience’s identification instead of truly visualising what the
narrative claims to be doing. ‘Three Little Pigs’, on the other hand, uses accurately
composed visual and aural POVs as real metaphors, which are overwhelming and
obvious at the same time. That way it brings across the commercial message in any
case, and its storytelling furthermore appears truthful and congruent. Concerning
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the intermediality it can be seen that even though in both commercials the form
discusses the commercial’s own construction, it makes a difference whether it in
fact leads away to a different medium (as in ‘Points of View’) or whether – as in
‘Three Little Pigs’ its experimentation with POV allows for a true comparison and
examination of storytelling mechanisms in general (as well as in the commercial in
question). This difference between the two commercials is most evident in their
direct discussion of POV: ‘the whole picture’ in ‘Points of View’ is just one, manipulated choice and thus constitutes a problematic simplification: the amount of
information in any picture is always relative to what is shown – even a wide perspective omits something, and its greater distance means that some things are
shown less clearly. ‘Three Little Pigs’, however, truly describes the filmic POV –
that several bits of information from different perspectives need to work together. 50
The comparison between the two commercials not only shows clearly that even
truthful self-reflection may work in advertisement and how. Self-reflexivity, according to Wolf, need not necessarily be serious and rational, self-critical, or distanced; if it is presented playfully and entertaining, it can make the audience lose
distance to the text and encourage their engagement with it. 51 The point of ‘Points
of View’ is to advertise only, but that of ‘Three Little Pigs’ is to also entertain as a
product of art which – mostly like journalism, but unlike commercials – is consumed voluntarily. 52 Self-reflexivity can in itself draw attention, and thus, even if
the commercial message is not as strong, the vast number of views compensates.
According to Guardian News and Media, the Open Journalism campaign made up
for its print paper decline by growing ‘its online audience 38% to 67.8 million
unique browsers year on year’.53 David Pemsel has already announced: ‘The next
version of this will invite people to do something with our content. The metrics
will be even tougher then. We want to see them change …’ 54 This rapidly growing
acceptance of video commercials 55 is bound to encourage more research on the
carefully constructed works of ‘commercial artists’ 56 which would provide plenty
of material for close analysis. 57 Just like those of ‘Three Little Pigs’, further new
forms of storytelling might tell a lot about the mechanisms even of conventional
narration; such research could point towards how concepts like POV need to be
adapted to a world of ever-transforming and increasingly overlapped ways of media communication with their own, changing notions of (the representation of) time
and space.
Notes
12
1
Visualising the Point of (View of) Storytelling
Ann-Christine Diaz, ‘For U.K.’s Guardian, What’s Next After “Three Little
Pigs”? Lauded Push Supporting “Open Journalism” Will Move on to Invite Community Involvement’, Advertising Age, 4 March 2012,
<http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/u-k-s-guardian-pigs/235275/ >.
2
Cf. Diaz, ‘What’s Next After “Three Little Pigs”?’.
3
‘Points of View’, Online, Art Director John Webster, Director Paul Weiland, The
Paul Weiland Film Company, UK: 1986, <http:// campaignlive.co.uk/thework/907755/ >, 00:00:18; ‘Three Little Pigs’, Online, Art Director
Matt Fitch, BBH, Director Ringan Ledwidge, Rattling Stic, UK: 2012,
<http://.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2012/feb/29/open-journalism-three-little-pigsadvert>, 00:01:56. ‘Points of View’ takes up the theory more indirectly.
4
Werner Wolf, ‘Metareference across Media: The Concept, its Transmedial Potentials and Problems, Main Forms and Functions’, in Metareference across Media.
Theory and Case Studies, ed. W. Wolf in collaboration with Katharina Bantleon
and Jeff Thoss (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), 1-85, 65.
5
Christina Slade, ‘Reasons to Buy: The Logic of Advertisements’, Argumentation,
16.2 (2002): 157-178, 157; cf. Winfried Nöth, ‘Self-Reference in the Media: The
Semiotic Framework’, in Self-Reference in the Media, ed. Winfried Nöth and Nina
Bishara (Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2007), 3-30, 13, 18; cf. Nina
Bishara, ‘Selbstreferenz in der Werbung: Opake Text- und Bildgestaltung’, in
Textdesign und Textwirkung in der massenmedialen Kommunikation, ed. Kersten
Sven Roth and Jürgen Spitzmüller (Konstanz: UVK Verlangsgesellschaft, 2007),
125-142, [‘Self-reference in Advertising: Opaque Composition of Text and Image’,
in Design and Effects of Texts for Mass Media Communication], 127.
6
Lara O’Reilly, ‘Guardian digital strategy “offsets” print fall’, Marketing Week
Online, 17 July 2012, <http://www.marketingweek.co.uk/news/guardian-digitalstrategy-offsets-print-fall/4002791.article>.
7
Cf. e.g. Werner Wolf, ‘Formen literarischer Selbstbezüglichkeit in der
Erzählkunst: Versuch einer Typologie und ein Exkurs zur “mise en cadre” und
“mise en reflet/série”’, in Erzählen und Erzähltheorie im 20. Jahrhundert: Festschrift für Wilhelm Füger, ed. Jörg Helbig (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2001), 49-84, [‘Forms of Literary Self-reference in Narration: Attempt at a
Typology plus an Excursus concerning “mise en cadre” and “mise en reflet/série”’,
in Narration and Narratology in the 20th Century: Festschrift for Wilhelm Füger],
49.
8
Cf. Nöth, ‘Self-reference in the Media’, 15.
9
Wolf, ‘Metareference across Media’, 31.
10
Ibid.
11
Nöth, ‘Self-reference in the Media’, 18.
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12
13
Wolf, ‘Metareference across Media’, 31.
Marina Grišakova, ‘Intermedial Metarepresentations’, in Intermediality and
Storytelling, ed. Marina Grišakova and Marie-Laure Ryan (Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), 312-331, 313-4; Limoges also uses self-reflexivity in the
way Wolf understands metareference, cf. Jean-Marc Limoges, ‘The Gradable Effects of Self-Reflexivity on Aesthetic Illusion in Cinema’, in Metareference across
Media: Theory and Case Studies, ed. Werner Wolf in collaboration with Katharina
Bantleon and Jeff Thoss (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009), 391-407, 392-3.
14
Cf. Wolf, ‘Metareference across Media’, 15-6.
15
Cf. Nöth, ‘Self-reference in the Media’, 13.
16
Siegfried J. Schmidt, ‘Modes of self-reference in advertising’, in Self-Reference
in the Media, ed. Winfried Nöth and Nina Bishara (Berlin/New York: Mouton de
Gruyter, 2007), 47-60, 49-50.
17
Schmidt, ‘Modes of self-reference’, 49-50.
18
V.I. Pudovkin, Film Technique, trans. Ivor Mantagu (London: George Newnes,
1933), 66.
19
This is at least the case in ‘classical editing’, cf. e.g. David Bordwell, Narration
in the Fiction Film (Madison, WI: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 163.
20
Cf. Edward Branigan, Point of View in the Cinema: A Theory of Narration and
Subjectivity in Classical Film (Berlin/New York/Amsterdam: Mouton, 1984), 73;
this shows that perspective and angle are interconnected with other parameters
such as shot size.
21
Bordwell, Narration in the Fiction Film, 161.
22
Branigan, Point of View, 105.
23
‘Points of View’, 00:00:00 – 00:00:21.
24
Ibid., 00:00:10.
25
Ibid., 00:00:17.
26
Ibid., 00:00:24.
27
Ibid., 00:00:28.
28
Cf. Nicola Berger, Was sagt Clementine zur lila Kuh? Fernsehwerbung analysieren und interpretieren (Duisburg: UVRR, 2008), [What does
Clementine Tell the Purple Cow? Analysing and Interpreting Television Commercials], 45, 47.
29
Bishara, ‘Self-reference in Advertising’, 126; cf. Berger 61.
30
Cf. Pudovkin, Film Technique, 41.
31
‘Three Little Pigs’, 00:01:20 – 00:01:33.
32
Diaz, ‘What’s Next After “Three Little Pigs”?’.
13
14
Visualising the Point of (View of) Storytelling
33
The number of cuts is 89, not counting split screens and texts popping up.
‘Three Little Pigs’, 00:00:55.
35
That is without counting microphones and demonstration banners.
36
Thereby POV is more introduced as abstract concept of opinions than spatial
positions.
37
Diaz, ‘What’s Next After “Three Little Pigs”?’.
38
Nöth, ‘Self-reference in the Media’, 3.
39
Ibid., 23.
40
Diaz, ‘What’s Next After “Three Little Pigs”?’.
41
‘Three Little Pigs’, 00:00:36.
42
Cf. Berger, What does Clementine Tell, 48-59.
43
Cf. Branigan, Point of View, 103.
44
Nöth, ‘Self-reference in the Media’, 21.
45
Limoges, ‘Effects of Self-Reflexivity’, 392.
46
‘Three Little Pigs’, 00:01:52.
47
Ibid., 00:01:52.
48
Ibid., 00:01:53.
49
Ibid., 00:01:56.
50
Cf. Branigan, Point of View, 103.
51
Cf. Wolf, ‘Self-reference in Narration’, 79-80. In any case, self-reflexivity tends
to increase the audience’s attention for the commercial, cf. Bishara, ‘Self-reference
in Advertising’, 140.
52
Cf. Bishara, ‘Self-reference in Advertising’, 125.
53
O’Reilly, ‘Guardian digital strategy’.
54
Diaz, ‘What’s Next After “Three Little Pigs”?’.
55
Cf. Slade, ‘Reasons to Buy’, 162.
56
Nöth, ‘Self-reference in the Media’, 3.
57
Cf. Schmidt, ‘Modes of self-reference’, 49.
34
References
Videos
‘Points of View’, Online. Art Director John Webster, Director Paul Weiland, The
Paul Weiland Film Company, UK: 1986. <http:// campaignlive.co.uk/thework/907755/ >.
‘Three Little Pigs’, Online. Art Director Matt Fitch, BBH, Director Ringan Ledwidge, Rattling Stic, UK: 2012.
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15
<http://.guardian.co.uk/media/video/2012/feb/29/open-journalism-three-little-pigsadvert>.
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Lena Möller completed her BA in Theatre and Media Studies and English and
American Studies in Germany. Early on she was interested in POV theory, which
she also looked at in her Master’s dissertation (2012) as part of the film specific
time and space structures (MSc of Research in Film Studies, The University of
Edinburgh).