EPISODE VII: BATTLE OF THE SIDEKICKS

I chose to create a fake movie poster for a Star Wars movie featuring R2D2 and a made up character, the King of the Monkey-Penguins because I feel that photo alteration is most common in the media. I tried to make something ridiculous that no one would believe is true so that the motive behind the manipulation is comical rather than harmful so I selected R2D2 as he is considered a "sideick" in the Star Wars episodes and created the fictional character, the Monkey-Penguin King. I selected three pictures to create my poster, a picture of a penguin, a monkey, and R2D2 that I combined on a gradient background to create the effect illusion that they are in space. I moved the monkey's head to the penguin's body and transformed R2D2 to be facing the Monkey-Penguin. After increasing the saturation and altering the hues of the characters to create a futuristic space effect, I smudged R2D2's light projection and cleaned up the Monkey-Penguin's stomach feathers and created a neon green and black gradient background. This manipulation is more comical than harmful and it could be considered a "spoof" on Star Wars as people would probably not believe there is an actual Episode VII involving something so out of place as a Monkey-Penguin King. In the article I chose, it discusses a picture of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie walking on a beach that was on the cover of a magazine that was a fabrciated photo, leading the public to belive something existed that did not, similar to my Star Wars poster. The article continued to discuss how photos are altered and keys clues for recognizing altered photos. As we have discussed in class and as is discussed in the article, photo manipulation in the media is exceedingly common as celebrities are often pohtoshopped to look "more attractive" than they actually do and people are taken out of the context of the actual to give the public false ideas. I incoroporated this idea in my photograph by creating a false movie poster that could potentially be printed in a magazine and give someone the idea that this movie actually exists.

Wickelgren, Ingrid. "TRUE LIES. (Cover story)." Current Science 92.4 (2006): 10-12. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 11 Nov. 2010.