The Woman of Juarez

             Femicide is the mass murder of women simply because they are women. It is the term that has been coined as a response to the many murders of women in Juarez.  For more than a decade, the city of Juarez, near the U.S Mexico border, has been a killing field for young women. Today, it is the site of nearly 300 unsolved murders and many more abductions. Despite the horrific nature of these crimes, authorities at all levels exhibit indifference; there is strong evidence that some officials may be involved in the crimes. Impunity and corruption has permitted the criminals to continue committing these acts with utter disregard for the consequences.

My awareness campaign was inspired by this tragic series of occurrences. I tried to create a collage of images that would have a powerful effect on the relevant (target) audience. Not many people know about the murders in Juarez, for this reason I included some basic information as well as the main slogan of the campaign, “Stop the Femicides.” I tried to overlay strong images that would capture the main point of the cause. As the main image in my poster I chose a picture of a woman, who is making incisions on her body (this is because after the women have been raped and tortured, they are vivisected and their organs are sold to the black market). Additionally, in order to better make the visceral aspects of the picture stand out, I lowered the hue/saturation and then using the paintbrush I left in color the incisions. By using the “Plastic Wrap” filter, I was able to indirectly allude to the dead bodies of the women. I wanted to achieve a final image that would show the victims and the women that are fighting for their life in Juarez.

One major challenge in creating this collage was seeking out images on the internet that matched the idea that I had already begun to construct in my head. I researched the topic and chose some images. I then planned out the poster on paper while looking at what effects I should use to edit them to get across the message. I wanted the woman to stand out from a background which showed various images representing the Femicides. One of the problems I encountered was that I needed the colors of the background images to be lighter and to stand out without being overpowered by the main image. For this reason, I made the main image black and white so that it would contrast against the other colorful images.

Visually speaking, the image is supposed to be powerful on its own but I believe that the requirement of adding typography overpowers the overall message and theme. It gives the audience too much to visually comprehend at one glance. Moreover, I had a specific aim and idea which was to make all the images flow together as a whole. While many of the photo-editing techniques that I used came from Google Photoshop tutorials, in the future I would like to establish my own style and deviate from the conventions of standard photo editing.

            Though I had some problems with getting my ideas from paper to Photoshop and figuring out the editing that would best convey my ideas, I worked with what I had and tried to learn as much as I could with the tutorials on the web along with experimenting and finding out new techniques. After various attempts with the effects I found a result that would match my ideas. I used plastic wrapping on the woman to convey the morbid idea of a dead body found in the desert, wrapped up. The black and white effect was used not only to make the figure stand out, but also to make a connection to how the authorities are indifferent to the murders of hundreds of women. After completing my poster I showed it to a couple people, the main reaction was of shock and of disgust towards the lack of indifference towards such an important issue. Moreover, they said it rose awareness on the topic that there isn’t so much knowledge about. This means that I was able to successfully get my message across with the design and collage of images in my poster. On the other hand one of my major disappointment was that I would I know I could have improved my design if I knew more about Photoshop. The online courses and information helped me but it was not enough for me to learn all the effects I could have used. With the basic knowledge I have about Photoshop I don’t think I would have done anything differently. I believe I managed to successfully across and this was my aim. Moreover, I managed to convey my ideas with images and typography and gave the audience something to think about.

The Cutting Edge

I chose to watch this movie because I was interested in hearing more about editing. Watching the movie I realized some things that I would not notice before, or give them for granted. For example, with a simple cut it is possible to bridge millions of years. A cut can show the audience past present and future in a movie and this only by choosing which scenes will show. I liked the parts when said that editing gave birth to a new art, it allowed a new kind of cinema, a new kind of movies. As the film mentions, when cuts didn’t exists the fill would continue running until the film was over. This way the audience would have to follow every second of what was happening without any changes, any transitions, anything that would surprise.  A cut can slow down time or speed it up, a timing of a cut can causes suspense or amusement and I believe this is why people like movies. I never thought about the editor being an artist, but watching the movie I realized that they don’t get to be where the movie is filmed, they do get to see the actors, or choose the setting or the lighting, all they do is mix and match parts of the movie and the final result are everyday movies that we enjoy watching.  Director Rob Cohen said “Editing is why people like movies, because in the end wouldn’t we like to edit our own lives, take out the bad parts, take out the slow parts and look deeper into the good parts”. This also made me think that an editor can help you identify the characters in the movie, for example a cut of the facial expressions or of the lighting around the character would make the audience understand where the character stands in the movie. Also I liked to hear what I have learnt while making the films for class. 200 hours of film are shot, with the editing it is then brought to a two-hour movie. I would have never said so many more shot were needed, but I learnt it on the field while making my own shot film!