I watched the Michael Mann neo-noir classic Collateral last night. I was thinking about the idea of noir characters, and how this film shows a great example of the Innocent Bystander, a cab driver, a man with a plan, whose life is turned upside down by a random fare.

This segment, starting at 1:23 of the video, struck me as a metaphor for customizing our blog spaces: Taking the standard ride, seeing how the controls work, closing the door to focus, and adding the personal touches. As Jim put it:

Figuring out how to design the space wherein you live, work, and learn remains crucial and remains at the core of the ds106 experience.

How’s that for an unexpected coincidence?

I also wanted to do a visual or design assignment using the film. I told myself I would go to the fifth page of assignments and do one I found there. I was taken with the initial cab ride scene with Jamie Foxx and Jada Pinkett Smith and thought it would be good for the Storytelling Collage assignment. Pinkett Smith does an impressive job of communicating with eyes and expressions, so I tried to capture some of that. Here are the shots I used:

1. She tells him how to do his job
2. He suggests a better route
3. She barely gives him attention as she responds. The plexiglas partition is a concrete symbol of the divide between them
4. But she thinks about it. Note that she’s no longer behind the partition.
5. Exterior view of the tangle of roadways
6. There’s a seriousness and depth about him that she finds attractive
7. Another exterior, would not be out of place in a tech noir film
8. There’s an openness and connection between them – closer together horizontally and also depth-wise. Note how the background is completely out of focus, All that matters is the tow of them.
9. Love this shot, with the noir feel of shadow and light and the symbolism of the green light ahead of him and the red light behind

And here is the collage:

I was thinking of it in terms of a page from a graphic novel, so the layout is a little more formal than the average collage. I pondered cropping images, but the director and cinematographer had them framed so perfectly that I thought it better to use them as is. I did try to use the arrangement to show them coming closer together.

Fortunately for me the scene was on Youtube. I used yt-dlp to download the video. At first the command didn’t work, so I looked up some directions.  They weren’t exactly what I needed, but they gave me the idea to put single quotes around the video URL, and that did the trick. I imported the video into iMovie and selected about twenty frames from the scene. Then I used PowerPoint as a canvas to arrange the stills, and exported the final arrangement as a JPG.

I think it works. I’m not sure if it says collage, but it conveys a version of the story. I’m not sure if the decision not to crop was the right one. I could have been more creative and expressive with design and arrangement otherwise, so perhaps I will consider revising it later. It was worthwhile though to give the scene a close reading and look at how the shots work internally and in combination.