Website: www.sonypictures.com/movies/identity
The website I have chosen is the official movie website to the 2003 film "Identity," directed by James Mangold, where stranded at a desolate Nevada motel during a nasty rainstorm, ten strangers become acquainted with each other when they realize that they're being killed off one by one. Throughout the film the individual characters are brought to life to the audience; their identities and depth of character come to light. The website itself is very interesting, though not especially informative. It is a flash designed site which I can only assume is there to create the atmosphere of the movie rather than informatively explain as whilst text is used through the pages it is brief, with the main focus of the website left on the visual elements. These visual elements are images taken from the movie, graphically altered and then through the use of flash broken apart into different interactive elements.
a. Whether it falls into design and/or art (and why):
My basic definition of design would be that it essentially has a job to do whilst art is more for aesthetics and tends to be there primarily for thought provoking purposes. Using this definition I rather feel that the Identity website actually comes more under art than design. Whilst the website creators would have designed the site with the purpose of projecting the films atmosphere and hopefully selling it to their audience and potential viewers of their film, the way in which they are doing this is essentially by presenting the viewer with a series of digital artworks of which the purpose is therefore to provoke a feeling and an emotional response, thus making it more artist than design-based.
The sites navigation is sometimes confusing, perhaps also because it is more art based than design based as it effectively encourages the user to navigate through in a random manner to find different sections of the site. The numbers one to ten are positioned in small font in the bottom right hand corner of the site and it is by these simple numbers that the user can move about the site. Each number is connected to a flash effect which responses each time the mouse scrolls over it; the number changes colour and a ‘blood spurt’ type of effect sprout from it. In other sections of the site a red line move over the images to highlight areas in the image which work as hyperlinks about the site. Other sections allow for different forms of interaction; at one point the mouse is used to scratch a lottery card and another to drag a tape into the tape player.
b. How it relates to other art/design forms on the web:
I believe the type of artwork style found on the website is fairly commonly used in movie websites. The concept of taking shots from the movie, turning them into stills and using them as part of the interface design to the website is not a new idea, though often very effective at expressing the mood and tone of the film via web. Definitely the use of flash in websites is making a huge appearance. This is probably due to the level of interaction which flash websites will allow with their users; they let the user become physically involved with the site through interactive elements or else entertain the user with forms of animation and effects. It is understandable that this would appeal to most people on the net as it differs from the standard basic website layout found in most and would certainly appeal to a film lover who are likely the websites primary target market.
Some of the most common forms of art and design on the web include animation, photography and graphic design all of which made an appearances in this site as photography is combined with graphic and web design then animated through flash to create the artwork for the website.
c. How it may reflect in content or style your final project.
Unfortunately I don’t believe I will be able to make use of flash in my project, having little knowledge or skill in the area to rely on. Also I actually don’t like how vague the sites navigation is despite the fact I feel it is effective at reflecting the atmosphere of the film. For my site I would like the navigation to be clearer and would probably make use of considerably more text. I would love to incorporate some form of animation, but I am not convinced it will be within my skill to do so. The style of the images however may be able to be reflected in my project, as the simplex black background juxtaposed against the scratchy, faded into the background images style artwork could be incorporated into my websites background design through the skills I have learnt in Photoshop.
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