Back Ground Information
“An Inconvenient Truth is a 2006 documentary film directed by Davis Guggenheim about former United States Vice President Al Gore's campaign to educate citizens about global warming via a comprehensive slide show that, by his own estimate, he has given more than a thousand times.”
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Inconvenient_Truth)
An inconvenient truth, as you can clearly see from the DVD cover, is a documentary aimed to inform the viewers about global warming. It can therefore, be put in the mode of an expository documentary as it has an informative and educational purpose.
This DVD cover sends out a very strong message, from top to bottom showing a lot of detail as it is a long shot. At the very top of the cover is the name title name of the film, ‘An inconvenient truth’. The title is at the very top in a bold font to make sure it stands out. The word ‘inconvenient’ is written in a different colour compared to the rest of the title, a colour most visible from far distances to the human eye than any other colour, red. This makes the cover more eye catching, towards a customer and merely impossible to miss. It emphasises the word ‘inconvenient’ and also states the importance of the word so that when the title is read, the viewer can clearly understand that this film is going to be about a discomforting topic but the word truth makes sure the viewer knows that it is a fact, the colour red also signifies danger and in this case maybe over heat.
Just below the title is a sort of sub heading, ‘A GLOBAL WARNING’. This is being a bit playful with the words as even though the ‘a global warning’ is written the very first thing that comes to the audience mind is global warming as the words are very similar. This gives the audience a clear idea of the topic of the film. The way ‘warning’ is written is unique and different to the other type of text around it, this is done so that it stands out, again there is the use of the colour red which signifies danger. These words, ‘inconvenient’ and ‘warning’, leave more of an impact on the audience as they are very pessimistic which is giving a good hint and idea to the audience about how this film is.
The main and largest part of the DVD cover is the image of a dark and gloomy factory polluting out into the blue beautiful sky however, instead of smoke being released, I believe, they show a hurricane/tornado as seen from space. It is a very powerful computer generated image and sends out a very clear message to the audience. The clear message the audience get in their minds is ‘we aren’t just polluting, we are causing all these hurricanes and other natural disasters. They show the factory to be very dark and dull to as if signify it is evil, the dark side. There is also more editing on the DVD cover as the top and bottom of the image turn black, the impact this has on the audience is that it makes the main focus in the middle of the image which in this case is the main part. The image of the factory has been cropped on the left and right, only keeping the main part of the factory and getting rid of the rest.
There is another version of the same image (on the left) however, instead of the sky being showed blue it is shown as grey and gloomy. This image was used for cinema purposes and shows that all this pollution is destroying our world and turning it grey and gloomy. Another reason it may have been done is because a large poster in the cinema is hard to miss no matter what the colours used are however, the colour blue was probably used for the DVD cover to make it more eye catching and attractive for the audience.
It doesn't matter whether you're a Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative....your mind will be changed in a nanosecond - Roger Friedman.
“Roger Friedman is an American entertainment news journalist. Friedman created and wrote the FOX411 news column on Foxnews.com for 10 years. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Showbiz 411, an entertainment news column. “
This is a powerful quote from a very experienced journalist working for a very popular news channel, for anyone who picks up the DVD and reads that quote it would be very convincing to encourage them to buy/rent the DVD. The person who reads the quote may not have heard of the journalist himself however, due to the fact Fox News is a very popular news channel they are likely to believe that quote.
