MAT 150 - Flash 1

I thought it would be interesting to look at and discuss a movie created for the business-to-business market, especially in comparison with the Gangs of New York promo Karl showed us last week, which was created for the business-to-consumer market. InQuira in a Flash is a movie that introduces InQuira, a company that makes natural language software to improve the effectiveness of call centers (the people who answer your calls or emails when you inquire about a product or have a complaint).

You might think that this piece, which is extremely simple, using primary colors and flat clipart figures, has nothing in common with the Gangs of New York piece. But both movies aim to create desire--desire to see more. In the one case, the Flash team is trying to make us want to go see the film; in the other case, the team is trying to make us want to contact InQuira for more information.

But, what these two Flash movies must do to achieve similar aims is quite different:

• Gangs of New York creates desire primarily by evoking emotion--the vivid images, the fire, the color, etc. Understanding is secondary. While there are lots of fun features for exploring the characters, history and topography of the story, we don't have to understand any of that to want to see the film. They are supportive secondary features, and therefore the Flash team has put them at lower levels of the site's architecture.


• InQuira in a Flash creates desire primarily by helping viewers understand. It does this through sparse, carefully orchestrated visual/verbal explanations. It uses emotion too, but in a subtle way: the simple graphics on white background create a feeling of simplicity and ease, which suggests "the problems you're having with your call center are solved."

My comments on this movie revolve around this tension and balance (or lack of it) between understanding and emotion.

I think InQuira in a Flash does a great job of clearly conveying just the essential information necessary for understanding. Notice, for example, how we learn exactly what they do in the first 20 seconds. Watch how they begin with the familiar and specific, then gradually guide us to new content and abstract ideas. I'll talk a bit about this in class.

But I think the decision to play so little with our emotions was a mistake. They don't make us care enough. And the look and feel of this movie is too clean for subject matter that involves the messiness of people the way a call center does. The piece would have had much more impact, in my view, if they had used some images of real customers, people like us we could relate to, at least initially and perhaps occasionally throughout. They could have then transitioned to or layered on the icons representing customer in the diagrams. In fact, the ideal, in my opinion, would be to use images and sound to convey some of the human messiness and confusion of the real world (people calling in with problems, etc.), and use the graphics to suggest that the InQuira product takes it all in and handles it with a call center process that makes everything simple and clear (overall feeling kind of like a Jedi warrior passing his hand in front of our face, changing our perception).

I'll bring another business-to-business Flash movie to class, one that uses images to convey information in a similar way as the InQuira one. While this movie has plenty of its own problems, it has, I think, more emotional impact. I'll be interested to hear what you guys think.

See ya Tues.

P.S. If you think this business-to-business stuff is boring, consider that there is a very small number of films released every year, but an enormous number of businesses (including small startups and nonprofits) trying to convey their messages and sell their services and wares. There is a HUGE opportunity to help them, especially now that we are going through a market transition which is making Flash animation--formerly practical only for a handful of large, wealthy enterprises--feasible for nearly any business.