For my third visual assignment, I decided to do Rainbow Showcase.

I’ve acquired quite the collection of screen shots from episodes of The Wire, since I’ve been writing a blog post for each episode, so I thought it would be fun to sift through them all and assemble a rainbow of colors. The screen shots are pulled from Season 1, Episode 10 through Season 2, Episode 9.

RED

D’Angelo has been see around a lot of red through the episodes, especially toward the end of his existence.

ORANGE

I still find it very interesting that Wallace and D’Angelo were both wearing orange in an episode that ended with Wallace being killed and D’Angelo being arrested. Orange has been an important color throughout the series, showing up in the pit during season 1 and on the docks in season 2.

YELLOW

Here is the yellow truck used to carry cargo away and be resold and used to make drugs. There’s also red and orange in this picture, which is very warm and bright against the drab, wintery surroundings.

GREEN

The green road signs really stand out here. Normally, this color appears as grass or trees or some other sign of life, but it is winter, so the sign is the little bit of green left.

BLUE

The blue clothes really stand out against the lighter background colors in this stained glass. Blue has been everywhere in the show, but being the color of police uniforms, seems like the most important meaning.

INDIGO/VIOLET

Nick’s daughter is wearing a purple coat, which stands out against the more neutral colors her parents are wearing. This may be the only time purple has not appeared in cohesion with yellow or red.

For my second visual assignment for the week, I decided to do the Rainbow Showcase assignment. I was originally planning on using one of the episodes of The Wire that we have to watch, but the assignment said that I should use my favorite show, so I decided that Doctor Who would be more fun. I watched an episode from season 7 of Doctor Who called “Journey to the Center of the Tardis” and took screen shots while I watched it as appropriate colors came up.

This assignment was a lot of fun, but it also made me pay a lot of attention to different colored lighting used for different emotions and scenes, and what the colors in general were trying to convey.

“Don’t ever get into a space ship with a mad man. Didn’t anyone ever teach you that?”

I decided to use the Rainbow visual assignment to highlight the colors in the Wire. The point was to take clips from a show or movie that highlights the colors of the rainbow and string them together. This has been done before with the “Rainbow Port” post, but I decided to focus on episode 7 because it had a lot of color all over it. Many colors were discussed at the beginning of the episode in the flower shop when figuring out what flowers to buy for D’Angelo’s funeral. The docks have a ton of color, which is where I pulled the orange and red from, but I also wanted to get some colors from the street, which is where I found the green tennis ball and yellow signage. The blue represents the dock workers who always seem to be wearing some shade of blue and I actually had a photo of Nick wearing blue before I saw the scene with all of the dock workers at the house of the injured man.

The coloring in this episode was also juxtaposed with the darkness of the cops clothing, as well as the funeral and graveyard scenes where everyone is wearing black.

Colors are so telling in this show and seem to designate certain aspects to groups or settings and they are definitely something to pay attention to. With how dark the show is, the colors are important as a contrast and would not be provided by Simon if they were not important.

I took screenshots of episode 7 when I found a striking color and eventually had the whole rainbow. I took screenshots and looped them together by taking one large screenshot on my computer screen. I simply uploaded to flickr, twitter and the hub through Known and was ready to go! It’s definitely a new style rainbow with a disturbing twist, but it is nice to pay attention to color in such a dark show.

“A picture is worth a thousand words.” I wanted to do this Visual Asssignment, because it’s a fun and funny assignment to do. Plus when The Wire started it’s second season, I saw tons of comparable pictures to this assignment of making a rainbow. Here below are what I thought:

Red:

When the first episode of Season 2 started and later on it came to Bodie going to the car which is the color red, I was thinking “Why is the color red?”. The reason why I thought of the question to myself is that look at the other cars that the Barksdale organization drive, it’s mostly the color black or white. It’s interesting that Bodie’s driving the car with the color red. I assume like it’s a new season so they want to start new things.

Orange:

I find it usual that these type of workers use their orange color vest when working like below of Nick and Frank wearing their orange color vest. Like I said before, it’s a new season so the crew wants to start new things. The first season we haven’t seen usually workers wearing their orange vests that much as it’s showing in the first episode of the second season.

Yellow:

You know I’m going to be honest here, this particular scene is my favorite scene. Coming back to your usual workplace and meeting with old and best friends. The color Yellow is shown during this scene such as on McNultys collar and the sign that says “I love City”. Especially the police picture on McNultys jacket, part of it is yellow.

Green:

At the Funeral place where Stringer and his crew are doing the business, I wasn’t surprised how the green flowers were there. I mean it’s a funeral place, so of course there would be flowers there. The flowers are green so I wanted this particular scene to correspond to this assignment part of it with the color green of rainbow. I remember in the last episode of Season 1 at the funeral place, I don’t remember any flowers showing during the scene.

Blue:

This opening scene where McNulty and his boss I thought was interesting because McNulty talks about where his father used to work in the factory that they showed and his boss was saying he as well had someone that worked in that factory. McNulty and his boss are wearing their jackets since it’s cold but it’s the color blue. Especially the ocean and sky is blue which all of these links to this assignment of being the color blue of the rainbow.

Violet/Purple:

It was funny and surprising how in this episode, I found the color purple with Daniels wearing his tie which is the color purple. I’m pretty sure this is the only time in this episode where purple is being shown. I thought this was a good one to show because Daniels he isn’t that much of a rainbow type of guy. This scene with him wearing purple connects back to part of the assignment with the purple of rainbow.

For the finale of the first season of The Wire, I decided to make my own creative assignment here. One thing i noticed while watching this amazing episode was the wide variety of color use throughout the various scenes. Actually, if one looks closely, one can see important use of all the colors of the rainbow.

Red:

This episode shows us that the Barksdale organization includes more family than we previously knew. Brianna Barksdale, D’Angelo’s mother, discusses important matters with leaders Avon Barksdale and Stringer Bell. Seems that she maintains some authority and power of her own.
Orange:

These two images highlighting D’Angelo and Wee-bey in their jail i=uniforms also illustrates another contrast. The look of remorse on D’Angelo as he talks about Wallace, and the look of cold indifference as Wee-bey describes his various murders. Two characters with two very different moral compasses in the same situation.

Yellow:

This one is a bit of a stretch, but I couldn’t help but adore the lighting in this scene, and the soft golden glow that results. Here Lt. Daniels confronts Carver on his spying, and gives him a lesson on his future in the police force.

Green:

This scene shows a lot of greens, from the background to the bench, to even the money. The beautiful emerald park was a scene to symbolize Bubble’s path to staying clean from drugs. However, the dirty green of the money sadly illustrates that in the end, temptation and addiction won over.

Blue:

The blues of the water, uniforms, and boat as McNulty is “exiled” to the marine unit of the police.

Purple:

The purple signs of the funeral home that are to be the new home base for the Barksdale organization. Here again we can also see the sharp red of Brianna’s dress.

Bonus- Black and White:

Not really “colors” per se, but I like how much Avon and Stringer stand out in their white clothes in the darkness of the parking garage.