"Fight Club" vs. "Pulp Fiction"

In "Pulp Fiction in Typography" the words come at their own speed- they don't wait for the reader/viewer to catch up, and don't stop or slow down for easier comprehension. They overpower the processing ability of the brain. If you haven't seen the film or don't remember the scene, then the animation is not going to allow you to catch all the dialogue- you won't know all of what is being said, so you will always be a step or two behind the characters delivering it. But you should get the gist easily.

Jule's (Samuel L. Jackson's character in the film) dialogue is bigger than Brett's. It remains on screen until new words move the piece along, literally. Brett's feeble whining and protestation fades in and fades out- he's not powerful, nor is he going to last, literally. It's not until he screams in pain that his dialogue takes upon any quality of permanence or force- the paint-splatter font suggests pain, messy and confusing.

The animation discussed above differs greatly from the little piece "8 Rules of Fight Club in Kinetic Typography" in one major detail- you don't miss any of what is being said, not until the crowd speaks. The text on screen details all of the dialogue easily. Unlike the earlier animation, the "Fight Club" piece would allow you to view it without sound or prior knowledge of the film, and you would still understand most of what is being said. The "Pulp Fiction" piece depends heavily upon the audio track and familiarity with the film and the specific scene in order for the animation to not run right past the viewer.

Another important distinction is that the title of the "Fight Club" piece gives the viewer enough of a context to understand what is being detailed therein- rules conduct in the club. The "Pulp Fiction" piece has no context for someone who hasn't seen the movie or is foggy on the scene.

Both pieces do lose some of their impact without the audio track. Without the audio track, you wouldn't know that Tyler Durdin is giving the speech to a crowd of about to be combatants, and you wouldn't know that Brett got shot. You'd see that he was screaming, but you wouldn't know why, exactly.

Both pieces use their own little tricks to grab the viewer and/or convey the meaning of the text. Brett's weak and impermanent dialogue is one example, as is Jule's big bad font. "fight Club" puts the word "Over" on top of the word fight when the rules state that a fight should end and uses text already on the screen to continue the flow- the words "Fight Club", left on the screen from a prior sentence, glow red again as a way of catching the viewer's eye with something new and to speed things along.

Both pieces use larger fonts to emphasize what is being said and to deliver the same impact that the actor's voice is used for in the film. "Club" keeps all the dialogue on screen at once, though, so it is easily read, whereas "Fiction" uses typefaces so big that sometimes only two letters at a time are visible on the screen. Both use the same tricks, but to different degrees, leading to different levels of dependence on reader knowledge of the scene.

I'd like to use the "Club" tricks to keep the viewer interested, and keep the text small enough so that sentences stay on the screen long enough to be read. This is necessary becasue no audio will be used for the next assignment.