Suggestion: Bad Bad Acting

I have a trope image suggestion for the Bad "Bad Acting" trope with this image◊ that I have cropped myself (from Suite Pretty Cure ♪ episode 19, video clip here for reference).

I think this an excellent illustration of the trope because as the trope article itself states, "In Hollywood, bad acting can only come in two flavors: Large Ham; and this trope. Stilted, wooden, or monotone." Hibiki (on the far right) certainly shows the stilted and wooden part compared to Kanade just to her left (with an Oh, Crap! face and Alertness Blink for good measure). The subtitles also give the implication of how blatantly bad the acting is on top of doing their normal job. Kanade even berates Hibiki for it which is also visually clear from the way she is leaning forward towards Hibiki in the second part.

If the image does get accepted/approved, I also suggest having the caption read "That Mentor Mascot is actually an imposter, and she kidnapped the real one." to give some situational clarity to the image (assuming you approve this image at all). We can always edit/resize the image as needed, and I already know that it's too large as it is now. The reason is that I wanted you to see everything in detail to make passing judgement a bit easier.

That pic will need some cropping to work.

I know it will need more cropping, but I'm looking for approval that this will make an appropriate image before I do any more work on it.

Ok, I have recropped and resized the image as best and as comfortably as I could. Here is the new version◊. The new dimensions are 334 x 428 (down from 520 x 610).

edited 6th Sep '13 5:27:27 PM by aNinjaWithAIDS

Could you please save the screenshots PNGs instead? I'm seeing further quality degradation with each version.

I noticed that too, and thanks for the tip. I wasn't aware of the difference between png and jpeg. Sure, I'll redo it.

HUGE Difference. PNGs compress without loosing quality, while JPGs degrade every time you save. Avoid saving as JPGs at all costs when you can.

Ok, I've redone the whole process from scratch to eliminate the problem with the JPE Gs. The new image is here◊ (new dimensions are 303 x 386), and I have destroyed the other links along with their respective JPE Gs (it's my dropbox so no hackusations, please).

That's decent enough that I'll give it a ...but would it be possible to rebuild it at 350 px so the facial features in the first panel are a little more clear?

I hate to be a wet blanket, but I'm not seeing "acting" in anything except the subtitles.

Yes◊, and you are very welcome. The new dimensions are 350 x 445, and the old link has been destroyed.

@Madrugada, refer to the first post in this thread. Bad "Bad Acting" is about comming across as stiff and unnatural, which Hibiki certainly looks the part in contrast to Kanade. Now, why do you think Kanade has the Alertness Blink and the Oh, Crap! face? She knows that Hibiki will blow their cover with bad acting! Plus, when you suspect someone, you certainly do not want to hint your suspect into knowing that you have doubts about him/her if he/she doesn't already know.

Bad "Bad Acting" is "characters try to act and do a horrible job at it". I don't see the "is trying to act and doing a horrible job of it" in that image. All the rest of your explanation requires a high level of knowledge of the work the image is from. I don't see anyone that the one girl is trying to act for. There's no one there for her to be trying to convince.

edited 6th Sep '13 8:36:03 PM by Madrugada

This is where my suggested caption comes into play, "That Mentor Mascot is actually an imposter, and she kidnapped the real one." Simple, concise, no long winded explaination needed; but for you, I'll spell it out some more: They are covering for the real Mentor Mascot! As in, they are trying to rescue her.

edited 6th Sep '13 8:45:15 PM by aNinjaWithAIDS

But I don't know which one is the Mentor Mascot. I can't tell from the image which one is supposed to be the one doing the Bad "Bad Acting". It's all in the subtitles that it's even happening.

Read up on what a Mentor Mascot is or what they typically appear to be. Ask anyone else in this thread who apparently agrees with the picture's logic. Simply pay attention to the picture and look at its details, look at the body language.

It's the girl's face in the first panel that sells it for me, she's got that wide/weird-eyed OMG-I'm-having-to-fake-this-on-the-fly thing going on.

If someone's got a better suggestion, we can certainly entertain it, but for right now this is better than nothing for me.

Point one: someone reading a wiki page should not have to go read another one first for the image to make sense.

Point two: You are familiar with the work. You know who the characters are, and what the situation in the image is. I am not familiar with the work, and all I see in the image is two girls standing in a hallway.

Explaining it to me over and over again does not make it a good image. It is still an image that I (and a lot of other people who are also unfamiliar with that particular work) need a detailed explanation of to see how it's an example of the trope.

Do you see the cat in the lower left-hand side of the first panel? Does the word "Mascot" register in your vocabulary at all?

If your answer to both questions is yes, then I have fulfilled your doubts and I have proven that you were not looking at the whole picture.

I'm with Maddy on this one. I don't see it. I see someone who's surprised, and someone who's surprised that the first girl is surprised. Or something. It doesn't show acting at all. Or trying to. It says so in the subtitles. Sort of. And I don't really understand what the mascot has to do with it in the first place. It's actually an imposter? What does that even explain?

It's just confusing to me, and of pullable quality.

edited 6th Sep '13 10:06:12 PM by AnotherDuck

And I think that someone isn't thinking this all the way through.

1. The imposter/kidnapping part: This is a no brainer...THE REAL ONE IS MISSING!

2. The bad acting: The two girls are acting to gather information (hence the question). Yet, it should be clear by the redhead's board-stiff body and wide mouth that she's speaking the line and inadvertanly hinting the imposter that they are onto the imposter, which is a common-sense mistake thus Bad Acting the way the trope is defined. Think about this too: looking stiff and nervous makes for perfectly natural acting!

3. The "surprise": I've said before that the Alertness Blink is really a sign of that particular person's Oh, Crap! (this should also be clear at glance). She knows that their cover may get blown if the charade continues. This is also why I left that second panel in, she is berating the bad actor (thus adding to the image's value)! This is also clear because she's forcefully leaning towards said bad actor.

4. Just because you have to think about a picture doesn't mean it's Just A Face And A Caption. Look for the subtle clues that are in there. Sadly, I had to explain said clues because you're simply not looking and thinking. I specifically chose the caption to fill in context and add another clue. We can all play the ignorance card in regards to Image Picking, but if that flew, we would lose many clever trope images that way.

5. The quality: Ok, I can't really argue there, but it's not so bad that its unreadable and making the clues difficult to spot.

Nope, I'm with Maddy and the Duck here. If anything, this picture leaves way too many questions to anyone unfamiliar with the work like to be a good illustration.

edited 7th Sep '13 3:04:33 PM by Elbruno

So, in other words, From a Certain Point of View it illustrates the trope? Point is, if there are several interpretations of an image, and there's no obvious one that illustrates it, it's not a good image.

You're not going to win any arguments by insulting the intelligence of people who disagree with you. If you have to resort to Ad Hominem, I can simply conclude you don't have an argument that's going to convince me it's a working image.

Yes, we can lose clever images if we absolutely have to be completely and utterly obvious about how it illustrates the trope. However, this is not a clever image.

By the way, by "quality" in that context I meant as far as an image illustrating a trope goes, not technical quality.

I agree with @17, but it will need a caption to explain well.

@Another Duck I'm sorry if my arguement came across as Ad Hominem, but it really did seem like to me that you weren't looking at the whole picture and thinking (or thinking too hard) about the clues; that's where I believed your confusion came from. However, there isn't anything about the image that's Metaphorically True as you suggest because at least 2 other people in this thread can see and recognize this image as Bad "Bad Acting", and thus is not really a case of Fan Myopia as you may have suspected.

The clues are all concrete and clear; they just need a little more thought and attention, but they aren't that distracting from the trope's main offender in the image. If you are really trying to argue that my image does not demonstrate the trope, then ask yourself this: "What part of the image makes no sense according to the trope's definition and the situation the image (and caption) presents itself?"

Try thinking about it like this: hold the image next to the trope's article as you are reading it. Go back and forth between the definition and the image as if the it has already been pasted onto the article and think about my suggested caption, which I had thought up because I knew that part of the context would be necessary in understanding the image (as in I know that everyone has not seen this show).