Georgia's Blog

My thoughts on this class class changed a lot over the semester. Going into the class, I thought that this was going to be a class that would help me improve my technical writing skills in different kinds of mediums. I thought I would like it because it seemed as thought it would be a practical class for the future. When we first started the class and just did a lot of reading on different theories, I really did not like what I had gotten myself into. I honestly almost wanted to drop the class, but when I thought about it, it wasn’t a hard class–I just didn’t like the content. So, I decided to stick it out.  Then, when we had the first project, the sweded video project, and I became really confused. I could not understand what it had to do with the class. In my mind, I really could not see what this had to do with “Writing Across Media”.

But once we got to other projects, I was able to get into the class.  I started to realized that it wasn’t going to be a technical class like I had thought, but more creative. Once I got into that mindset, it was understand what this class was trying to accomplish. I really enjoyed working on the stencil project and the video project. I think the thing that I liked best about it was getting to see a variety of creative projects so often. I really enjoyed other people’s presentations and I think that this worked well for this class. I also like that we got to practice with different mediums. Although I had some practice doing video projects in the past, it was still useful to get to practice again. It was also really useful to see how my peers used media, because I think it helped to open my mind up a bit about all the different kinds of things that can be done.

I’m not sure if this class has made a huge change in the way I approach projects or writing. I think because this was a class, it was hard to break away from the mindset of formal writing. We have been taught to write a certain way for class for so many years, its hard to change that approach through one class.

When deciding on which project to do for our final project, Brian and I both made up lists of our top three choices then compared them. Theories in Place was among the top choices for both of us, so we quickly decided on that as our final project. In order to start preparing for this project, we decided that we would both need to read the assigned chapters. After completing the readings, we decided we would both come to class with ideas for what we could include into the proposal. I came to class with a rough draft version of the proposal that talked more about the theories we learned about, while Brian ended up coming to class with many examples of these theories. It couldn’t have worked out better. We then decided what ideas we would probably be using, and then combined his examples with the rough draft that I had already written.

The next thing we had to do was decide how to create our project. We knew that we wanted to use a few different types of mediums, so the challenge was to going to be how to incorporate those mediums. We knew that we were going to be using a lot of pictures because many our examples were very visual based. We decided to display them via PowerPoint, because it would be a simple but effective way of displaying the picture while we explained the example. As far as using other mediums, PowerPoint made it easy for us to pause in showing slides to show an interactive portion of the presentation (when he sat down in the middle of class and continued presenting), and it made it easy to include a link of a video.

When it came to presenting, Brian and I decided to take turns. We split the topics as even as possible, and simply decided who would speak about what based on what ideas we felt most comfortable explaining to the class. In the presentation, one thing we wanted to do with PowerPoint was to have blank slides in between picture slides. This way we would have a blank screen when first introducing a subject, so that the audience would not be distracted. After explaining the overall idea, we would then move onto a visual example. However, I don’t think we got the timing of this down correctly, so sometimes there were still pictures up when we were discussing a new idea.

Overall, I’m happy with the way this turned out. When we picked the topic, I thought we picked a very manageable subject. After reading, I became worried that we might not be able to convey the ideas that were in the book correctly, because there were parts that I had trouble understanding. But after going back and reading parts of the books over a few times, and brainstorming ideas with Brian, I think we found simplified ways of explaining this topic to the class. If there was anything I would change I would have practiced the timing with the slides better, and I would have found a way to embed the video into PowerPoint to give it a more consistent flow.

When trying to come up with a topic for the video project, Liz and I wanted to find something that would be easy to shoot around campus, and something that clearly had two sides to the issue. It was Liz who came up with the idea with portraying disability accessibility on campus, as she knew someone who was in a wheelchair, and noticed her struggles with getting around on campus. I thought this was a great idea, because I already knew a bit about DRES (Disability Resources and Education Services). I used to work for the University of Illinois Foundation, and one of our calling campaigns was to raise money for DRES, so I knew a bit about what they were all about. So, we decided this would be a great topic for us to portray objectively and subjectively. We then decided we would get an interview with someone who worked for DRES for the objective side, someone who was a student with disabilities for the subjective side, and shoot lots a B-Roll of disability facilities and programs on campus.

Shooting was pretty easy. We walked around campus videoing wheelchair ramps, elevators, and DRES related buildings. We set up an interview with a student intern at DRES, and met with her to record an interview. We were unable to arrange a meeting with the student (conflict in schedules), but luckily the interview with the student intern gave us more than enough footage.

The student intern, Carmen, was very informative. She talked about the services from the University standpoint, which we classified as “objective” material, and also from her own perspective, which was our subjective material. As we shot her interview, we quickly realized that she would provide us both with enough material to make a subjective and objective piece. In fact, I am really pleased that it turned out this way. I think it’s really interesting that we were able to create two separate projects from two different perspectives just from one interview and the way we chose to edit the footage.

I would make a few changes to my video if I had to do it again. I wanted to include a lot of b-roll while Carmen was speaking, but at times, I did not have footage that matched up exactly with what she was saying. Instead the footage I showed was us general facilities and programs on campus. Also, I had a hard time figuring out how to end it, so if I could change it, I would have tried to get a cleaner ending in the interview.

3. Are Ede and Lundsford the actual authors of “Intertext?” All they did was bring together many different quotes on the same theme of collaborative writing. Possibly discuss the artist Girl Talk in your answer.

This is a very interesting question. No, I do not believe that Ede and Lundsford are the actual authors of Intertext. To me, being an author of something is writing your own text from your own original ideas. As mentioned, all they did was bring together many quotes, which was interesting, because they were doing exactly what the quotes were talking about–collaborating. It’s not a bad that thing that this is what they were doing, but I don’t think that they can claim that they wrote this piece. Rather, they were editors, and brought together relevant texts to discuss an idea. If they would have collaborating by putting together their own original writing, I think that they could have claimed to be authors.

1. Do you think collaboration in an academic setting is important? Why or why not?

2. Do you personally enjoy working with other people in group projects? Why or why not?

3. What types of settings are most useful for collaborations? What types work better for independent work?

Based on Hampe’s concept of “visual evidence” and editing, do you believe documentary is objective? why or why not?

I do not believe that documentary is objective. I believe that it is subjective because the content that is filmed and chosen to be a part of a documentary depends on the creator’s interpretation of the subject. A person can choose to make a documentary about Chicago history, but the content they choose depends on what they believe to be is important parts of Chicago history. It does not necessarily give a broad view of everything can be considered to be a part of history. The topics may be more or less important, depending on the viewer.

How can subjectivity appear in documentaries?  Is it possible to make a completely objective documentary?

Subjectivity appears in documentaries because of what the creators deem as worthy information to be included. The information they choose to include may not be something that all audiences consider to be important. I think that it is possible to have a completely objective documentary, but I think it would be very  bland, as you would only be presenting absolute concrete facts. You would not really be able to included interviews of people, as that would probably create some sort of bias. Any narration would have to be extremely factual, which would probably make it very dry and dull.

1. Why do you think it is that editing can change the meaning of video?

2. Have you ever seen a TV show or movie that you thought could have been better simply due to editing? What was it, and why?

3. I think reality television is a big place where editing can determine the feel of the scene. Can you think of any examples of when this happened in any show?

When trying to come up with a podcast, I had an idea of the kind of sound I wanted. I had listened to some podcasts in the past on my own, so I had a rough idea of what they sounded like. I wanted to go for a “talk show” like feel. The hard part was coming up with a topic. I knew that the best route to go would be to pick something that I know a lot about and something that I’m interested in. I thought that this way I could say a lot about whatever topic that I decided to pick. I picked social media because I hope to work with it as part of my career, and because I thought it was something that would appeal to many listeners, because it is such a large part of our daily lives.

I wanted to record the podcast with software that I had. Unfortunately, my computer crashed about a week before this project, and my friend had to reformat my hard drive, and therefore I lost the software and could not install it in time because the disc was at my permanent home. So instead I downloaded Audacity. I found it very easy to use. I had actually done some sound editing for other projects before, so it didn’t take too much to figure it out.

While recording, I would practice a piece of my story a few times, then record it. I would hit stop when I was done with the portion of the recording, and then start recording again from where I left off when I wanted to continue. If I messed up, I simply deleted that portion of the audio and re-recorded it.

I was happy with the way this came out. I think that the style and sound of my voice flowed well and it was exactly the type of sound that I was going for. My only regret was that I wish I would have paid more attention to the volume of the sound effects. The sound effects did not sound that much louder when played on my computer, but when playing it over large speakers, you could clearly hear the volume difference.

Georgia\’s Podcast – Silly Social Media