Introduction
When I was looking for a class to fulfill my literary arts gen-ed credit, I originally thought I'd take one of those poetry or ancient book courses. After reading the syllabi, and promptly realizing those classes required hours upon hours of reading per week, I decided to find a different route. The Connect Carolina browsing session shortly thereafter is what brought me to stumble upon ENGL149: Networked and Multimedia Composition. This course seemed far less traditional and focused more on a topic I actually found interesting, Digital Media. For starters, I figured the class would largely be a repeat of the similar classes I'd taken in high school, and that I would know the material fairly well while also making fun new media projects.
It turns out that I was dead wrong about the overlapping material. Almost everything I learned this semester was new, and while previous courses did help me, I certainly had my struggles throughout the spring. Being able to use the Adobe Suite in its full capacity through UNC is an amazing opportunity, and ENGL149 really allowed us to explore the full potential of some of its programs. This list included Photoshop, Rush, and Audition, three of the most popular applications in existence. As someone who is confident in their use of technology, I learned a lot more than I originally thought I would in this class. I attribute that mostly to Dr. Anderson's project selection, the classmate feedback I received, and the lack of pressure that results from minimal focus on timelines and grades on a week to week basis. Obviously deadlines were given and incentivized, but having extra flexibility to finish some projects when needed was a massive factor in the increased quality and creativity shown in the media created.
Not only did this course increase my hard skills on various media composition platforms, but I also feel as though my soft skills were fine-tuned. Communication, data interpretation, and peer-review are just a few examples of intangibles that this course focused on and helped me improve.
Video Poem
Original Draft
Revision: The only glaring changes that I made in my final revision of the video poem were the swapping of a few clips that my peers felt didn't fully fit with the mood of the piece. Upon swapping them, I agreed that the newer clips were a much better fit. Other minor tweaks included tightening up some of the text effects and perfecting the timing of the clips.
The video poem was the first of the major projects we completed in ENGL149. In hindsight, composing this was a fitting and useful introduction to what the course would demand and teach. It's premise was creating a visual interpretation of a written poem for the purpose of emphasizing its themes and presenting our own spin on its meaning.
I chose to use "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night" by Dylan Thomas. My inspiration for this choice was the scene in the film Interstellar that recites it. I always found that part of the movie to be particularly gripping from an emotional standpoint, and felt that with my own added flavor I could further enhance that effect. I used compelling video footage and powerful narration in combination with one another in an attempt to draw and maintain the audience's attention.
This project was helpful to me in a multitude of ways. The most prevalent skill was the understanding of different lighting, text and video effects, and how those can emphasize or draw attention away from certain words and phrases. Another skill that this helped to fine tune was my collaboration. Like most of our work throughout the course, this project received feedback from classmates. I was able to use this feedback, and my own feedback to others, as fuel for my revision. The final positive aspect that I'll touch on is attention to detail. Video editing requires a considerable amount of patience, and this video was tedious to make due to the vast amount of visual and audio effects that I added. Overall, this was my favorite assignment in the course and I felt that it was the most enjoyable to make.
Social Media Postings
Memes: This may seem a bit surprising given their simplicity, but the memes were actually the hardest project throughout the semester for me. Thinking of a joke, and especially making an image for it is fairly difficult from scratch. Comedy is a product of being relatable and hyperbolic, and finding a common ground of material that sits between widespread relatability and appropriate exaggeration can prove very difficult.
Instagram Stories: Our Instagram story project was designed to make us create one informative production and one creative set of images. For the more informative story, I chose to compose a video about Hurricane Irma and its effects on the British Virgin Islands. I used a combination of dramatic background music and compelling video footage of the damage in an attempt to produce a work that drew sympathy and attention from its audience. In the second story, I used a slowly rotating sequence of images that showed various professional athletes because I felt that it created a cool visual effect and drew the viewer's attention.
The social media postings posed their own different challenges, but were successful in teaching a great deal of different lessons in media creation. The most emphatic of these lessons was learning how to play into different audiences, tones, and narratives with different aspects of media. It may seem obvious that changing music, text effects, or video footage will affect the themes of a video, but getting first hand experience in tinkering with these changes really opened my eyes to their power.
These projects also taught me a lot about the power of communication through media. Seeing how easy it is to create emotionally compelling products, and to spread them on internet platforms, was really informative in regard to the tactics of modern-day news and entertainment media.
Audio Essay
Audio Essay Draft: This project centered around creating a "short and sweet" audio media project that presented information and some opinion on one of the following: Memes, Electronic Literature, Literacy, Human Cognition, or Cinema. The topic I chose for my audio essay was literacy. My sources consisted primarily of TED Talks and NPR podcast excerpts, and I used those to support and encourage the points I made. There isn't one overarching reason that I chose literacy as my topic, but I suppose I felt that it was an important international issue, and that I could easily compile data and expert opinions to support whatever claims I chose to make.
Audio Essay Revision: The only revisions I made on this project in my final draft were fine-tuning the intro and outro music, along with shortening the clips that I imported from third party sources. These changes came on the heels of both classmate suggestions and my own personal observations that it was a tad too long and could easily lose the audience's attention. If I could have done this whole project over again, I'd choose to use a little bit more non-audio data that I could present myself, and would have been slightly less opinionated in my presentation.
Podcast
Podcast Final: The podcast assignment is extremely similar to the audio essay in premise. It also focuses on the topic of literacy, but adds in a classmate and more outside evidence. This created a much more conversational and impromptu feel, which I preferred to the pre-written script of the audio essay. Another reason I really enjoyed this project was our use of the podcast studio in the Undergraduate Library. We had some trouble figuring out all of the different buttons and wires, but eventually got our bearings. I had never been able to use such an advanced and technologically sophisticated setup before, and I thought that it was a very interesting experience. I was a tad worried that my classmate and I would have a hard time producing 15 minutes worth of conversation, but was surprised at how fast time seemed to pass while recording, relative to reading from a script. In all, this was one of my favorite projects this semester, and I learned a great deal about conversational presentation, all while producing media that conveyed an important message.
In regard to both the audio essay and podcast together, I learned lessons in everything ranging from audio production to holding intellectual conversations. I enjoyed creating both, as I felt that they allowed me to express my opinions on literacy and educate myself more on the topic. Each had their own unique traits that made them interesting to create, such as the audio essay's conciseness or the podcast's interesting conversational points.
Both assignments taught me more about communicating information than anything else. The differences between presenting information to a stagnant audience and to someone you're conversing with are much more broad than I originally thought. I found myself conveying my thoughts in a much more open manner that prompted a response, rather than simply stating my scripted words as though they were the end all be all. This may seem obvious, but the subconscious changes in the way I spoke were interesting to me, if nothing else.
Review Videos
Visual Storytelling Video: These review/reflection videos are somewhat difficult to elaborate on, given that their entire premise is being a review in video form. They were fairly easy to make because they just consist of me talking about my experience, and the video aspect of them is just b-roll from the creation of the projects I talk about in the assignment. These projects speak for themselves.
Visual Storytelling Video Script & Storyboard
Audio Storytelling Video
Audio Storytelling Video Script and Storyboard
Comments
Throughout the semester, we were tasked with commenting on posts. Those posts consisted of both peer drafts and readings for class materials, and I provided constructive feedback and my thoughts on both. Linked below are my comments on peer drafts as well as my interpretations and comments on readings during the course.
- Comments on Peer Projects and Drafts
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My thoughts on Kaylie and Casie's video poems.
My comments on Pearce, Jaquez, and Ariana's audio essay drafts.
- Reading Comments
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Visual Strategies Reading, Photoshop and Memes Reading, E-Poetry Reading, Animated GIF Reading, Reflection Videos Reading, Remix Manifesto Reading, From Print to Audio Reading
Conclusion
Three main takeaways from this course for me were improvement in computer software skills, an increase in teamwork and communication, and learning how to further tap into my creative side.
The enhanced computer abilities are fairly self explanatory. The constant requirements of using various media composition platforms caused me to learn by being sort of thrown into hands on experience, which I found to be very effective and well-suited to my learning style.
From a teamwork and communication approach, the feedback and partner-oriented projects gave me further experience in working with a peer to complete a common goal. While communication is obviously an important aspect of working in a team, this class taught me more about communicative platforms and spreading messages over the internet. Some people may not realize that it only takes a matter of hours for a composer to go from a blank computer screen to a message seen by millions, and this served as a sort of reality check to that. It was a true reminder that any message posted online can, and will, be seen by many more people than you may have first expected.
The creative side of my brain never really seemed to activate before this course. I was always very detail-oriented, and cases of not having a step-by-step rubric seemed to trigger some sort of anxiety. I can confidently say that ENGL149 changed that. I was almost forced to be creative, and while that may seem a bit intense, it wasn't. The freedom and lack of emphasis on conformity allowed me to fully express whatever ideas and messages I wanted to convey, and did it in an interesting and fun manner.