Posted on Wed, 04/17/2019 - 15:41 by chris_bakolia

A New Meaning to Literature

Throughout my time as a student - whether it be elementary school, high school or college - I've never really been a fan of English courses. I've always been the kind of guy that would rather do 100 math problems than sit down and read a book or write a paper. Not sure how many people can say that, but it's the truth. This aversion to English courses can most notably be evident based on the fact that I chose to wait until the second semester of my Senior year to fulfill the Literary Arts gen-ed requirement for my degree. Yeah...it's that bad. But when I searched Connect Carolina for the course that was going to help send me off into the "real world", I came across one that looked to be right up my alley: Networked and Multimedia Writing.

Upon reading the description for the course online and attending the first day of class, I could not have been any more excited to be taking an English course. Rather than the countless courses that detailed the typical read and write outline, this was a class that was going to test me to do things I've never done before - all while providing the same learning outcomes of an ordinary English course. Reading articles and doing research was now done for the purpose of making video poems or recording audio essays. Revisions to first drafts were now to be done in the form of video reflections, made to document the detailing and thought-processes behind each decision.

I can't stress this enough when I say that this course was one of the most, if not the most, unique courses I've taken during my time here at UNC-Chapel Hill. My perception of what literature is and can be was completely altered to consist of aspects I would've never imagined. The projects we got the opportunity to work on in this class were like no other, and I'm incredibly excited to share (and reflect on) all of this work collectively in one space.

Video Poem

Our first project of the semester was probably my favorite of them all. When we were tasked with the video poem assignment, I was mainly intrigued about the endless creative possibilities the project entailed. The unique thing about poetry is it's open to a wide range of interpretation. The great thing about making videos is that one has the ability to communicate whatever they choose. Combining the two gave the opportunity to present a story in which every aspect played a role in telling that story. The poem itself, the visuals chosen, the song used, the effects employed - every piece of this project was essential and finding the right combination of visual and auditory elements made this project a blast.

I had also had a good amount of experience creating and editing videos for fun, so this project was even more enticing. As a kid up until about high school, I made a variety of random videos and uploaded them to YouTube. Because of this, I was already familiar with an editing software that I had used prior - Sony Vegas Pro - and decided against using Adobe Rush. I felt more comfortable working with this software and was able to do a lot of little added effects that Rush was unable to do. I chose the poem "Earth, You Have Returned To Me" by Elaine Equi, and after several hours finding the video clips and editing, I was quite satisfied with how the first attempt turned out. Below is my first draft of the video poem.

I received a lot of helpful and constructive criticism from this first draft. The video was shown during class, which aided my considerations for revisions; however, the main source of feedback was from peer comments on the website. Everyone seemed to be onboard with the music selection, pacing and editing, but there were a couple recommendations for improvement. Suggestions included using some different clips - because some clips were a tad pixelated - and making sure all of the text was legible at all times. Using white text made it difficult to read if the background was especially bright. I made sure to address these issues, while leaving most of my video intact because I was pretty pleased with the first draft. My final video poem can be seen below.

I loved that we were given the opportunity to create a reflection video for the video poem because it allowed me to share my intentions for the project in great detail. One can watch a video poem itself and get a general idea of what the creator intended to do, but the reflection video gives clarity to the thought process. It also aids in exemplifying all the work that goes into making a video that's just a little over a minute. It might not seem like a lot of work when casually watching these, but a lot of behind the scenes effort goes into putting together a project like this. This was a recurring theme that I learned to be prominent in just about every project we worked on. Lastly, the reflection video gave me time to do what it was primary intended to: reflect. I was able to give an overarching summary of how the creative process went and what learning outcomes I achieved from taking part in such a project. One of the main being that videos like these take a lot of time and considerable detail. To me, it was vital to look at all of the available details and make use of them to tell the story to its greatest ability.

You can see my storyboard for my visual storytelling reflection.

I also made a script to go along with the storyboard.

Social Media Postings

Instagram Memes

Memes have become one of the most prominent sources of communication in today's society. This is more than likely because of their quick and easy interpretation, as well as their relevancy to just about anything. Almost everyone has seen a meme and knows what they are, but not everyone can say they've made one. Before this class, I was in said majority but not anymore. Our second project consisted of creating a series of social media postings: memes, GIFs and, of course, Instagram stories.

Coming up with ideas for the memes was a lot harder than I thought it would be. It seems like they'd be pretty easy to make because one can be made for literally any topic or current trend going on in the world; yet, I had trouble figuring out what I wanted to do. The goal of memes is to mock something of current relevancy that is widely known so that the audience can understand what is attempted to be communicated. That is, the audience reception of the meme determines its success. While this seems like a generally easy task, I tended to overthink what I wanted to do and ultimately went through several drafts before finalizing my decisions. I went with a pretty generic meme for my first one that mocked the weather we were experiencing at the time. For my first time making a meme, and using Photoshop for that matter, I think it was modestly successful.

My second meme pertained more to a specific sub-population, rather than just students all in general. Battle Royale games have really taken off in the past year or so. These are video games similar to the Hunger Games in that 100 players are dropped on an island and must find weapons and materials to survive the longest. The last one standing wins. I wanted to mock the fact that so many of these games have come out recently and they're all replicating one another and competing with each other. The top half of the picture depicts three of the most prominent and well-established Battle Royale games, while the bottom half shows the "newest and greatest" overlooking all of the others. I personally thought this meme was pretty funny because of the timeliness of it (Apex Legends had just been released the week before making it), but as mentioned earlier, the meme requires background information. Thus, it might not pertain to as many audiences as the first one I created. This is an important concept to consider in that different means of media can tailor differently to certain audiences. Not every media form communicates with the audience in the same way and even the same types of media can have a different impact, depending on the content.

GIFs

We made two variations of GIFs: one in the form of a meme and the other more artistic. These were a bit different from the memes in that we were working with motion videos rather than still images. The meme GIF was the easier of the two because of the practice I had just gotten with creating memes. I wanted to do something similar to the first meme I created in making something that could be relatable among the masses, while adding in my own little touch to it. I decided to utilize my love for the sport of hockey and combine it with one of the common distastes of society (Monday) to create a unique animation video that could appeal to anyone. What resulted is the GIF below.

The second GIF was intended to be more artistic and morally motivating, rather than funny. Making this GIF tested my Photoshop skills more than any of the other previous posting, and forced me to really master the software. I imported a video as layers of a car riding down the city and chose to play around with the lighting and color settings as the clip progressed. I was able to mask a shape that changed sizes and added a color brightness to the mask. I darkened and blurred the the outside of the mask to give the brightness more emphasis. In addition, I changed the color overlay every couple frames to add an extra element to the piece. Lastly, I added some motivating text that would appear then disappear in different spots throughout the GIF. I was really pleased with the overall outcome of the GIF, which is below.

Instagram Stories

The Instagram stories aspect of the project was supposed to be something of relevance for most students. Just about everyone has an Instagram and has utilized the feature at some point. This was not the case for me. I'm one of the few humans (not just students) that doesn't have an Instagram. However, I do own a Snapchat and the stories feature on Instagram is essentially the same thing as Snapchat's, so I was familiar with the concept and how it works. Like the memes, I was pretty flustered coming up with something that I wanted to showcase.

The first Instagram story was to be composed of still images. For my first story, I looked at it just like a Snapchat story in which I would document something interesting that was going on in my life that day/week. For the past month or so leading up to this project, my family and I had been gradually moving out of my childhood home. The house was way too big for my mom and dad (and sometimes me and my older sister), so they figured it was time to downsize. They also just wanted a change of scenery, as they had been in this house in North Raleigh for almost 30 years. So, they chose to move to a home about a mile outside Downtown Raleigh. Exciting stuff! Of course, I was needed to assist in a lot of parts of the moving process, so I chose to document myself helping my dad move out one of the last things still in the house - the treadmill. The story turned out pretty good, in my opinion. It's very chronological and easy to follow, and it also serves as a good memory of my last time spent inside my childhood home.

For the second Instagram story, we were to make use of videos to create an informative sequence of videos. I wanted to do something a little different than showing something going on with me. Instead, I wanted to bring to light something that was, and still is, of great importance to my life: once again, hockey. Not just hockey in general this time, but specifically the Carolina Hurricanes. I've been a fan of the Hurricanes since my earliest memories of my childhood and the past few years have been rough. The Hurricanes have been practically irrelevant for the past decade, as they have been trapped in a period of mediocrity - failing to make the playoffs for each of the last ten years.

This year was different, though. At the beginning of the season, the captains of the team chose to implement a post-game celebration after a win on home ice in an effort to bring the fans together and get some more attention from outside of the market. Boy did it work, and better than they could've ever imagined. The team got a lot of positive feedback from the majority of the media, but one well-established broadcaster (who is know to speak his mind), wasn't to fond of the idea and made it known. What resulted was a rally call and an even more united fan-base. I chose to showcase the entire progression of this circumstance with my story back in February. Now, these "Bunch of Jerks" are going to the Eastern Conference Final in their first trip back to the playoffs in ten years. If they win this next round, they'll have the opportunity to compete for the franchise's second Stanley Cup. *knocks severely on wood*

Audio Essay

The audio essay assignment was yet another unique project that was completely new to me. Before the homework assignment in which we listened to a couple example essays, I had never even heard of the concept of an audio essay. I was familiar with audio books and such, so I figured this was just an alteration of that in an essay format. It was a little more than that, however. While audio essays are essentially essays outspoken in audio format, one can also add sound effects, songs, excerpts, etc. to add an extra element to the essay or emphasize a certain point. Audio essays can also be viewed as similar to radio talk shows in that expert opinions can be introduced to provide expertise or validity to the points brought up. I had a lot of fun with this assignment, and it forced me to expand my creativity skills.

There were several determinations that needed to be made when considering if words or sounds should be used to communicate a certain topic. Also, determining what variations of sounds to use had a larger impact than one would expect. It was important to make the script concise and easy to follow. It was also vital to have a pleasant tone and to talk slowly when communicating ideas. This was necessary to consider so that the audience would be able to comprehend what was being said without having to think too much about it. In addition to language being kept simplified, it was also important to refrain from using too many statistics or numbers, as that could also have a deterring affect on listener comprehension. All of these considerations made writing the script for the essay and actually composing the essay pretty involved. I wasn't able to write this essay like any other paper I had written. Below is my attempt at a first draft.

The revision process was definitely worthwhile. Like the video poem, I received positive feedback and criticism on the class website from peers and Professor Anderson. Some suggestions such as adding more sound effects in certain places and removing some in other spots were taken into account. I also tried to be more concise in communicating my ideas for the section discussing the concept of instant gratification and how that is impacting teaching in schools. This was all cleaned up during the first stage of revisions. I submitted my revised essay earlier than most students.

Because of this, I was fortunate enough to have my essay played aloud in class and got some extra feedback from fellow classmates on ways to improve. Recommendations on specific sound selection were made. For example, the cat sound effect I used sounded like just any other cat and not an "angry cat", which is more what I was looking for. Additionally, I had paused the essay for a few seconds for the Game of Thrones soundtrack to play when mentioned; however, after reviewing, I agreed with my peers that it'd be better to pause for a second and then just play it lightly in the background as the essay continued. I'm very thankful that I was given this opportunity to get extra feedback and improve my audio essay even further. In the end, I was very pleased with how it ultimately turned out.

My script for the audio essay can be found here.

Podcast

The last assignment we had for the semester was to record a podcast. Never in my life did I think I would do that. Podcasts are awesome, and I'm an avid listener to several different types of podcasts; nonetheless, to say that I had ever thought about making one myself would be a blatant lie. I'm not that outspoken of a guy in the first place, and just the thought of speaking into a microphone for upwards of 15 minutes scared me a bit to say the least. I knew this was going to take some courage and willingness to get outside of my comfort zone if I wanted to succeed with this assignment.

The podcast and audio essay were fairly similar in some senses, but entirely different in others. The good thing about the podcast was that it was to be done on the same topic as the audio essay. This allowed me to feel educated and comfortable with what I was talking about. Similarly, we were to use the same or similar expert audio pieces to play in the podcast, so finding these was easy as well. The main difference between the audio essay and the podcast was the fact that the audio essay was entirely scripted, while the podcast wasn't so much. There was a general script created for the podcast (to outline the route of the conversation), but there were several questions laid out in which answers were not prepared for. This required me and my partner - my housemate Stephen - to think on the spot and be improvised with what we said. The thought of this intimidated me at first, but because I recorded the podcast with my housemate (and very close friend), the conversation seemed to flow very smoothly. It didn't seem awkward in any sense, and we actually enjoyed the experience very much. After we were done recording, we downright said to each other, "wow that was awesome. We should start a hockey podcast."

Here are the materials and talking points for my podcast.

Recording the podcast was one of the most valuable learning experiences I had while taking this course. Doing something like this - something I really, really didn't want to do - only enriched the takeaways from it. The podcast greatly enhanced both my communication and adaptability skills. I learned how to quickly adapt to changes in a conversation and overcame my fear of talking for an extended period of time. The beginning of the course, I wondered why this assignment was included into the course. Now, as the semester closes, I'm fully aware of how much value this project has the opportunity to add.

A reflection of both my audio essay and the podcast - detailing the differences between the two and the learning outcomes that resulted from them - is found below.