Btdoyle2's Blog

INFO 303

btdoyle2 — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 22:17:47 +0000

INFO 303 has been a great class for me to take this semester for many reasons. I have been avoiding talking my Advanced composition gen-ed since they require so much writing. However with this class I seemed to get a good amount of writing, but most of my work was done in the form of expressing my words through media. Sometimes had trouble keeping up with my blog assignments, because I have never taken a class with a blog base for turning in assignments. In the future I will probably avoid that, or maybe I will give it another shot and just make sure I stay on top of my work. I also liked that class was not mandatory, for me this tends to be helpful due to medical conditions which I have. I thoroughly enjoyed taking this class and working with all of these different types of media. Thank you for a great semester, and I hope you had as much fun teaching this class as I did taking it.

Video Project Process

btdoyle2 — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:41:15 +0000

Throughout WAM we have used remediation in all different genres of media, but for our final project we were able to choose which media we wanted to work with which I liked because it gave me a lot of freedom. Jen originally told me that she liked the podcast project the most thus far. On the other hand I hated the podcast because I do not like to listen to my own voice. I loved the video project, and the sequential art project, because they gave me the ability to be as creative as I wanted. So I thought that we should split up the reading and then meet up and discuss our ideas. I said that I thought that I could create a video that depicted each type of genre that would work for this project, and we said that we could just talk to the class while presenting the video. However, as we worked on the video it seemed a little bit bland, and Jen suggested that we write up a script and that she would make a podcast out of it, while I created a video to go along with it. I thought this was a great idea and it sparked another idea in my head. I realized we were already using two of the mediums we had worked with in class why not try to incorporate as many as I could. I thought that using the different mediums represents multiple genres (which was our topic) and represents our understanding of each aspect of the course. Jen then began working on the podcast which turned out great, I think that her doing it alone worked out well because once again hearing my voice does not really work for me. Not only did Jen create a great podcast but she also organized the script very well. I then used my original idea of using the some clips from music and movies to represent different genres. I chose to use a clip from A Bronx Tale, and a clip from The Break Up for specific reasons. A Bronx Tale is a great gangster film, and the clip I chose particularly depicts it as such. However, the films main focus is how a mob boss teaches a young boy that that is not the life he wants for him. The Break Up on the other hand is a romantic comedy, and while the clip I showed is comical, it is still evident that it is a romance film. These aspects intended to represent the video projects we worked on. After representing the different genres of music and film I started Jens podcast. I then used the idea of the sequential art project, and used different pictures to represent what she was talking about. Some of these pictures were meant to be a bit comical, but not all of them. I was not able to represent the graffiti project here, because I could not think of how I would incorporate it. While I did want to use the things we learned in this class I thought that it is not worth incorporating something that would not go well with the project, just to relate to class. This film was particularly hard to compile since I uses so many photos. I had a lot of fun though so I did not mind putting in the extra work.

Podcast

btdoyle2 — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 21:09:32 +0000

Final Project

btdoyle2 — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:06:06 +0000

Process for video project

btdoyle2 — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:56:09 +0000

When I began this project I thought it was going to be fun and not very challenging. To my surprise it was not very easy none the less I thoroughly enjoyed it because I was able to work with iMovie which I have not had a reason to use since I got my Mac. Initially my partner had a few different ideas and we thought Mac v. PC would be an interesting topic for a few reasons. First off I have owned a PC and a Mac so I thought it would be interesting to find out what other people thought. Also I thought it would be relevant to this class because while most of our work is done on Mac’s some students still use PC’s for it. When it came time to do the interviews I decided to interview my roommates, because while most of them own PC’s they all like Mac’s. I also decided to have my roommate ask the questions so that I did not have to, because I hate hearing my voice.

Much to my surprise getting the filming started was a challenge in and of itself. When I gathered a few of my roommates to begin the interview I could not get any of them to take it seriously. After about three tries I gave up an doing an interview with all of them together, to avoid the jokes. I then decided to sit them down one at a time for the interviews. Once they were being interviewed solo they were much easier to deal with.

After I finished shooting I ran into a serious problem, when I uploaded my footage and my computer kept freezing because I do not have enough memory on it. After the program quitting on me 3 times I realized I had to go to the library to finish the project. I debated whether I should show each interview on its own or just use clips from each. Then I began to grab clips from each person’s response to specific questions, and I found that for each question one person led into the next question. After realizing this I thought it would be fun to use clips for each question. I was very impressed with how easy iMovie was to use, and with it I was able to edit my footage just like I wanted to and produce what I found to be a very good comparison between Mac’s and PC’s. Since I had the objective side I had free range to use most of the good footage I had. Furthermore I did not have to just use parts where people expressed interest in Mac’s or PC’s. There were definitely a few clips which I could have edited to mix peoples words around, but didn’t. However I think it would have been fun to see if I could successfully do so without making it obvious. In the end I was very happy with my video, I felt that it accurately captured the way most people would look at the argument. Especially because whether people use Mac’s or PC’s depends a lot on what industry people are in or are going to be in. So in the end I would say that my projects was very successful.

Shipka and McKee answers

btdoyle2 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:03:51 +0000

Julie asked the question 1. Do you think that in Val’s audio tour, the lack of music in the government room did cause more boredom?

I think that some boredom was derived from the government room. However I think that the room did not need the music because that would have taken away from the quality overall.

Tom Asked 2. Is silence really an important part of sound?

I think that silence is an important part of sound because in situations where you have silence you are allowed to think more about what you are listening to. Also silence in presentations sometimes can be more effective than sound because it helps emphasize the important parts from the creators standpoint.

Shipka Questions

btdoyle2 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:13:42 +0000

Shipka talks about students learning from projects in class. Would you say you have learned from students projects in this class? which ones?

What does “sound engineered” mean?

Can sound be distracting during presentations?

Sequential Art Project Process

btdoyle2 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:06:27 +0000

For my sequential art project I started off knowing that I was going to do mine on Blood Diamonds. This has always been an important issue to me since I saw the movie “Blood Diamond” and realized how little people do to help out with the problem. I also felt that maybe if students my age were as upset as I was maybe they could help make a change, because after all children are our future.

I began my project by looking on google for pictures of people in refugee camps, because people are forced to live there while this war over blood diamonds is going on. I was hoping to find pictures of families being reunited in there but I could only find pictures of the camps themselves, which was good enough for me. Following that I searched for pictures of children soldiers, because personally this is the most disturbing part of this war is that they are forcing children to fight, which is so sad to think that these children miss out on their child hood and much more. The next group of pictures I looked for was of people mining for diamonds, I thought this would help the viewers understand the terrible working conditions that these prisoners are put into. I then looked for some pictures of diamonds being examined, and where the blood diamonds were mixd with the clean ones. Throughout each of these searches I saw a lot of ads or pictures that had facts and other information about blood diamonds that I thought were interesting to think about. So finally I pulled the ones I liked off too.

When ordering these pictures I started with the refugee camps, because that is there the “lucky” people go, and you can see that they are not very lucky. I followed up those pictures with the ones of the children soldiers because they were the would be the ones guarding or watching the people in the following pictures. The following pictures were of the miners, which led into the pictures of the diamonds themselves. I ended the slideshow with the slogans or reasons that would get people to think about what a blood diamond really costs. I did not rework my concept in the end because I thought the order of the pictures flowed and made sense, and I ended up really liking the turnout.

Ede and Lundsford questions

btdoyle2 — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:26:03 +0000

If you have a book with multiple authors and a movie with multiple authors is one more likely to be better than the other.

Similarly do you find it easier to work on certain types of projects in a group and others on your own?

Is there a happy medium where you can get the best of working with groups and without?

Hampe Questions

btdoyle2 — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 16:32:30 +0000

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

No it is not objective I think that documentaries much of the time are guided by the director. Also they usually edit what people say and only take the parts that say what they want you to say.

Julie’s question. How many documentaries have you seen that have not primarily used interviews as their evidence. Please describe one.

I can not think of many documentaries that I have seen that were not primarily interviews, but one that comes to my head is the movie Pink Floyd: The Wall. The film does not go over interviews it is just a movie that tells the story of Pink the original lead singer of Pink Floyd. However I believe only some of the footage is real footage. I can not think of any others that would be that style of documentary.