3. Could one argue that most texts now all over the world have a definite author as a result of the Western world's influence?
Major authors are celebrities. Stephen King, JK Rowling, Michael Crichton, John Grisham...their books get translated into so many languages and displayed at the forefront of bookstores around the world that the influence of "singular author as God" is all over.
Here's some trivia to illustrate the point:
I remember reading in either Time or Newsweek the following graph: what author has had his/her work translated into the most languages?
If you said Shakespeare, you're wrong. Not JK Rowling (she's not top 50) and not Stephen King.
It's Agatha Christie, with some 6,000 languages (if I remember correctly). Twice as many as Shakespeare.
In either case, the vast majority of the writers are Western writers with household names. The people behind these texts become godlike, and in our monotheistic Western culture, it's no wonder that they are worshipped. Extending their names across the world cannot help but iterpellate non-Western cultures into the same one-author, one-God, one-text consciousness.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
All Dressed Up and No Place to Go
Look at that poster.
Look at it again.
Now, gut reaction -- is it eye-catching?
How about this: is it eye-catching enough to make you read it?
And finally: After reading it, would you consider attending the event?
I thought so, too. I'd been working for months to bring two of my favorite crime writers, Chicago-based Marcus Sakey and Sean Chercover, to come to U of I. I was thrilled to meet them, and figured I'm a normal enough college student with normal enough interests to be an accurate gauge of what other college students liked.
No, they might not have read these guys' books, but what better way to start than to meet the makers themselves?
Well, ten people showed up. Total. Including my brother and I, who had organized the event. I broke into cold embarrassed sweat as I smiled and "addressed the elephant" -- or lack of one -- in the room. Piles of books sat near us as we began to talk with the writers.
The conversation was incredible. We talked for two hours about everything -- college majors to why English courses worship boring books to writing quirks; everything -- but I was still in shock that no one showed up.
I emailed some of my writer friends. College students are f'ing stupid, one of them said. You made lemonade out of lemons, my mom said. Plus, a confounding variable was the time: smack dab in the middle of the day of the day of the week in the middle of mid-term week.
But goodness, the English Building was across the street from the venue of the event. Couldn't someone stop by? One professor? One creative writing student?
Okay: I'll tie a bow on the rant and troubleshoot my own actions.
I think my error in advertising this event was not the lack of the event's visibility on campus, but the lack of a human connection in personalizing an invitation. The poster was cool. I advertised it to a bunch of groups that dug this stuff -- Campus Honors Program, English and Creative Writing students, etc. But people who saw the poster didn't come because even a flashy visual is not enough to bridge the gap between interest and action, between thought and response. We think of lots of things we don't act on. The world our minds inhabits has freer range than the physical world we inhabit, which is constrained by things like transportation, weather, time, and health. I'm sure many people were interested in going, but interest does not equal action. And a poster was not enough to bridge this gap.
Just like special effects in movies: they're not memorable if there's no reason for them other than to look pretty. Likewise, in our class, we're learning glitzy ways to present information. But we can have all the cool fade-ins and fade-outs, explosions and alakazams that we want...but if there is no human element behind the presentation of information, then it's a forgettable display of fireworks...most of them duds.
Sunday, October 26, 2008
Lisa Ede and Andrea Lunsford "Intertexts" questions
1. Discuss how the mantra "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts" permeates so many of the example quotations in "Intertexts." Choose one of your favorite quotes and see how the mantra applies.
2. Are there any modes of work, arenas of employment, or fields of study that are more suitable to individual work? Why? What might happen if the identified field were done more collaboratively. If you can't think of one, do you think it's even possible to have a completely isolated, 100% individualist, purely self-run project?
3. Why do you think the authors decided to structure this publication as a series of quotes rather than a traditional essay?
2. Are there any modes of work, arenas of employment, or fields of study that are more suitable to individual work? Why? What might happen if the identified field were done more collaboratively. If you can't think of one, do you think it's even possible to have a completely isolated, 100% individualist, purely self-run project?
3. Why do you think the authors decided to structure this publication as a series of quotes rather than a traditional essay?
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Response to Ashali's Question
1. Do you think the opening scene of a movie with using a metaphor is or is one of the most powerful ways to set the tone for the rest of the movie/documentary/program?
An opening scene is crucial to get right because it sets the tone for the rest of the movie, but also allows for the most freedom of content and film making because there is nothing that comes before it (unlike in a conclusion) to hold it accountable to depicting certain themes, tying certain loose ends, or portraying a nice denouement.
Let's consider a type of film that does opening scenes right: 007 films. In Bond films, the opening scene is all about high-adrenaline action. The story hasn't even started yet, and it seems the filmmakers want to have fun concocting the most outrageous and awesome action sequences before story constrains them. While I'm sure there are metaphors that link the opening to the rest of the film, a metaphorical depiction is not the purpose of the 007 openings.
Now, consider the film W. that does open with a metaphor that is returned to throughout the movie. We see W. in a baseball field going back to catch a fly ball. The metaphor acts as a unifying agent throughout the movie, as it ends with a similar situation. It works, kind of. Personally, I prefer a high-octane intro that gets me on the edge of my seat rather than some metaphor that, at least at the get-go, leads to nowhere.
An opening scene is crucial to get right because it sets the tone for the rest of the movie, but also allows for the most freedom of content and film making because there is nothing that comes before it (unlike in a conclusion) to hold it accountable to depicting certain themes, tying certain loose ends, or portraying a nice denouement.
Let's consider a type of film that does opening scenes right: 007 films. In Bond films, the opening scene is all about high-adrenaline action. The story hasn't even started yet, and it seems the filmmakers want to have fun concocting the most outrageous and awesome action sequences before story constrains them. While I'm sure there are metaphors that link the opening to the rest of the film, a metaphorical depiction is not the purpose of the 007 openings.
Now, consider the film W. that does open with a metaphor that is returned to throughout the movie. We see W. in a baseball field going back to catch a fly ball. The metaphor acts as a unifying agent throughout the movie, as it ends with a similar situation. It works, kind of. Personally, I prefer a high-octane intro that gets me on the edge of my seat rather than some metaphor that, at least at the get-go, leads to nowhere.
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Hampe Questions
1. Stephen King once wrote: "To write is human, to edit is divine." How might this belief hold true for documentary-making? How might it apply differently for documentary films rather than novels?
2. Hampe says to "recognize that some ideas just aren't visual ideas" (54). What is a visual idea? What are components most good visual ideas share?
3. Hampe writes, "It takes time, training, and experience to look at your own work and see it for what it is" (57). What argument about intent and evidence does this quote relate to? Why is there a tendency to read evidence into film based upon intent, and how can we combat this intent?
2. Hampe says to "recognize that some ideas just aren't visual ideas" (54). What is a visual idea? What are components most good visual ideas share?
3. Hampe writes, "It takes time, training, and experience to look at your own work and see it for what it is" (57). What argument about intent and evidence does this quote relate to? Why is there a tendency to read evidence into film based upon intent, and how can we combat this intent?
Handball and Hampe
I had a cool new experience last week interviewing on TV, which you can watch here. Go to Episode 5. Handball footage starts around 2 minutes 30 seconds, then starts again around 10:40.
My brother and I cofounded the Illini Handball Club, and serendipity just so had it that one of our members is a TV producer.
Now handball is a fantastic sport. I grew up playing sports and handball is the best. It's the most technical, the most physically demanding, the most fun.
The problem is, handball is not the most exciting game to watch. In fact, there's a near-unnavigable chasm separating the enjoyment one gets playing handball versus the snooze-fest one enjoys watching it. I imagined it would be even worse to capture it on camera -- yet another mediator diluting the joy of actually being in the court and smacking the ball.
And I was right. The footage of us actually "in action" and playing the game is spotty. The girls filming were getting bored so they let the camera wiggle.
As Hampe writes in Visual Evidence, "It is the actual scene as it's recorded on film or videotape that has to provide the visual evidence for the audience of what occurred while you were there" (p. 53) And that's it. The film of choppy footage of a seemingly mildly enjoyable game is all we have to convince people to come to Handball Club. You can barely see the ball in the video. Maybe my interview made up for the gap between playing, watching, and watching on video. But I was pretty nervous...
But I swear it's a great game. I do! I do!
My brother and I cofounded the Illini Handball Club, and serendipity just so had it that one of our members is a TV producer.
Now handball is a fantastic sport. I grew up playing sports and handball is the best. It's the most technical, the most physically demanding, the most fun.
The problem is, handball is not the most exciting game to watch. In fact, there's a near-unnavigable chasm separating the enjoyment one gets playing handball versus the snooze-fest one enjoys watching it. I imagined it would be even worse to capture it on camera -- yet another mediator diluting the joy of actually being in the court and smacking the ball.
And I was right. The footage of us actually "in action" and playing the game is spotty. The girls filming were getting bored so they let the camera wiggle.
As Hampe writes in Visual Evidence, "It is the actual scene as it's recorded on film or videotape that has to provide the visual evidence for the audience of what occurred while you were there" (p. 53) And that's it. The film of choppy footage of a seemingly mildly enjoyable game is all we have to convince people to come to Handball Club. You can barely see the ball in the video. Maybe my interview made up for the gap between playing, watching, and watching on video. But I was pretty nervous...
But I swear it's a great game. I do! I do!
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Marathon Talking Script
I followed this script tightly in some places, loosely in others in order to make it more "talky." Only some of the sound effects are noted.
BANG
A sea of thirty-three thousand push towards the start, a surreal mass of lean butts, bunchy calves, and nervous chatter. To our left looms the Chicago skyline. We inch towards the start line, and it is here I realize that this run…well, it's going to be different. Now, I didn't cry when Bambi's mom died. But right now there's tears burning my eyes. I can't stop grinning. And as our chips bleep activation as we cross the start, a crazy, wild thought slips through my head: I think: Man, this is so cool that 26.2 might not be enough.
Boy was I wrong.
Mile 1: We gallop into the tunnel. I'm weaving in and out of runners (Excuse me, pardon me) – lateral movements that will only increase the already daunting distance. (Mile 2) But I can't slow down. It's magic: the runners' whoops and yells creating a distortion that knots us all together. (Mile 3) The flushed crowd pressed against the sides of the course.
Cow bells chime. Posters flap in the wind. (Mile 4) "Go runners!"
I see a man in an Illinois shirt. "I-L-L" I yell. (Mile 5)
"Free Beer, Free Beer." Four young men are handing out Natty Light. (Mile 6)
We pass bands – "Ain't nothin' but a hound dog" (Mile 7, Mile 8, Mile 9)
Cheerleaders – "2-4-6-8 Who do we appreciate! Runners, runners, goooooooo runners!"
Mile 10 (Mile 10): Chicago-strong. The city of my birth, of Byron's hot dogs, (Mile 11) my Navy Pier prom, of Cubby blue (Mile 12) and fat cat crime. This…this is finally really it. (Mile 13)
And then I hit halfway. The surreal cloud nine that carried me here goes out with a (Poof) and now there's only this searing sun of late morning. My legs ache. (Mile 14, Mile 15, Mile 16) "Go Eric!" My mom and dad. Gulp back the pain, run over, give my dad a high five.
(Mile 17) From the loudspeaker: "We have now elevated the alert level from yellow to Red." Red is one level below black, which means race cancellation.
(Mile 18) I yell at myself: "Come on you will-less, pathetic noodle. Tenacity!"
(Mile 19) My endurance is gone. I've got nothing left for these seven miles.
(Mile 20) : I take a mental snapshot of myself. There's the hot puddle my right foot keeps squishing in. (Mile 21) Probably blood. There's the spasms that freeze my whole leg at once. Can't bend my knee. I have to stop and stretch it out. (Mile 22) But it keeps coming back. It's then that I realize that a Marathon is little more than four months dieting on bite-sized pieces of self-inflicted pain (Mile 23) to prepare yourself for a big wallop of hurt that hits you with a sledgehammer. (Mile 24)
Screw Chicago. Screw it. Screw it all. The pain, the heat, the puddle of blood in my right shoe. Just let me stop. Just let me rest. (Mile 25) I have nothing left. I am slowing down. People I've passed are passing me. Old people, overweight people, nails in my pride. I am too exhausted to do anything about it.
(Mile 26) The finish line. A corral of screaming people. I kick, pump, eyes burning towards the end and kill the Joker who tacked on that last .2
I realize how, dreamless, helpless, how simple my life is. The pain has whittled away my dreams. I haven't been this happy in years.
BANG
A sea of thirty-three thousand push towards the start, a surreal mass of lean butts, bunchy calves, and nervous chatter. To our left looms the Chicago skyline. We inch towards the start line, and it is here I realize that this run…well, it's going to be different. Now, I didn't cry when Bambi's mom died. But right now there's tears burning my eyes. I can't stop grinning. And as our chips bleep activation as we cross the start, a crazy, wild thought slips through my head: I think: Man, this is so cool that 26.2 might not be enough.
Boy was I wrong.
Mile 1: We gallop into the tunnel. I'm weaving in and out of runners (Excuse me, pardon me) – lateral movements that will only increase the already daunting distance. (Mile 2) But I can't slow down. It's magic: the runners' whoops and yells creating a distortion that knots us all together. (Mile 3) The flushed crowd pressed against the sides of the course.
Cow bells chime. Posters flap in the wind. (Mile 4) "Go runners!"
I see a man in an Illinois shirt. "I-L-L" I yell. (Mile 5)
"Free Beer, Free Beer." Four young men are handing out Natty Light. (Mile 6)
We pass bands – "Ain't nothin' but a hound dog" (Mile 7, Mile 8, Mile 9)
Cheerleaders – "2-4-6-8 Who do we appreciate! Runners, runners, goooooooo runners!"
Mile 10 (Mile 10): Chicago-strong. The city of my birth, of Byron's hot dogs, (Mile 11) my Navy Pier prom, of Cubby blue (Mile 12) and fat cat crime. This…this is finally really it. (Mile 13)
And then I hit halfway. The surreal cloud nine that carried me here goes out with a (Poof) and now there's only this searing sun of late morning. My legs ache. (Mile 14, Mile 15, Mile 16) "Go Eric!" My mom and dad. Gulp back the pain, run over, give my dad a high five.
(Mile 17) From the loudspeaker: "We have now elevated the alert level from yellow to Red." Red is one level below black, which means race cancellation.
(Mile 18) I yell at myself: "Come on you will-less, pathetic noodle. Tenacity!"
(Mile 19) My endurance is gone. I've got nothing left for these seven miles.
(Mile 20) : I take a mental snapshot of myself. There's the hot puddle my right foot keeps squishing in. (Mile 21) Probably blood. There's the spasms that freeze my whole leg at once. Can't bend my knee. I have to stop and stretch it out. (Mile 22) But it keeps coming back. It's then that I realize that a Marathon is little more than four months dieting on bite-sized pieces of self-inflicted pain (Mile 23) to prepare yourself for a big wallop of hurt that hits you with a sledgehammer. (Mile 24)
Screw Chicago. Screw it. Screw it all. The pain, the heat, the puddle of blood in my right shoe. Just let me stop. Just let me rest. (Mile 25) I have nothing left. I am slowing down. People I've passed are passing me. Old people, overweight people, nails in my pride. I am too exhausted to do anything about it.
(Mile 26) The finish line. A corral of screaming people. I kick, pump, eyes burning towards the end and kill the Joker who tacked on that last .2
I realize how, dreamless, helpless, how simple my life is. The pain has whittled away my dreams. I haven't been this happy in years.
Marathon Audio Reflection
Before the fatigue castrated all other thoughts from my head, I kept thinking about the blend of high-energy sounds from runners and crowd not only electrified the Chicago Marathon but would also make for a fun audio project.
The challenge was, of course, recreating as best I could in a woefully small time frame the skyscrapers and deep trenches of emotional tumult that I went through running. I also wanted to recreate key sounds of the race, especially those that somehow linked to the emotion of it. Because the collective emotion is really what makes running 26.2 miles special and horrible. I decided to roughly use a 60 to 1 scale. For every minute running the real marathon, a single second of audio would play.
But this scale did little to infuse the emotion of the race. So one crucial strategy that helped me negotiate the contrast of size as well as emotional infusion was following a blueprint of tempo. When running, the pace you're going correlates with your emotional superstructure. So I figured by talking fast during the beginning, I could capture the excitement that strapped a rocket to my back and made the first half of the marathon a joyous flight. During the first half, I was acutely aware of the cheering crowd, the sounds they made and the things they did. After training primarily alone on Los Angeles beaches and in Champaign cornfields, having a crowd to cheer me on was energizing.
I also decided to record two separate tracks: one of me speaking with vocal inflections that match the emotional state, the other a more monotone mile marker that counts from one to 26. That way, the tracks would grate against each other. Sometimes, the mile marker interjects mid sentence, which I though was an accurate representation of the way the miles bleed into the runner's reasoning in a way that both structures and unravels thought – structures, because at each marker I knew I was one closer to the end; unravels, because there are so many markers that they seem infinite and you have no beginning and this race will never end and all your world is a gutting-out of pain so as to avoid embarrassment and cash out on all the training. While running, I welcomed and despised each mile marker. It was like: "Yes, I'm finally half-way! But dammit, I'm only halfway and I want to quit now!"
But by 13.1 miles, halfway, the race changed as if night and day. I no longer cared about the crowd, so I took its screams and hoots out without fade. I began to realize my various aches that got worse and worse. I breathed harder and harder, thus the breathing soundtrack (that I got lightheaded making). I began to beat myself up in order to force myself to keep going. I focused on my own world, no longer mesmerized by running in the Chicago loop. I don't think I even heard my footsteps. Just my pulse thudding in my head and the indescribable fatigue. In this case, less was more, especially when the second half's "bare bones" presentation is done in light of the first half's pizazz.
A psychoanalyst or dirty-minded college kid might find the intensifying breathing around mile 26 a bit orgastic. I thought about dialing it down, but found the sexual innuendo a fitting twist on traditional emotions associated with physical excess. After all, the flood of endorphins that swarm your brain is the highest high; the aches and pains are the lowest low. Marathon running is a blending of binary oppositions. One that twists your mind and guts your will for a long, long time.
The Marathon is the hardest thing I've ever done, but that statement does little to recreate just what I felt when. This project, with all the bells and whistles of sound editing, helped me recreate the awful prospect of being absolutely physically taxed yet still having a gut-wrenching distance to run. Despite the challenge, when sitting here and writing about it or creating an audio presentation, I still can't completely remember just what it felt like. Memory does a disservice by recalling only the parts of the race I emphasized in the audio, and not those long gaps when I was just a slow moving figure of bright and glorious agony. It can't recreate just how long the race was. A good thing, yes, but also a dangerous one.
Because now that I can walk again. I can't wait to do another one. If only to find out how to more accurately recreate the race in a space far too small.
The challenge was, of course, recreating as best I could in a woefully small time frame the skyscrapers and deep trenches of emotional tumult that I went through running. I also wanted to recreate key sounds of the race, especially those that somehow linked to the emotion of it. Because the collective emotion is really what makes running 26.2 miles special and horrible. I decided to roughly use a 60 to 1 scale. For every minute running the real marathon, a single second of audio would play.
But this scale did little to infuse the emotion of the race. So one crucial strategy that helped me negotiate the contrast of size as well as emotional infusion was following a blueprint of tempo. When running, the pace you're going correlates with your emotional superstructure. So I figured by talking fast during the beginning, I could capture the excitement that strapped a rocket to my back and made the first half of the marathon a joyous flight. During the first half, I was acutely aware of the cheering crowd, the sounds they made and the things they did. After training primarily alone on Los Angeles beaches and in Champaign cornfields, having a crowd to cheer me on was energizing.
I also decided to record two separate tracks: one of me speaking with vocal inflections that match the emotional state, the other a more monotone mile marker that counts from one to 26. That way, the tracks would grate against each other. Sometimes, the mile marker interjects mid sentence, which I though was an accurate representation of the way the miles bleed into the runner's reasoning in a way that both structures and unravels thought – structures, because at each marker I knew I was one closer to the end; unravels, because there are so many markers that they seem infinite and you have no beginning and this race will never end and all your world is a gutting-out of pain so as to avoid embarrassment and cash out on all the training. While running, I welcomed and despised each mile marker. It was like: "Yes, I'm finally half-way! But dammit, I'm only halfway and I want to quit now!"
But by 13.1 miles, halfway, the race changed as if night and day. I no longer cared about the crowd, so I took its screams and hoots out without fade. I began to realize my various aches that got worse and worse. I breathed harder and harder, thus the breathing soundtrack (that I got lightheaded making). I began to beat myself up in order to force myself to keep going. I focused on my own world, no longer mesmerized by running in the Chicago loop. I don't think I even heard my footsteps. Just my pulse thudding in my head and the indescribable fatigue. In this case, less was more, especially when the second half's "bare bones" presentation is done in light of the first half's pizazz.
A psychoanalyst or dirty-minded college kid might find the intensifying breathing around mile 26 a bit orgastic. I thought about dialing it down, but found the sexual innuendo a fitting twist on traditional emotions associated with physical excess. After all, the flood of endorphins that swarm your brain is the highest high; the aches and pains are the lowest low. Marathon running is a blending of binary oppositions. One that twists your mind and guts your will for a long, long time.
The Marathon is the hardest thing I've ever done, but that statement does little to recreate just what I felt when. This project, with all the bells and whistles of sound editing, helped me recreate the awful prospect of being absolutely physically taxed yet still having a gut-wrenching distance to run. Despite the challenge, when sitting here and writing about it or creating an audio presentation, I still can't completely remember just what it felt like. Memory does a disservice by recalling only the parts of the race I emphasized in the audio, and not those long gaps when I was just a slow moving figure of bright and glorious agony. It can't recreate just how long the race was. A good thing, yes, but also a dangerous one.
Because now that I can walk again. I can't wait to do another one. If only to find out how to more accurately recreate the race in a space far too small.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Response to Glenn's Question
2. Why is it that reality t.v. is scene as truth even thought it all could very well be scripted or planned? Does the fact it is live change the situation and add that element of reality or is it something more?
Ah, so the gig is up on reality tv. You mean to say it's not all unscripted? Honestly, I don't think reality TV is seen as truth, but as a simulation of "Worst Case Scenarios" and dramatized incidents of otherwise mundane occurrences that are consistent in the environment of reality TV. It's not that our own lives are too boring to simply be filmed a la Truman Show, but that the creation of "reality" at least so that it is consistent with the hyperbolized drama of related events needs to be molded to our expectations: some sort of story line, resolutions to problems, all fitting within the commercial breaks.
Ah, so the gig is up on reality tv. You mean to say it's not all unscripted? Honestly, I don't think reality TV is seen as truth, but as a simulation of "Worst Case Scenarios" and dramatized incidents of otherwise mundane occurrences that are consistent in the environment of reality TV. It's not that our own lives are too boring to simply be filmed a la Truman Show, but that the creation of "reality" at least so that it is consistent with the hyperbolized drama of related events needs to be molded to our expectations: some sort of story line, resolutions to problems, all fitting within the commercial breaks.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Hampe Questions
1. What is more effective: a spontaneous interview or one in which the interviewee gets to prep some responses from a list of questions? How does the latter method either enhance or constrain the dialogue of the interview?
2. If you could interview one person, who would it be? What would you ask him/her? What strategies would you use to prepare for and conduct the interview?
3. Recall a very good interview that you watched/read. What made it so good? Now recall a bad one. What made it so bad?
2. If you could interview one person, who would it be? What would you ask him/her? What strategies would you use to prepare for and conduct the interview?
3. Recall a very good interview that you watched/read. What made it so good? Now recall a bad one. What made it so bad?
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Response to Glenn's Question
1. Have you ever had to do a project that included sound, such as a movie or song. If so, were you conscious of the sound being used or was it simply that it was there?
For an English class, twice. I've made two movies. It's amazing how much more involved students get when there is the movie or song project. I remember devoting my entire weekend to making the movie, "Transcendentalist Hunter," and being thrilled rather than pissed off, which I would be if I spent all weekend writing a paper.
Sound was probably the most fun part. From the gunshots, to the slow motion sloggy sounds, to the soundracks, adding sound was an integral component that really made the project feel alive. For the second movie I made, I actually wrote my own soundtrack, recorded it, and exported it into the movie. Not often you see someone get writing, directing, acting, editing, and Music By credits. Ahem. Yeah, but I did. And it was glorious. Now where's my seven figure contract and bottle of spring water?
For an English class, twice. I've made two movies. It's amazing how much more involved students get when there is the movie or song project. I remember devoting my entire weekend to making the movie, "Transcendentalist Hunter," and being thrilled rather than pissed off, which I would be if I spent all weekend writing a paper.
Sound was probably the most fun part. From the gunshots, to the slow motion sloggy sounds, to the soundracks, adding sound was an integral component that really made the project feel alive. For the second movie I made, I actually wrote my own soundtrack, recorded it, and exported it into the movie. Not often you see someone get writing, directing, acting, editing, and Music By credits. Ahem. Yeah, but I did. And it was glorious. Now where's my seven figure contract and bottle of spring water?
Monday, October 6, 2008
Literariness in Videogames
This New York Times article on "The Future of Reading" is pure INFO 390 in 10 years. It discusses how videogames not only are a gateway drug into reading, but how print is merging with videogames to create environments as complex as those created by literary megaliths, with benefits: games are interactive, you can fail at games, and you can control the story.
Reading isn't dead. It's just changing forms, slowly but surely.
Reading isn't dead. It's just changing forms, slowly but surely.
Sound-storm
Speaking of sounds.
This summer I was in Comalapa, Guatemala doing some voluntourism. When I wasn't busy noticing the rampant third-world poverty or choking back vomit during hairpin turns over mountain roads, one of the greatest differences was the immersion in a whole new environment of sounds.
Night sounds, in particular, were the scariest. You wouldn't believe how blood-curdlingly loud a rooster is at 5 a.m. Fireworks exploded at all hours of the night; Comalapans were always celebrating something. Then there were market days, where rows of tiendas lined the streets and vendors shouted out at we white -- and thus obviously rich -- tourists wandering about.
Sounds were integral to sustaining the difference of the environment. Sounds notched up the intensity of the foreign-factor. Sounds were constant reminders that we were far away from the shady boulevards back home, quiet at all hours.
Shipka Questions
1. Shipka writes: "A potential difficulty is encountered, however, as many of the “wide and alertly chosen materials” students may draw upon while composing multimodal texts are often equated with playing, or with artist- or childlike expressions of feelings and emotions—this as opposed to the communication of scholarly, rigorous arguments or ideas, something more often associated with the production of linear, print-based texts" (p. 2). What does she mean? What are the differences between the materials conducive to "childlike play" and those conducive to "scholarly, rigorous arguments or ideas"? Is one method of representation better than the other?
2. By arguing in favor of "activity-based multimodal courses," Shipka reacts against the traditional "five-paragraph essay." What points does she make in favor of activity-based multimodal courses? Do you agree or disagree, and to what extent? Argue for or against the form of thinking the five-paragraph paper prescribes in relation to her more amorphous lessons.
3. You're the teacher. Who gets the higher grade: Dan or Val? Why?
2. By arguing in favor of "activity-based multimodal courses," Shipka reacts against the traditional "five-paragraph essay." What points does she make in favor of activity-based multimodal courses? Do you agree or disagree, and to what extent? Argue for or against the form of thinking the five-paragraph paper prescribes in relation to her more amorphous lessons.
3. You're the teacher. Who gets the higher grade: Dan or Val? Why?
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