Today in class we got into groups and talked about our projects together. Everyone seemed to like the idea for social media mixed with the story of Beauty and the Beast. I want to work to make sure that the project comes together cleanly. I also want to make sure that all the different types of social media blend together so that there is not a disconnect between the different sites I will be using.

Looking at the other group members projects helped me to gage my progress against theirs. Strangely enough, all the members of my group chose the same topic of Beauty and the Beast for their projects. One member is doing a movie trailer and the other is doing a magazine spread. We discussed the questions in the book and all helped each other think of ideas for the upcoming drafts of our projects.

My project is off to a good start. However, there are lots of improvements that can be made to make it even better. First off, some of my clips feature the Washington Nationals in different colored jerseys and playing against different teams. This could get confusing to the audience despite the broadcast running parallel to the poem in the baseball situations. A way I found to combat this is to take clips from a WHOLE game broadcast instead of just highlights. This will keep the uniforms and teams consistent. The difficult part of this will be using QuickTime to take both screen recordings and audio recordings and putting them together.

I will also not be using text in any of the transition slides. Instead, I will be doing strictly my own voiceovers.

Revision Plan

Today mostly concentrated on what I needed to get done, as I didn’t have much to show people. Everything I’ve got is in Word Document form, which isn’t impressive. However, by the end of the day, I have already put together my Prezi (with nothing actually in it yet, but it’s getting there. Also, I’ve made an awful lot of progress on the big pieces. So basically the plan is the keep going with what I’ve got. Chipping away. At my soul….. Nevermind.

Progress

Today, this….

Became this. See? Getting things done.

After discussing and sharing what I had so far for my project, my reviewer had little in the way of criticisms and recommendations as my project currently stands. However, he did ask how I planned to put together my video (what program, filming techniques, etc.) and how the audience would know the references to the Jack Tales that I was using (i.e. will the audience know the original stories and understand the remix?)

My plan for revision:

To answer these questions, I am revising my project plan to make the story as easy as possible to follow by making it so that an uninformed audience understands it as a complete mash of other stories into an original production. I will accomplish this through the opening tittles and credits by referencing the works I have pulled from, as well as stating that the film is a remix/mash of the stories told by the authors cited in the credits. Additionally, I have revised my project timeline to push back filming and video editing to next week, but voice-over work, narration audio recording and soundtrack work will take place this week and over the weekend.

Revision Plan

After discussing my project with my peers, I have revised slightly the plan for my project.  I am planning to compile all of the Instagram images for my project over the Thanksgiving break.  I hope to create captions that tell the story and recruit more followers to the account.  Since I still have a lot of work to do on my project before it is complete,  my peers were only able to comment on the progress that I have made thus far.

1. Strengths to keep

The mapped version of the Instagram account was appreciated.

2. Design Problems

Both Instagram and Presi are limited in their abilities and are both weak social media platforms.  By combining the platforms, I am using Presi to display the map version of Instagram available only on the Instagram application not on the website.

3. Rhetorical Choices

Since the audience of my project is Virginia Tech college students (particularly Freshman), prospective students, and the associated social media community, I plan to use simple day to day language.  Since most of the rhetoric for this project will be in my Instagram captions, I plan to use a variety of @Tags and #Tags.

4. Multimodal elements

In consideration of the need for gestural mode on my Instagram account.  I have decided to try and capture some video footage.

5. Most Important Changes

I need to finish my project by uploading all my photos to Instagram.  I need to gather more followers on Instagram so that I can increase my likes.  Finally, I need to input the images to Presi.

6. Time Constraints

Due to my planned Thanksgiving vacation, I plan to have all of the images I need for the project before Friday, November 19, 2014.

 

As far as my project goes, I don’t think there’s a whole lot of need for revision. The only parts that aren’t meeting my standards are the ones limited by the constraints of the actual tool I’m using. After talking with my peer editing group, we decided that the strongest part of my project is the dialogue between the characters. I’m really going to play up on the dialogue and continue to strengthen it because it is the one aspect of the project that I have complete control over in the tool. I’m also making use of images to show what Beast is buying Belle to win her attention so that visual aspect will break up some of the text on the page and give some color as well. I was going to try a YouTube video on Belle’s wall to add the musical aspect in as well but I don’t think the tool supports it. Instead, I’m going to have Beast post some lines of poetry on her wall, finally winning her favor. I’ll also have Gaston interrupt and try to discredit him and Belle shut him down to show she’s starting to give in to Beast.

I am still in the midst of finalizing how I am going to do my project. I met with the other group members to go over my final plane before I start. They helped me with my project and offered their ideas and how to revise my project.

There were some strengths and weaknesses they saw with my idea and how I was going about my project. They loved my idea and how I was going to do it. They thought using iMovie and incorporating Finding Nemo would be great and I could execute it to how I said I was going to. They also liked my idea of mixing the story up and adding an alternate ending.

The part of my project where they felt needed work was in the middle of my video. I told them my overall storyboard and when I was going to include things but they felt if I went away from the story too much then people would lose the concept and I would lose their attention. It would be key for me to stay with what everyone know. Also since I have never used iMovie before that was going to be a bug challenge, they did suggest going to innovation space and working on it there.

After talking with my group they had some great suggestions and also liked where I was headed. They told me to continue what I was doing and go to innovation space if I had any questions or if I wanted to work on the project with people who knew iMovie.

Here’s my revision plan!

My peer reviewers thought that my document was fairly strong. They were a lot more complimentary of my Illustrator drawings than I expected, and they said that everything looked nice. One of them did say that I should add white borders to the smaller images on my cover to make it look more like a tabloid, and I plan to do that as soon as possible. I’d been worried about contrast, and that fix solves that problem while enhancing the tabloid effect. I was a bit unclear about my intended audience, since my original story is for children, but I added adult elements. My group helped me to narrow my audience to adults familiar with the fairy tale. I am also adding an advertisement to the end of the document. I’d been toying with the idea, but my group members made it clear that that would really strengthen the document, so now it’s a priority. As of right now, my top priority is finishing the document, as I still have three two-page spreads and an ad left to do. I think that I will have time to make the revisions, since the ad is already in my plan and the white borders will only take a couple minutes to add. I’m planning on more InnovationSpace marathons this week and the week after break to make sure that everything gets done.

My project is not online, but here are some screenshots of my work! I’ve spent over 12 hours working on this so far, and I’m limited by InnovationSpace’s hours, so please don’t judge how much I have left to do. I’m going right back at it after my lunch today! Also, this computer won’t download my fonts properly for whatever reason, so that’s why a lot of them look awkward and have red highlighting. I promise they work when I do them at InnovationSpace, and I’ll make the pdf from there.

 

Revision Plan:

My group members really liked my script and my ideas. I haven’t been able to shoot the actual video yet so they didn’t have much to say in terms of execution. They said if it all comes together like I explained, it will be an entertaining project. They said make sure to get good shots and edit it well.