I received some feedback today after showing my project to my peers. I have a pretty good rough draft of what my final project will look like because I am completing each leg of the journey in its entirety before moving on. So my ‘rough draft’ is essentially just a third of my completed project, which I think allowed me to get some good opinions on my progress. Most of the feedback was very positive and my group enjoyed my presentation. One of the biggest issues that we discussed was that my destinations in the beginning of the journey can get cluttered at some points, especially in western Europe where each city is located close to each other.

To amend this problem I have decided to reorganize the media associated with each city so that the presentation will zoom to a different frame. I will limit the amount of images that the frame focuses on for each leg of the journey to prevent as much clutter. This makes it easier for the reader to follow the journey, comprehend all of the associated images, and read the short description of each leg of the journey. I now have a basic outline of where the journey is headed, so I am able to determine which parts of the map are in use and which parts can be used to diffuse the clutter.

I will also work on organized the media I have imported so that it is easier to identify with a particular city. While most of my images clearly relate to a specific city, some images could be confused for being associated with another leg of the journey. I will use proximity and alignment to make it more clear which images are associated with which leg of the trip.

After feedback today, I have some revisions to do. Some of the strengths of my draft are the different movies and clips I incorporated to give the video meaning. When I showed my draft, I was worried that the video was a little too cheesy. However, my group said that a little cheese was good and that it was ok in my video.

One of the biggest aspects of my project that I need to revise is the sound. One song is louder than the other. You can’t hear some of the clips because they are too quiet or the song is too loud. I need to get all of the clips in place before I work on changing the levels because I have to split the audio. Revising the sound levels will have to be one of the last changes I make. I also might want to incorporate another song in the middle. In this draft, the music goes abruptly from sad music to uplifting music and I want to have a song in the middle to show the progression in the clips and throughout the video. The next time I work on my project, I will incorporate a new song and line it up with the clips. Once I get everything lined up, I can work on adjusting the sound levels.

Lastly, I need to add a title clip with a title for my video and a end clip with credits. I have to credit the movies and the tv show that I use. I also need to give credit to the songs that I use.

The strengths of my project that I plan on keeping are the current boards that I have. The design choice that was problematic was that Pinterest pins things so that the more recent pin is the last thing you pinned. I ran into problems with this when I wanted things in chronological order. Some of my boards seem out of place, but I am going to think them over and decide if they are worth keeping. I need to remember that while this project is about telling the story it has more to do with how I did it. I want to make sure that it comes across that I did something I enjoy while trying to tell a story through separate boards. I can think about some of my boards as well as continue to work on what I have. If I were to completely revise my story and had the time to do it I would consider doing a different interface as my template. While Pinterest is enjoyable it is not easy to work in or present.

My draft showed the basic idea of my project, but wasn’t anything close to a final product. I think it showed my intentions well and it received positive feedback from my peers. It will be problematic for me to really do a good job making the transition from Ichabod’s diary to Brom’s narrative (if I decide to do that) given that they are probably going to be on different mediums.

I need to change the font and size a bit, as well as include the sketches throughout to break up all the text.

I’d like to try adding background music, but I’m not sure how to do that since wordpress is restrictive and at this point I’m not even sure how to get the flip book into wordpress at all. I’d rather not link to it since FlipSnack’s site doesn’t have the feel I’m looking for. I think I could code a window within a window if wordpress wasn’t so locked down. Right there I have a lot of issues to solve.

Before the next due date I can definitely finish my project, but the final result will be a challenge to fine-tune and perfect.

Here’s the draft.

What I did today:

Today I added more to my script and brainstormed ways to lay it out on the page. The main chunk of my project will be the video news report, but I also think that adding additional elements to the page could be useful. One thing I’m considering doing is making a google map with pins that point to spider-man sitings around campus. Another thing I’m thinking about doing is adding a screenshot of spider-man’s tweets. They will be various funny statements about his doings around campus.

So for my project, the storyboard was hard to familiarize itself with the actual story line of Where the Wild Things Are. It’s been difficult to make it work, and I really don’t want to force anything with it. I still am planning on recreating the visuals in Photoshop. But, I think I am going with my backup plan. I’m not too worried, I know I’ll be able to handle it and catch up. So Max will be in the setting of New York City and he will encounter many “wild things” within the city until he gets back to his home in New Jersey. This will be the “remix” of the story.

I’m going to somehow either put him in a setting in which he’s working for a company–like he’s grown up or him as a kid being overwhelmed by the city life. I’m going to add some of my personal touch within the story since I am from NJ and I love the city, I’ve interned in Manhattan the past two summers.

I feel like there is so much more I can do with this, and I’m exciting to create the illustrations for the story. Part of pf my original plan is still in tact; after creating each page in Photoshop, I plan on uploading them to iMovie of Final Cut. I will do a voice over for all the pages and it will be essentially an e-book that you can watch and listen to online.

Peer revisions helped me realize what about my project works, and what I still need to work on. The draft of the actual copy of my story was strong, and I probably won’t make many changes outside of editing for spelling and grammar. As far as design, my peers felt that it worked overall but some of my images are awkwardly large or blurry. I’m going to try my best to resize some of them – I’ve been working on doing this already, but Creatavist has some constraints that make it difficult to edit images. However, I’ll look on some help sites and see if I can figure out how to make my design look neater. I don’t have much work left to do on my project, so over Thanksgiving break I want to fine-tune as much as possible so it’s ready to go by the time I get back.

Today I worked with Sarah and Ally on our projects.  Both girls gave me good feedback on how to present my timelines to the class and present the final project.

Revision Plan

move the info I started on a google presentation to a google doc

make note cards instead of a presentation for the class presentation

make sure my timelines are horizontally over/under each other so Ms. Traci can easily scroll through the info

make sure my google doc and note cards cover the rhetorical material, style, and modes of communication as well as tie the two cases together

What I Did

I’ve successfully begun to arrange some of the broadcast clips for my project in iMovie. Most of the content will appear towards the end of the video. I’ve been able to find clips for three of the five players featured in the poem. I’ve also added a few slides that contain text to help progress the story and keep it parallel to the poem.

Why I Did It

Finding clips that best represent what is going on in the poem remains the greatest challenge. It will also be necessary to use audio-only in some situations. Audio can help progress the story the same way text and video can.