9/8/16

 

In Fraser's article, she discusses the problems with the Public Sphere in a post-modern society--for example, she discusses the inequalities present in society and how that doesn't make an open, equal forum of discussion possible. She mentions the disadvantages of women and people of color have in the public sphere because a public sphere would require those inequalities to vanish under the bracket of discussion, however, those differences (or inequalities) exist even withing the public sphere. In order to create a public sphere, we must first eliminate the inequalities present. She also emphasizes that multiple public spheres of discussion exist among each other and that there is no one sphere--this is due in part because of the class, racial, gender, etc. differences present in society. Examples she provides include gov't spheres, multi-media spheres, etc. 

 

 

9/12/16

 

 

One of the take-aways from the reading was the art of interviewing--I had not considered it so intricate. In order to have a successful interview is making the interviewee conformable with you in order to make the story flow freely. It also helps if the interviewer can get the interviewee to act out exactly how the story went. I also didn't realize that the process of editing was so intense on a radio show--I assumed it would be a lot like editing an essay. I liked how they broke down the steps from taking notes on the entire audio recording, organizing the story in a way that engages the listener, and then recording it. One of the most surprising things I saw in the text is the process of making the radio show "sound good," as in making sure there are breaths and pauses in the right places. For example, Abel talks about how breaths are usually after each sentence and a pause can be used to create a dramatic effect. One of the other major takeaways I noticed was the importance of music in the show. Certain music tracks could be accompanying the story, work in between different parts of the story, or stop suddenly to give a dramatic effect to an important part of the story. These are subtle way of manipulating the audience to pay attention to certain things. I was overall impressed with the text, I didn't think I would learn so much from it.

 

9/15/16

 

I don't think I faced any difficulty writing this poem--I actually couldn't wait to do it. I like writing in a poem format because it gives me the opportunity to play around with language and make my story as descriptive or as vague as possible. I think the most challenging part was having to delete lines I wrote because they didn't fit well with the rest. The minute this was assigned I started writing lines in my head--however most of the lines came in the moment. I definitely had to think "which experiences am I going to keep and which ones am I going to have to delete?" It made me more aware of what aspects of my life were too important to take out. To decide what I was comfortable sharing, I just thought about all the things my friends know about it--it seemed like I could share all of that., although there were things I wanted to keep secret. I think I definitely have a few stories that would be more revealing of me and who I have become, however, those stories wouldn't be easy to share in a poem style. Overall, I had a fun time writing this, I wish I had more time to make it longer and add depth. 

 

9/19/16

 

How do you decide what to tell and what to keep a secret?

Are there any aspects of the story you altered for the sake of privacy or did you just omit it?

Do you prefer getting more personal questions rather to fact-based ones?

Do you feel comfortable answering questions which you know will cause you to be emotional? Do you ever think that you may want to share that experience for the sake of telling your story in the best capacity?

Do you ever feel like certain interviews have cut out major parts of your story and have you ever requested an interview to be changed?

Are you ever worried that an interviewer will try to twist your story into something you didn't intend it to be?

How do we support you if you are getting emotional? 

Are you okay with me getting emotional?

Does sharing your story empower you?

 

 

9/26/16

 

I think the biggest piece of advice we received was to do your research before coming into the interview. I think it says a lot about your work ethic as well as your dedication to telling the interviewees story. I also like how Chanda and Sana both reminded us not to exploit the interviewee's situation, obviously what that undergone is horribly sad, but that doesn't mean we get to paint them as a victim. I think they really made it clear that we shouldn't videotape them being emotional or crying. It was important to remember that the importance of this project is to empower these people who have undergone these tragedies. That's something I definitely want to remember as I'm interviewing, as I'm editing, and even later on in life. 

 

The feedback I received was generally positive. The song in the background was good and at a good volume. They also said my story was easy to listen to and very engaging. They also told me my last line was memorable. Some suggestions I got were to turn down my music at certain important parts and to let the end fade out so there isn't an awkward 30 seconds of just music. I plan on doing both of those things in my revision but I also plan to change the style of my narration so it's more in chronological order and more specific. Hearing my peers do thier stories, I noticed how they both immediately connected with the audience so that's something I want to try as well.

 

 

10/13/16

 

 

In chapter 4 of Abel's book, the author emphasizes the importance of creating a story structure that captures the listener's attention. The best thing to do is to keep the story in chronological order and add parts of reflection within the narrative. Reflection is a key aspect to the story, but you should always let the interviewee rather than the interviewer make the reflection. They should be the ones the audience connects with. It is also your job to make sure the listener can follow what you are saying--always repeat key aspects. As an interviewer you should also emphasize certain parts of the narrative by asking questions or repeating things for clarification.  If you happen to find yourself lost while trying to put together a story, try to remember the parts of the narrative that you initially found interesting and work from there.

 

Reading this chapter made me really glad that I asked the interviewees for their final message instead of offering up my own. One of the struggles of having two people's stories to tell is that it is more difficult to put it into a chronological order because different parts of each story overlap. That means we might have to get creative when editing it all down. Because we interviewed two people (and accounting for the time the translator needed to translate), we didn't get as much reflection as we did the story--that's also something we're going to have to figure out. In order to point viewers in the right direction, I want to emphasize in the video the parts the two women emphasized in person. For example, Ma Sarah kept repeating "we really suffered," and I think that's something we should make a point about. 

 

10/24/16

 

Sound is referred to as the Deep Sea because it lies under the surface of the story, yet it is tied into the story. Sound is how the story is made impactful. Using sound correctly, like added sound effects amplifies the story and doesn't overpower it. Another important aspect is making sure music does not impose the "feeling" of the story on the listener from the creator. Instead, music should act as a placeholder and a way to keep the audience waiting and yearning for more. Sound effects operate in a different way--it is their job to make the story more tangible and believable to the listener. In the book, the author describes how the radio show creator used the sounds of keys, footsteps, and the crunching of a pillow to create the sound that was being described in the story about the shooter. In terms of our video stories, we can use music to set the place with different parts of the story--meaning more upbeat music for action parts and more gentle music for sadder parts. We can also use sound effects to display some of the imagery the community members describe: like shooting and running. 

 

11/3/16

 

The purpose of the "edit" is to get feedback on the work you are currently doing. It involves bringing a draft into a room of people, hopefully of different backgrounds and expertise, to respond to your work. The book talks about how they brought in the webmaster because he didn't have a background in literature, so that gave them the perspective of another group of people. The people in the room then pick apart parts of the story so you can get the best possible version possible. Sometimes this can be difficult to hear, however, it is necessary in order to create content that people are interested in. 

 

Framing is about setting the stage for a story. It can help get the message across to the audience. Signposting is when you direct the listen to specific parts of the story. If a certain part of the story is significant or important, This would highlight it and make it understandable to the viewers/listeners. Both work to lead the audience in the right direction of the story and convince the audience of the greater meaning of the story. Both also help to create a better image for the audience, using specific language to keep the listener engaged as well as making them experience the story first hand. 

 

11/10/16

 

My peers seemed to have the same general feedback. Every person commented that they would like to see subtitles, which is something my group has decided to include near the end of the editing process. It also seemed like majority wanted more background information in general--some of the women and what they do now and some of Charles Taylor and other aspects of Liberia. There also seemed to be an agreement that the music was a bit off at the end. We also got someone saying to introduce the translator, which was something that we were thinking about doing. I think a lot of this feedback is part of things that we have been thinking about and discussing so I think we can address a majority of these issues.

 

The feedback from my outside viewer was a little different. I don't think the situation in Liberia was entirely clear to her, and that's definitely something I think we need to address more (and consistently throughout the video). She also shared with me that the stories themselves were very impactful. She was also very passionate about the mention of PTSD. I think our video can do more to elaborate on that. She also thought the shakers at the end were confusing. I think these are all reasonable things that we can definitely try to address in our next revision. 

 

11/14/16

 

Oral history is the telling of stories through mouth and spreading those stories throughout generations in that method. In many ways, documenting oral history is difficult because there’s a lot of information to process. “A co-constructed process of narrative composition” means that the process of this narrative does not belong to one person: it takes the person sharing the story and the person condensing the story into a viewable format. It is only when these two pieces work together and listen to each other that they can form a narrative. To “map coherence” onto the “disorder of lived experience” means to try to make sense of life. This is tricky because the twists of life don’t often make sense to us—it’s difficult for the producer to create “a lesson” or a meaning from this person’s life. The implications of these questions are that we got a lot of work to do—we should keep in mind the vision and the emotions of the community partners. We will also struggle with trying to make sense of the narratives we got.

 

This project reminded me of the importance of both visual and audial text as independent variables. It worked well to have only some audio pieces among the pictures—it made me look at what was in front of me and interact with the materials. Also, because it is not a typical format for storytelling, it captures your attention and forces you to put together the little pieces of someone’s life story. The project helped me think about public audience and the importance of presenting material that they can interact and engage. It also means accommodating for various audiences: perhaps some prefer audio over visual. With a more flexible format, you can create a piece that is engaging to a wide variety of people. This project makes me realize how difficult it is to represent someone’s life—the various pieces of the Olive Project came together to form a story. However, with a video, we have to be careful to pick the pieces that will tell the most honest story—I think that is the most difficult part. The project really forces us to be aware of the choices we make in the editing process and to keep the story about the subjects, not about us. I definitely think that’s something that my group struggles with—what do we include that will do justice to Ma Sarah’s and Mama Sania’s Story? I think that this project brings that question into light. Just as Erin struggled to create a cohesive story, we also have to work hard to create their stories.

 

11/17/16

 

1. The purpose of the article was to get the audience to ask more questions about what is multimedia/multimodal/new media work. The article challenged us to think about definitions and to look into the many facets that characterize a definition of a word. Its form helped me understand the purpose because it challenged me to think about multimedia work as I explored a multimedia source. It was a more dynamic learning experience because of this. It was also easy to navigate and handle--at no point did I feel overwhelmed with the information. I think that also speaks to the nature of multimedia work and how it many ways, it helps distribute information in ways a print text cannot. 

 

2. I thought that ham sandwich piece was one of the most interesting, mostly because it's hard to agree with. We all like to believe that our message is our message and many of us will not compromise the integrity of our message to appeal to a boarder audience. However, Palmeri states that if his audience believes his work is a ham sandwich and pay for that, then his work is a sandwich. I like to believe that the opinion of the majority cannot change the nature of my work, but I think Palmeri does bring up an interesting point. Another clip I found interesting was Kress' "a new world." He states that media is called new because it is something we are not used to. I thought that was interesting because when I heard the term "new media" I was really confused by what that meant--I certainly didn't think it was nearly the same as multimodal and multimedia work. I think that's because I am now used to working with multimedia and multimodal work, so that isn't "new" to me. Another clip I liked was by Johnathan Alexander, who stated the difference between multimodal and multimedia. Multimodal is anything with more than one mode, but multimedia only applies to digital multimodal work. I would disagree. In my head, multimedia was anything made with more than one material (like art made of clay and paper for example) and multimodal is something with different modes like audio and video. Perhaps that speaks to the notion that these definitions are dependent on the audience. 

 

11/21/16

 

1. For the video project, our entire group picked out the "scenes" that we showed and figured out what to do with slides and pictures and music. We made all the broad decisions together but we delegated the more tedious work. I was in charge of writing out the subtitles. I also helped write some of the slides to get the wording right. During the interview process, I was the one who met up with the community partners and asked questions during the interview. I think we split up the work pretty evenly, getting down the subtitles of heavily accented English was difficult but not impossible. 

 

2. I really love that there is an overarching theme in the video--I think it was perhaps the most difficult part of creating the video, but once we got that theme everything else just fell into place. I'm also really proud of how we managed to edit it, even when iMovie is being difficult. The part that most displeases me is that we didn't really incorporate the pictures Mama Sania provided us with. We just threw them in at the end, which doesn't look bad, it's just not how I imagined we would do. I also don't like that the historical slides are at the beginning and that there's not really any text slides in the middle of the piece. I think the text should be evenly spread out throughout the video. 

 

3. If I had the opportunity to do this project again, I would use another program. Because I don't have a Mac, I was unfamiliar with iMovie. Even after watching the Lynda tutorials, we still struggled with iMovie and how touchy it is. Also, I thought there was so much useful information in the Out on the Wire book, but it seemed like we were read a chapter when it was too late. For example, we read the chapter on interviewing subjects after some of us had already conducted our interviews. I thinking reading that chapter before the interview would have been incredibly useful--I've had moments after reading a specific section when I thought "oh I wish I did that instead x" or "I should have done y." 

 

12/6/16

 

1. Both of the reflections I viewed today were websites. I really admired how fluid the websites were and how easy it was to navigate them. I also really liked that both included aspects outside the Community Storytelling Project--I think that's something I'm going to try to include in my own reflection because it brings up an excellent point about all the work we've done in this class to reach the learning outcomes. I think I can incorporate the I am From Poem into my section on Metacognitive Knowledge and Writing Process Knowledge. I also try to include the Out on the Wire text in my Writing Process Knowledge because the text was instrumental in creating the final video.

 

2. I plan on editing the audio pieces I recorded and adding in more elements from the class. I also plan on putting together a conclusion for the very last slide of the Prezi to tie everything together. Initially, I didn't think I needed it, but looking back I think it might be necessary. I'm also going to see if I can incorporate video and images into my presentation. I'm not entirely sure Prezi will be able to support that, but I think it will create more concrete examples of how I have achieved the learning outcomes.