Movie Making

When we first started working on this assignment, I have to admit that I was a little irritated that we were making a movie. If I had wanted to make movies I would have taken a film class. I don't like being on camera, and therefore quickly suggested to my group that we use puppets to tell our story. Now that we are almost finished putting everything together, I have definitely learned and enjoyed the process. The one thing that is both difficult and a blessing is the fact that this was a group effort. It was difficult in the beginning to find a common storyline to agree on and keep everyone on the same page, however once we started putting it together it was nice to have a balance of talents.

Throughout the process I did notice a few similarities and differences between the movie making process and the writing process. Starting at the beginning, we definitely had to talk out our brainstorming and try to agree on the direction we wanted to go. Once we got into the filming, we had to build an introduction, body of the movie, and then conclude it for the audience. Using a camera and computer programs to create a movie fits right in with our first project of using Ong and various writing technologies. A movie is just one of many ways to tell a story or inform an audience. When we read about McCloud and his comic form of storytelling, we learned a lot about the importance of images. Whether used alone or with text, images are very informative, and a great way to convey an idea to the reader. I find that comics are a median between plain text and movies. While comics typically combine text and images, movies typically omit text and use images and speech.

Videos vs. Writing

After reading the articles and doing the first part of our group video, I'm not so sure that I see the connections between writing and using the video software for projects. I have enjoyed doing the video so far, but it's like the You Tube article explained: we are so used to writing and expressing ourselves in this fashion, that the technology and video process is foreign to us. It's not that we can't do it, but it's a continuous learning experience. While I love using visual images to help express myself, I like it in addition to text. I don't think that using video or low-bridge media is like writing at all. I do agree that in a video you can construct it similarly, with an introduction, body and conclusion, but the creation process I find to be very different. I do agree with Anderson that using this kind of technology is a learning process for both the student and teacher, and it fosters student creativity. There are a lot of benefits in using this software and technology in the classroom, I just don't know about the writing comparison.

Peer Review 3

After going back and looking over my old peer review blogs I found that my opinions and findings are still fairly consistent. I still like Google docs and the many editing features it has. I noticed when reading some of my classmates postings they found the same thing. Overall, I think our class likes this site better than the wiki site. I noticed that some people commented how each peer review seems to get better with the feedback. This could be that we are progressing each time we do it, or it could mean that different people are reviewing our essay and they just happen to give different or better feedback than other students. I know that for this essay I did get good feedback and a few good suggestions for my content and material. This was very helpful. One person gave me a few tips on where to find more info if I want to include it. I also found that I was able to give quite a bit of feedback on each essay I reviewed. This too I find is directly related to each individual essay. Some are much easier to work with than others.