writingacrossmediaproject-blog

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This poster project was significantly easier than I thought it would be. I wanted to ensure that it had a professional overall look to give my subject the seriousness that is needed to convey my message. I was pleased with how helpful Crimson Copies was and how well the pictures blew up. Often times when you take a small picture and put it on a large poster you are unable to see the image clearly. My images are a little pixelated but it is still recognizable and does not distract the audience from the message. (Expect when the audience is like Mary Katharine, you, and me who focus on the small details!)  

The target audience for this poster is voting citizens but mostly young adults. That is why it is important to use relevant, relatable material. In order to be taken seriously while talking about memes, I needed the poster to have a professional look. I choose the red and blue background to give it some color against the big blocks of black text. I wanted the background to go from blue to red going left to right to mimic democrat to republican being referred to as the left and the right. Additionally, to keep from being boring, I chose to stager the text and images. The poster is still symmetrical and visually pleasing without overwhelming the viewer with large blocks of text. The explanation for the overall project and what I choose to place on the poster is stretched across the top to emphasize that it is explaining the poster holistically. Then the poster showcases the three projects I have completed during the semester. First, the image and text project is featured in its entirety. This was the obvious choice for this project because it could be translated to a physical platform without changing the content. It would not make sense to use anything else unless I wanted to recreate or edit the meme. Second, putting the audio file on the poster is not possible. In order to visually showcase the audio project, I chose to use pictures of the people who were featured. It adds more to the audio project as well, in that, after listening to the file the audience can superficially compare the two. The reason that is important is that the female subject looks like the intelligent, mature, young women she is but does not sound like in the recording. Additionally, the second subject of the audio project is not what is pictured when someone hears the implied confidence in his voice. Congressmen-elect Johnson is a smaller and somewhat nerdy gentleman but is able to project confidence with how he speaks. Additionally, I added the comical graph to visually represent my assertion that “uptalk” harms the speaker’s creditability. Lastly, the video project also needed to be adapted to be represented in a physical platform. I choose one of my favorite moments from the supercut to highlight what the video is about visually. On the left side, you have a selfie from former Secretary Clinton that is amusing and emphasizes my point. Almost all young adults have a similar picture or image of their parents at the same angle. It shows her lack of intuition when it comes to technology. This is contradicted by the meme-worthy catchphrase on the koozie in the right half of the photo. This highlights my thesis in the supercut that she, like many other politicians, are trying to pander to a group by doing what is popular with the said group.

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https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1R9t0lxD54nBH_AUhH-5CiRVQ_u4R0t1K 

For this project, I decided to stick with my original theme in how politics and politicians are portrayed by popular culture. I choose a few of my favorite clips of Hillary Clinton and her most “cringe-y” moments over the years. I originally wanted to overlay the song “God Bless the USA” to drive the point home more but the supercut of these cringe moments made it a new video enough for this project.

   The goal of this media is to take a group of serious interviews, campaign speeches, ads, and congressional hearings and turn it into a humorous video. The goal is not to persuade the audience to vote for or against anything but to make light of such a divisive time. I very easily could have chosen many other politicians, including our President. However, I thought to make fun of President Trump has been a bit overdone. The goal is to show how powerful politicians are people too. They often make silly sounds and faces. They often, just like our parents, try too hard to seem cool and fit in with their kids. This is especially present in the Clinton campaign because of her need for the young vote. In my original plan to add music was to add even more humor to further play on the fact that this is the type of campaigns that are most common in today’s culture. However, I think the moments themselves show my point enough on their own.

   The ideal audience for this video is young people. The same audience that these cringe moments are often trying to reach as well. I want to point out that politics does not have to be boring CSPAN coverage and that it is often something that should be given attention. Not only can it be amusing but most politicians are counting on young people paying little attention to them. The Clinton campaign knew that young people want a quick clip and someone to connect with on their level. If people do not pay close attention they are more likely to fall trap to the tricks and quips of politicians trying to manipulate public opinion. The response from the audience I want is laughter. I want people to see how stupid some of these attempts to relate are. I want people to expect more from their politicians and themselves. Personally, I think it is insulting that someone assumes that someone I relate to more because they say funny things is how I will choose who I vote for in an election. I want my elected officials to represent me but I also want to know where they stand on the issues they will have control over.

   My inspiration for this video is other videos like this that are supercuts. Our generation is constantly digesting media and news at a rapid rate. Young people get bored very easily. We are constantly multitasking. In order to keep someone’s attention, it is necessary to keep things moving quickly. I would almost say that my video is not going fast enough but I wanted to keep the pace similar between clips.

   In conclusion, the goal was to get people to think but also to laugh. I am obviously biased but I think that politics is important to everyone in this country. We need to give a better effort to be informed about what is being told to us. Question everything. Why are people saying these things and in what way? Why does the fact that she is making meme like jokes important? Further, why did President Trumps no filter attitude connect with the general population? With all the media being thrown our way we need to be conscious consumers of said media.

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I needed to adjust my project a bit due to a shortage of time and a desire to keep the quality high. My goal was to show the difference in how society and people naturally react to different sounds. This project specifically focused on the reactions to vocal tones. Personally, I have had several public speaking lessons. One of the things that I have focused on is the tone of my voice. It has been brought to my attention that I have a “good” speaking voice because it is a lower tone. In the vocal selections I choose, I wanted to highlight how important vocal tones are when trying to convey a message. Especially for older generations, high pitch and unconfident vocal tones are extremely distracting. The way that people interpret how people speak has been studied to explain what that means for society as a whole. This is how my project ties into the class’ overall theme. I think it is an important aspect to think about the desired vocal tones when trying to spread a message. Personally, I think the reason deeper vocal tones is more desirable is that it projects confidence. The high tone, up-talk makes the speaker appear unconfident in what they are saying. This interpretation of vocal tones is not only a comment on our society but it is also an important note about what we value. The need for interpreting vocal tones is how society can determine the validity of an argument being made, the truthfulness of a person, or even the safety of a situation. As we have explored in various aspects of this class and specifically through the reading on sounds, people have a need to understand the world around them. The various interpretations of vocal tones is, more often than not, is based on previous experiences with messages received in those vocal tones. Therefore, knowing the interpretation of vocal tones is important for the speaker and the listener. When constructing a message, the speaker needs to know how they will be preserved and if that is how they want to be interpreted. For example, my project audience is the class but society overall. The audio track I choose was meant to be interactive and create a discussion on how voices affect the delivery of a message. The first vocal sample is a young women scientist being interviewed on Conan. She developed a new technology to keep a phones battery life last longer. She is obviously intelligent but her delivery, especially in the selection I choose, she sounds unintelligent. I decided to add a sound effect to signal the change in examples. To juxtapose the first example, I choose a candidate running for Congress. I choose this example because of the higher tone of his voice. The depth of the voice is less of the difference in these examples. The biggest difference is the confidence in which these two people speak.  

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The way that I decided to convey my message was the use of a somewhat commonly known meme. The goal of this type of media can be multifaceted. For my own project, the goal is humor, connectivity, and understanding. With a quick look that memes are supposed to have, it is first for the value of humor. The idea behind this particular one is relatability, which ties into the third goal of understanding. The audience would be people on social media at large but the main audience would be people in politics like myself. It shows people of similar situations that someone is also thinking that everyone views them in different ways and they are not alone in this feeling of multiple perceptions of their job. This would more than likely appear on social media, where groups of similar interest would connect. For those who would see this image but are not a part of the group it is describing, the goal is to create a bit of understanding. Others may fall into the different categories described and think critically of themselves and how they view politicians. It could create multiple reactions from a person thinking “yes, that is how I view them!” to “Okay, I don’t think they are kick puppies awful!”  The idea behind it and why I choose it to be the first piece of my overall project is it highlights the misunderstandings of people who work in politics.

The way I designed the image was to look similar to the other memes that have been created in the same space. The theory is to have it look much like the other images so that people can automatically know what to expect when they see the image at first glance. Social media and memes are focused on the ability to consume media quickly. I attempted to adhere to the similar look of the meme that I got the idea from but it was difficult to change the pictures to be similar sizes.  I selected the black background with the white colored letters because that is the format in which similar images were created. In this selection, I wanted to keep the theme of other memes so the audience is able to recognize the type of image right away. For a font, I chose the most basic because the font and the text is not the most important part of the overall image. The smaller images in the frame are what is most important. For most similar images, the five or six little pictures are of the same categories: “What my friends think I do, what my boss thinks I do, what my mom thinks I do, what society thinks I do, what I think I do, and what I actually do.��� For the first image, of what my friends think I do, I choose the popular cast of House of Cards. This is to highlight the first thoughts that truly come to mind when people of a similar age hear that I want to work in politics. The thought that every day is a drama filled TV show. For the image of what my boss thinks I do, I took an image of Republican presidents partying. I choose this because it is a fun play on the words Republican Party and to show that, just like many other careers, bosses always think the young workers are partying and not always working. Where it gets more interesting is the fact that networking is essential in a career in politics and that is most often occurring in bars and happy hours. For what my mom thinks I do, I choose an image of an older more accurate political show, The West Wing. The image specifically has the staff working around the president. I would love to say this is the work I do and maybe someday it will be but for now, it is a bit too high level for the majority of people who work in politics. This fits with what my mom thinks I do because mothers and family always think you shoot straight to the top. For the image of what the opposition thinks I do, I choose a gentleman happily kicking a puppy. This is to show that the opposition always thinks the other side is evil. I strategically choose the word opposition to create even more relatability in the image because all groups of political nature are guilty of thinking this of the other side. Additionally, some other similar images use this as what society thinks I do but I decided that the entire image is a more complete view of what society thinks political workers do in general. For the image of what I think I do, I choose this over dramatic image of George Washington in front of an American flag purely because it looks cool. The idea behind it is the reason a lot of people work in politics is that of the love for our country and patriotism. We often think we will be constantly fighting for our country in some fashion. The final image is the actual reality. At least, for the most part, working in politics requires a lot of research, writing, mail, and correspondences with your district and the media. Some days are more like the other images but for the most part, it is you, your coworkers, and laptops, tons of research and loads of coffee.