Tuesday, May 5, 2009
Final Project
The process of our project wasn’t very complicated. We had the visual rhetoric theory. In order to portray this theory, Cynthia and I interviewed various people asking them what they thought of when they first saw the certain advertisements presented to them. We then continued to ask them questions pertaining to the advertisements and what can help get the message across, more visual or texts. I interviewed people about the advertisements that were newer while Cynthia asked people to evaluate the older or more vintage looking advertisements. With our theory of visual rhetoric we wanted to show how advertisements have changed over time and how depending on the genre of the advertisement that visuals or texts have more of an effect on what people see. At first, I thought this project would be a lot easier, but it is harder to tie a movie in with a theory. With our video we open it up with a lot of older looking ads and then use all the people that Cynthia asked after that. We then proceeded to use the people who were shown the newer advertisements and end it was various new advertisements to tie the video together. With the theory presented by Kress, we wanted to get the idea of different genres of advertisements being presented at different times. With the editing process part of the project, Cynthia used a imovie and iphoto to put the advertisements we asked the people about as still images in it with captions. We ended the video with a bunch of different billboard advertisements. A lot of people know that when an advertisement of snow and polar bears during Christmas time, means it is related to Coca Cola or that a lot of advertisements use a lot of sex to get their point across even if they barely have the product presented in the advertisement. Also, most advertisements that contain half naked women with beer in the background or a big hamburger are presented in men’s magazines and diamond rings are shown in magazines directed towards woman. Advertisers know not where to place certain ads and direct toward the audience that will most beneficial to them. Before all of this, advertisements were a lot different and didn’t have a lot of sex in their ads. They actually had the product in the ad because that’s what they were selling and not try to show a hidden meaning or have people guess at what it means. It was just plain and simple for everyone to understand. Even with the Got Milk! Ads, people still knew what the ads were fore but they said that it would be better if the people were actually holding a glass of milk. Also with these ads, they used celebrities because they want people to have the mentality that if someone that is famous is drinking milk, they should too. Like everything else such as computers, television, and cell phones, we feel that advertisements have also been remediated. They have changed greatly over time where they have one word and people will supposedly understand the advertisement or people will just buy it because it will make them be cool or sexy if they use the product advertised. With visual rhetoric, advertisers have learned how to put just a single visual and one word to sell a product. There are times though where there does need to be more texts in order for the audience to get the message and that why we tried to ask people what would help get the message across with the ads better. In the end, the project turned out very nice.
Thursday, April 23, 2009
Project Proposal
Visual Rhetoric Theory-Cynthia and Teri
Our project will be focusing on media and how text, visual images and genre plays an important part in what people see. The readings from Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World gave many good examples on how our world has changed over time. In this class we’ve learned to show how media or images can have a different meaning when there is a lot of text or none at all. Sometimes media doesn’t have to have text at all to get the meaning across but at the same time one word can make a difference in whether a person understands it all. Also, the location or how the media is presented is also key. A company selling men’s hair products obviously wouldn’t place an advertisement in Cosmopolitan which is clearly directed towards woman. According to Hill, one needs to ensure that verbal, visual and oral illiteracies are all equal and one mode does not isolate the others. We also agree with this because sometimes there can be too much texts or visuals in an ad that takes away from the media itself.
In Kress’ reading, “we live in a new communicational world and that there are now choices about how what is to be represented should be represented in what mode, in what genre, in what ensembles of modes of genres and on what occasions.” The reading also stated that everything has a purpose and different meanings behind what is represented by the colors people choose or where the writing or visual is placed in particular media. In order to show this, Cynthia and I propose to make a video documenting how media has changed over the past few years in advertisements and how it affects our daily activities. We plan to show different advertisements in magazines, television and billboards and show how the location or the design of it gets the meaning across clearly. We will relate the visual rhetoric theory with this because people walk by certain things everyday and never really think about what they see and actually analyze it. We will probably interview people and show them an ad or image and see if they understand it or ask them if there should be more visuals or text to make it more clear. This theory is very interesting because in the book, they used an example of how Microsoft word uses images on their tool bar instead of words for all of it and how it makes so much of a difference or even on a web page. If a web page takes too long downloading all the images, people usually just go to another one. At different times, visuals are more helpful than actually seeing the word right there in front of you. With our video, we want to show how this does make a difference in people lives and affects their daily activities whether they realize it or not. Our video will be more of a documentary of how media has changed over time by how things are designed a certain way.
We plan on working together with filming different people and advertisements as well as the editing. Our project will be equally split.
Our project will be focusing on media and how text, visual images and genre plays an important part in what people see. The readings from Visual Rhetoric in a Digital World gave many good examples on how our world has changed over time. In this class we’ve learned to show how media or images can have a different meaning when there is a lot of text or none at all. Sometimes media doesn’t have to have text at all to get the meaning across but at the same time one word can make a difference in whether a person understands it all. Also, the location or how the media is presented is also key. A company selling men’s hair products obviously wouldn’t place an advertisement in Cosmopolitan which is clearly directed towards woman. According to Hill, one needs to ensure that verbal, visual and oral illiteracies are all equal and one mode does not isolate the others. We also agree with this because sometimes there can be too much texts or visuals in an ad that takes away from the media itself.
In Kress’ reading, “we live in a new communicational world and that there are now choices about how what is to be represented should be represented in what mode, in what genre, in what ensembles of modes of genres and on what occasions.” The reading also stated that everything has a purpose and different meanings behind what is represented by the colors people choose or where the writing or visual is placed in particular media. In order to show this, Cynthia and I propose to make a video documenting how media has changed over the past few years in advertisements and how it affects our daily activities. We plan to show different advertisements in magazines, television and billboards and show how the location or the design of it gets the meaning across clearly. We will relate the visual rhetoric theory with this because people walk by certain things everyday and never really think about what they see and actually analyze it. We will probably interview people and show them an ad or image and see if they understand it or ask them if there should be more visuals or text to make it more clear. This theory is very interesting because in the book, they used an example of how Microsoft word uses images on their tool bar instead of words for all of it and how it makes so much of a difference or even on a web page. If a web page takes too long downloading all the images, people usually just go to another one. At different times, visuals are more helpful than actually seeing the word right there in front of you. With our video, we want to show how this does make a difference in people lives and affects their daily activities whether they realize it or not. Our video will be more of a documentary of how media has changed over time by how things are designed a certain way.
We plan on working together with filming different people and advertisements as well as the editing. Our project will be equally split.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
GAMES
I don't really play many games online but the one I do like is TwistText. Basically, they give you a bunch of letters and you try and make as many words as possible. It is a very simple game to play but you actually use your brain instead of other games where you shoot characters. I'm not really into the violent games but more games like this. http://games.yahoo.com/console/tx
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Questions
1. Describe what medium is according to the author. Do you agree with this definition or if not what do you think medium is?
2. The author says that remediation doesn't end after leaving a movie theater because we are surrounded by posters, computer games and videoscreens. Can you give another example of where remediation doesn't "end" when it's finished?
3. According to the author, "The goal is not to replace the earlier forms to which the company may own rhe rights. bur rather to spread the content over as many markets as possible, Each of those forms takes part of its meaning from the other products in a process of honorific remediation and at the same time makes a tacit claim to offer an experience that the other forms cannot." Do you think this is true or do you feel that media and technology has gotten out of hand?
4. How do writers, directors, actors, video game designers show their success of remediation?
2. The author says that remediation doesn't end after leaving a movie theater because we are surrounded by posters, computer games and videoscreens. Can you give another example of where remediation doesn't "end" when it's finished?
3. According to the author, "The goal is not to replace the earlier forms to which the company may own rhe rights. bur rather to spread the content over as many markets as possible, Each of those forms takes part of its meaning from the other products in a process of honorific remediation and at the same time makes a tacit claim to offer an experience that the other forms cannot." Do you think this is true or do you feel that media and technology has gotten out of hand?
4. How do writers, directors, actors, video game designers show their success of remediation?
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Video Project Process
Our video is posted on Sean's blog.
This was a fun project. It was very different than anything I ever done. I guess everything we've done in class is all new to me. Yes, we've all done our standard interviews where we ask the person questions and put it down on paper, but with this project we did ask them questions but rather on paper it was on video. It was very difficult to find something or someone that we found interesting. We tried to think of different places and the only place that seemed somewhat interesting was the movie theater. So we thought we would try the Savoy movie theater but they didn't really seem too happy to do anything with us which was fine with us because after thinking about it, that idea kind of sucked. Then at a spur of the moment idea we decided to go to Friar Tuck. I figured since we are college students and love alcohol, why not go learn more about it. It was interesting to learn how their store is set up and when their busiest times of the year are or even which is the most expensive bottle they have there. I think the hardest part of the project was actually putting the movie together. Sean was very useful with this part because I had no idea how to work our video camera since I forgot to charge it the first time we went to record, so I really didn't know much about iMovie. We had difficulties at first because it wasn't working exactly right but after about 15 minutes messing with iMovie, we finally got to work in putting the movie together by having Lisa talk in the beginning and then have her talk and then show a clip of what she is talking about. I would have liked to figure out how to strip the sound and use that while we go through the store, but that was pretty hard to figure out. Sean took the video home and added transitions to the video which was good so it wouldn’t look like we just put a bunch of clips together. We actually had to cut a lot of footage out because we recorded about 9 min. I didn’t think we would be able to even do that because I thought 4-6 minutes was a lot to fulfill. I liked this project a lot. It was something different and we were able to see what happens behind the scenes of place that we thought we knew very well. I didn’t know that they have the wine split by countries or how the rest of the store was set up. It was very different to me and really fascinated me. The person we talked to really loved her job and was actually willing to do the interview with us unlike the people at Savoy. All in all, I’m very pleased with this project and its outcome. I was worried at first because we couldn’t think of anything but I’m glad we decided on Friar Tuck.
This was a fun project. It was very different than anything I ever done. I guess everything we've done in class is all new to me. Yes, we've all done our standard interviews where we ask the person questions and put it down on paper, but with this project we did ask them questions but rather on paper it was on video. It was very difficult to find something or someone that we found interesting. We tried to think of different places and the only place that seemed somewhat interesting was the movie theater. So we thought we would try the Savoy movie theater but they didn't really seem too happy to do anything with us which was fine with us because after thinking about it, that idea kind of sucked. Then at a spur of the moment idea we decided to go to Friar Tuck. I figured since we are college students and love alcohol, why not go learn more about it. It was interesting to learn how their store is set up and when their busiest times of the year are or even which is the most expensive bottle they have there. I think the hardest part of the project was actually putting the movie together. Sean was very useful with this part because I had no idea how to work our video camera since I forgot to charge it the first time we went to record, so I really didn't know much about iMovie. We had difficulties at first because it wasn't working exactly right but after about 15 minutes messing with iMovie, we finally got to work in putting the movie together by having Lisa talk in the beginning and then have her talk and then show a clip of what she is talking about. I would have liked to figure out how to strip the sound and use that while we go through the store, but that was pretty hard to figure out. Sean took the video home and added transitions to the video which was good so it wouldn’t look like we just put a bunch of clips together. We actually had to cut a lot of footage out because we recorded about 9 min. I didn’t think we would be able to even do that because I thought 4-6 minutes was a lot to fulfill. I liked this project a lot. It was something different and we were able to see what happens behind the scenes of place that we thought we knew very well. I didn’t know that they have the wine split by countries or how the rest of the store was set up. It was very different to me and really fascinated me. The person we talked to really loved her job and was actually willing to do the interview with us unlike the people at Savoy. All in all, I’m very pleased with this project and its outcome. I was worried at first because we couldn’t think of anything but I’m glad we decided on Friar Tuck.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Grace's question
2.) What does the author mean when he says, all mediation is remidiation?
From the reading, I feel that the author means that most of the media today is better than the next. Each type of media seems to get better as technology comes around. For example, we started off with a a big radio where people would listen to hour long segments, then the black and white tv came around, then it was color and so on to the point where we have tivo or ondemand to record shows that we have missed. Each form of media is copied by another form of media and presented in a way that is more realistic. It gives people options of what type of media they want to see and I think this is a lot better because it's more creative.
From the reading, I feel that the author means that most of the media today is better than the next. Each type of media seems to get better as technology comes around. For example, we started off with a a big radio where people would listen to hour long segments, then the black and white tv came around, then it was color and so on to the point where we have tivo or ondemand to record shows that we have missed. Each form of media is copied by another form of media and presented in a way that is more realistic. It gives people options of what type of media they want to see and I think this is a lot better because it's more creative.
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