How to Evaluate a Digital Literary Narrative

The first video was very creative and interesting at first to watch. The use of music and words combined with images made it dynamic and informative. It did drag on at the end and would have been better if it were shorter. The second video was shorter than the first and easier to watch. The use of the film strip made the voice over easy to follow and interesting. Like the first video though, it dragged on after a while and was seriously repetitive. The third video was very dynamic because it was done in an informal setting and the story made the video very interesting and fun to watch. It ended at the right time, so it didn't drag on and become boring. The fourth video was interesting in how it began and the topic discussed. The downside was the amount of time that was used to show texting, especially since the audience has a hard time reading the words and thus being distracted from the point. The fifth video was interesting in the difference of how the video was made compared to the others. The use of still images and words made it easy to follow and funny at times. After reviewing these different videos, the idea of having a common grading system seems more complicated than black and white. To grade the videos certain aspects need to be graded. Does the video get across the required point? Is it easy to follow or confusing? And is it interesting to the particular audience? Each of these questions needs to answered to come to a decision in terms of a grade.

Reflecting on successful texts

The three texts I had to read for this blog were from Ariel Popp, Austin Robertson, and Kelsey Rock. Each of them had a very different theme and subject they were analyzing, ranging from recipes to comics to game wiki pages. The first one, by Ariel Popp, was about successful comics on webpages. In particular, life experience type comics were being evaluated. Ariel discussed five different comics, highlighting the similarities, specifically webpage format and content, and differences, specifically ad space and color. In the end, I learned that organization, emphasis through color, contrast, and framing were key to making the comic interesting and user friendly. The second webpage, by Austin Robertson, is about gaming wiki pages and there effectiveness and user friendly capabilities. Austin discussed the usefulness of the wiki pages in correlation to the game, for example Eve is built into the actual game, thus is more user friendly and formatted to match the game. An example he discussed of a bad or less useful wiki page was the last one, which had almost nothing useful in terms of the game, except the walk-through, and a useless toolbar that distracted from the text being presented to the audience. In the end, his discussion left the idea that to have a successful text in concerns with a wiki page, it should be ascetically pleasing along with giving useful information that is easy to find for veterans and rookies. The final webpage, by Kelsey Rock, discusses the representation of recipes online and the effective use of organization, emphasis, and user-friendliness in terms of the audience. It talks about the format and organization design which would be most compatible with the intended audience. An example of this being the use of a note card format, which speaks to people who have been using notecards to write recipes. Another example is the availability and accessibility of print to make it easy for the audience to get the recipe. 
My favorite website has to be: Megan Hitchens because of the contrast between the background and the words, which is very visually dynamic. Plus she has a Tolkien quote.

Project 1

For project 1 I have decided to compare three video streaming sites, Hulu (hulu.com), Netflix (netflix.com), and Youtube (youtube.com). All three websites seem to have featured videos or at least popular videos as a welcome screen when first visiting the site. One of the main differences between the sites is if payment is required to watch the videos, as well as if ads are included in the viewing process.

How each facet plays its own role in a whole piece

Emphasis

. Describe where your attention is visually drawn in this text. What strategies does the author use to emphasize this element? Given that this text is essentially a title page for a larger project, does this emphasis seem effective to you? Why or why not?

When watching the video, my eyes are draw to the notepad because it stands out the most and the action is localized to it. The author makes this point of emphasis by picking a light colored paper and using a dark pen, while scratching and writing the words. In doing this, the reader is very well aware of the topic DRM because of the color choice and the repetition of the word, as well as the clever play on words.

Between composing the two different pages ("Digital Rights Management/Digital Robbing Maniacs" and "Criminal") the woman disappears from the screen and the jumpy stop-motion effect ceases. Describe how this moment of stillness can be understood as "emphasis" and explain if it seems like an effective strategy? What is emphasized by stopping the movement?

In stopping for a few brief moments the audience is able to effectively read what she has written and later what she has drawn because her motions have drawn our eyes to the notepad and her disappearance has kept our eyes on it. It is effective because as an audience, we correlate the silence to mean importance because action isn’t just stopped, thus what is being stopped becomes more important.

Consider the role sound plays in emphasis. How does the soundtrack to this clip help to (a) emphasize certain moments in the clip, and (b) place a particular emotional emphasis on the meaning of the clip?

First off, the music is akin to something played in the background when diffusing a bomb or puzzling what to do next, thus the audience is conveyed the emotion of solving a question, which in this case would be DRM. The tempo the music allow for emphasis to be placed on parts where it is slowed down, particularly when author is off screen and the action is stopped.

Contrast

1.      Watch 0:22-0:36 of The JUMP's "Call for Papers." Notice the words, the gray box, the cartoon background, and the sound. Do you think any of these elements contrast? If so, which ones and how so (specifically, what makes them different from one another)? What effects do you think this use of contrast has on the audience and the purpose? Consider how the text's effectiveness might change if these elements did not contrast.

In looking at the video, major contrasts include the music, the voice-over, and the cartoon. The music starts off with a dark undertone, which contrasts the pleasant looking comic picture and the words being said. It also contrasts with the song the follows it because the second song is much more light-hearted. The voice-over and comic are major contrast because of the eras in which each takes place, as the lessons mentioned earlier.  Now looking at the effectiveness, the contrast in music makes the audience focus on what the voice-over is saying, while the contrast in image versus voice also brings attention to the voice-over. If these contrasts were not used, then the audience’s attention might wonder to other aspects of this video and miss what the author is trying to convey.

Watch 0:55-1:08 of The JUMP's "Call for Papers." Notice how this is similar to the clip from question 1, yet the background no longer includes the cartoon. First, describe what elements are contrasting. Next, explain why you think the cartoon background was deleted from this section. What happens to the contrast now that the background is black? Which element is now the most emphasized, and how do you think this helps convey the purpose of the text?

The text and the black background truly contrast this time around, which makes the text seem more important and leads the audience to focus on it instead of the comic. The background makes the text easier to see and allows it to be more accessible to the audience.

Imagine you've been asked to design a flyer to post around your campus advertising The JUMP. What would the flyer look like? Which element(s) would contrast and to what effect?

The flyer would have the comic character in the bottom, right corner while the background would be a light gray with black, bolded words except The Jump which would be in red. Having the character contrast with the background allows for the feel of a everyman kind of idea, while having the background contrast the words allows the word to become more important, especially The Jump since it will be in red.

Organization

Choose 5 of the 15 images to drag into the empty timeline. Make a note about each of the 5 photos to explain what each one signifies, and how one leads to another. How does your organization convey your purpose?

The first image I chose, MODERN, denotes the idea that my slide show is going to talk about current ideals. My second image, milk cartons, denotes the idea of buying and selling goods, which is leads into my third image, the barcode on the foot, which can be seen as a correlation between the milk and the being, we are consumed along with being consumers. The forth image is a man smoking, which in today's culture can be seen as rebellious and when coupled with the last image, the fist in the air, a person could see the slide show as a way of saying people are not just goods, but actual people that if strong, will not be "drunk" and thrown away. 

Are there different arguments that you could have made by organizing your 5 photos in different ways?

If I had organized the images differently, I could have made the argument that smoking is a modern plague that leaves a person strapped and crippled by their addiction and just a barcode waiting to expire.

Are there other elements you could add to make your argument stronger—for example, playing music with the slide show or adding text?

If I added statics and music that starts out dark and ends with strength then it would make my slide show more appealing and the audience more receptive to my message.

Alignment

How would you describe alignment of the words "murmuring" and "insects" in the opening scene? How does the unusual alignment (reflected on screen and timed) add to your interpretation of the text?

Dual left alignment is present in this image, which causes the reader to take notice of both words, but not in a way that would make them conflict or negate each other.

2.      Now watch the "Earth" scene. What other elements are aligned in this scene? How does the consistent alignment of elements across screens (and also across some of the scenes) affect how you read these scenes? What elements do you end up focusing on? Would the scene seem as effective if all of the elements on the page (upside-down moon, contrails, words, background color, etc.) had no shared alignment?

The date is right aligned in the bottom, right-hand corner, which causes the reader to look at it after the two words "murmuring" and "insect" have fallen. If this alignment had no organization the message might become confusing and no longer effective in conveying the message.

Now watch the "Air" scene, paying attention to the lines of poetry and the audio tracks. The poem doesn't settle on the same horizontal axis as the other scenes do, and the two phrases in the audio track are aligned (synced) to appear with each line of poetry. Why do you think the alignments of the words are different between the Earth and Air scenes? What is the significance of the audio track's content in relation to that difference?

It allows for a connection to be made by the audience between the music and the words.

3.      Now watch the "Water" scene. How does the curvature of the words, aligning with the background image of an eye, relate to what the man in the audio track is saying?

The eye places the two words together when read because they appear at the same time, so the emphasis is placed on the sentence instead of each separate word.

. Based on the alignment (or lack of alignment) between elements in a scene and across scenes, why are the three menu options ("Air," "Earth," and "Water") on the main screen of this text not aligned? What does this lack of alignment tell you about the emphasis, sequence, and purpose of this text?

It makes the word murmuring become the most important sense it lasts the longest, which in turn disconnects it from the rest of the message because everything else becomes slightly less significant.  In having no alignment, the audience will think it is more about murmuring, especially with insects, instead of what it has to do with the earth and the date.

Proximity

Did you group certain categories of information together? How did you group them—typographically, by placing them closer together, or in some other way?

I put the title “Seagulls” in big, slanted letters at the top and chose a smaller, Arial font for “A Novel about Flight” and put the author’s name at the bottom of the page.

What do you think is the most important piece of information on your cover? What choices did you make about typeface or size to convey that sense of importance? How does the layout of your book cover reflect your sense of how the information should be organized?

The most important text on my front page is the title, closely followed by the author’s name. In making this choice, the audience is led to believe this book is about seagulls and that the book would focus on the aspect of flight in seagulls.

What are some limitations you've encountered in laying out visual elements in a traditional way? What are some other ways you might want to organize the information on a book cover that might work better in a non-traditional format?

In making the choice of the seagulls being a large font, the rest of the words suffer and may go unnoticed because of the traditional manner in which I set up the front cover. If I were to have the author at the top instead, the audience may get confused because society has established a standard for how and what a book cover should have on it.

College Websites: To be Effective or Not to be Effective

When looking for colleges, certain items make the difference between an application being filled out and a close window being clicked. Does it not only have links, but pictures and do the pictures represent the experience that can be found at the college in question? Also, the college has to take in to consideration past students are just as important as future ones, so there has to be something that shows that the colleges still values them, alumni news.  In taking these considerations into account, the comic in Figure 2.5 is an extremely accurate depiction of what the content of a college website contains, minus the presentation of such information.

            One university in particular, which reflects the list in Figure 2.5, is the University of Tampa in Tampa, Florida. It includes a mission statement, alumni information, pictures, etc. along with a giant slide show.  It follows the same formula as the list because as mentioned before, those are the items that people go to the college website to find. If it only had pictures, some links, and nothing that connected the reader to the school, the reader would close the window and the school would kiss goodbye multiple donors, future students, etc.  So it may seem redundant and annoying to navigate, especially if you are a current student, but in looking at what the audience wants, the items aforementioned, the information and websites are highly effective.

Multimodal versus Multimedia/ Different facets of Multimodal Communication Modes

Firstly, the definition of multimodal may not be an exact word for word replica of the definition for multimedia, but the ways in which the information is conveyed to the audience through both are very similar. For example both focus on linguistics (word choice), visual (the look), aural (the sound), gestural (the gestures), and the spatial (the set-up) and how they combine to create the intended message of the writer, thus the main difference between multimodal and multimedia is the spelling.
The Linguistic Mode
In examining the above speech, a sense of strength, friendship, and sympathy can be felt by the word choice of the writer. By stating "Our thoughts and our prayers remain with the people of Japan" the public has the reassurance that compassion and support will be offered to those who are suffering in Japan. In addition, the phrases "Japanese Friends" and "America will stand with Japan" create a feeling of unity and a recognition that America needs to helps its "friends" in their time of need.
The Visual Mode
Figure 1.3  has more of a contrasting layout, green and white, compared to Figure 1.4, blue and white, which makes Figure 1.3  more bold, thus attracting more attention and giving more importance to the words in the area with the green background. In recognizing Figure 1.3 is bolder, the person who created the Twitter profile is likely to be just as bold in their everyday life. On the other hand, Figure 1.4 is probably a more reserved person due to the color choice, as well as the profile picture. In following that assumption, Figure 1.4 was created to be a more professional application, while Figure 1.3 appears more casual and is probably used as a personal medium instead.
The Aural Mode
I can hear the bells in the background while the female speaker delivers her message when I listen to the short video. It seems more educational and informative because of the tune of the bells along with the conversational tone of the speaker. If it were a country tune in the background instead, the video would be more casual and less informative when coupled with the same speaker because there is no cue that it is meant to be more than the appearance of words said in a conversation.

The Spatial Mode
When visiting the Washington State University (WSU) homepage, my eye is drawn to the three slide show blocks with links to information relevant to the college. These blocks are placed in the middle while the links create more of a border around the web page, which in turn causes the reader's eye to find the slide shows first and the links afterwards. In setting it up this way, the reader can view the surrounding links to be supportive, much like back-up singers, to the main slide shows. If this set-up was switched, the slide shows would seem pointless and distracting, while the links could become confusing and difficult to navigate.
The Gestural Mode
In having his hands crossed, Obama promotes the idea of togetherness and unity, especially when discussing the joint task forces comprised of multiple nations. He also tries to maintain eye contact with the audience, thus attempting to connect with the audience and in turn have them become more connected to the topic his is delivering the speech on (Libya). In incorporating these gestural actions, Obama successfully conveys the emotions he wants the audience to feel in his speech.