Making Connections

Relating the moving making process to the texts we have read in class will be a distinctly creative process. I think McCloud will be most useful since he's already looking at pictures as text. I've thought about a couple of connections here, dealing with how we relate to images using closure--for example, I'm thinking about how I wore a mask to play the "essay" in our short movie changed the way the audience relates to the movie because there's more room for imagination and less mirror-like reflection of self. I also think that our other choices of costumes to fulfill stereotypes falls in this category as well. I can also see connections to the YouTube texts through arguing that the process of making a video (at least a semi scripted one with a topic like ours) induces a type of learning because it requires the use of an out of the ordinary, through, thought process. I could also see making connections to the writing process here, perhaps using picturing texts, dealing with the similar considerations of audience, purpose, subject and style that are universal to most forms of creation, writing and movie making included.

the youtube delimma and other related ideals.

So far, I think that the movie making process has, in many ways been congruous to the writing process. The process is much the same: brainstorming, planning, introduction, body and conclusion. However, i have noticed a very distinct difference in the process of creating a movie and writing an essay, particularly within the context of upper level lit/English classes: we're not expected to be good at making movies. In fact, in many cases, the worse we are at it the better, because the goofiness of it act of a situational inside joke that is funny because all the participants know one another and the nuances of the course for which its being made. However, when I write an essay for these classes, I am expected to be somewhat of an expert, and as such, turning in an essay in which I was goofy and situational with no real regard for a larger audience would be completely unacceptable. As such, on the surface, moving-making is an easier task in this context: wtihout grandiouse expectations for its maechanics, there's no real need for refinement or gaurenteed clarity.

peer review recap part 3

After reading my own previous peer review recaps and some of my colleagues, I found that our entries mostly say the same sorts of things: I found the process to be sort of helpful; there were some glitches editing on line (Jeff, Hannah, and Mike all seem to be on board with me here). However, since this blog assignment asks us to look more critically at the process as a whole, I logged back in to Wetpaint and my first Google docs group to look at what comments were actually made on not only my work, but others as well. I found that the peer editing process is really good for two things:

1. An ego boost. There are a lot of "great paper!" or "good start!" 's flying around out there. Which, is nice. I had 4 different people tell me my Style paper was some variation on "good". It was nice to see, but apparently not correct, as after receiving my graded paper back the professor, my grade did not reflect the sorts of overwhelmingly nice comments I received in the peer review process. I can't fault people for doing this though; they probably do think it's a great start. I think this significant drawback to the process could be eliminated if Professor Krause gave us some sort of rubric to work with that we could base our judgments off of while we peer review. I'm thinking the most base form of rubric, some thing like "to score top points on this paper, you need to make clear connections to both texts discussed in class. Mulitple examples will be given and explained fully.... yada yada details only krause could give." That way, we could meaningfully judge our peers work.

2. Grammar. Since good content is relatively subjective given that we don't know what its expected outside of our own expectations for "good", a majority of the feedback given is gramatical. Commas, excess words, and capitalization are caught in abundance. Which, is of course, useful, espically since these things often slip past the author because they're familar enough with the work to know what should be there.

Peer reviewtake three hasn't really been much different from this. As much as I really like the idea of peer review, in retrospect I think we need more information and guideance to make it a truely meaningful process.