Looking back at past readings, looking forward to the essay about the movie-making process

I think video and writing can be as closely related as the artist wants them to be. They certainly share some characteristics. One naturally precedes the other, like speech came before writing, and video comes after writing. Like writing, video is a very new technology. Both writing and technology are changing, but video is still undergoing extreme changes and slowly becoming a widely used tool as much as writing. I think the advent of YouTube and other viral video sites are a brilliant way to get people to share thoughts and opinions (regardless of how stupid or pointless) in a sort of face to face contact.

Unless we have a script in front of us on camera, we usually speak in our normal everyday dialect and mannerisms. I think this gives video more credibility than writing because you have those facial expressions and mannerisms to base judgments on. Video sort of transcends the barriers of writing by giving you that face and voice with a text (to Plato's disgust, I'm sure).

When making video gets to be as simple as picking up a pencil and jotting down a few notes and is available to everyone as an affordable way to communicate (some of Ong's requirements in a good technology) it won't be long before we see widespread use of webcameras and videophones in everyday situations; in other words, it won't be limited to YouTube, extreme distance communication, newscasts, and the business world. This will bring an entire new set of problems to the market and will be a constant source of inspiration and new technology, much like writing still is today.

YouTube/Low-bridge videos: Are they good? Are they bad? Are they writing?

Michael Wesch seems to think that digital text is the same as written text, but with less of a linear nature. It also transcends distances and can bypass traditional publishers to reach a worldwide audience in mere seconds. As for Anderson's "low-bridge" technology serving as a type of universal education tool, I can see how it would spark interest in students, but keeping the technology simple so as to not discourage students would be more difficult. I believe that creativity is a major part of motivation; Anderson is on the right track with that statement. However, exercising that creativity in a way that promotes learning is the trick.

I think that there is a connection between writing and video, but the connection is only as deep as the writer/director wants it to be. As much as writing can be internalized and the rule memorized, the same can be said of video directing and editing. The level of planning can then vary with individuals. I know that minimal planning beyond basic brainstorming in my own group was used to plan our video. We're sort of flying by the seat of our pants, but at least we know where we're headed.

Reading and Writing About Comics ala McCloud Part Deux

I examined Rebecca's blog post at this location. It described a comic by David Gaddis in which he depicts a man's flirtatious encounter with a woman in a jazzy coffee house. The comic bears no text but tells the story with large panoramic shots of the interior and closeups from the man's point of view. Rebecca calls attention to the difference in coloring, mentioning that when the man is alone, "drab, muted colors are used. When he interacts with a woman the colors are more red and more alive with warmth." The perspectives and frames are also used to give a sense of communication between the two, and she notes that the shape of the panels becomes more inconsistent when the man is alone.

The artistic style of the comic reminded me of other art that I've seen in the past in some English comics and the whole feel of it gave me a pseudo-realistic feeling. One of the panels, in which the woman looks up in horror to meet the man's gaze, it shows his face from her perspective, horribly distorted in a fisheye-type lense. As McCloud describes it, "Expressionism, as it came to be called, didn't start as a scientific art, but rather as an honest expression of the internal turmoil these artist just could not repress" (122). The lines in Gaddis' comic are free-flowing and jazzy, full of warm energy while the characters interact with mixed emotions that play out in their facial expressions and the environment around them. McCloud writes that all lines can carry some expressionistic potential, and even "the most bland 'expressionless' line on earth can't help but characterize their subject in some way" (125).

Reading and Writing about Comics ala McCloud, Part 1

I checked out a comic by Daniel Goodbrey that displays a lot of "MS Paint"-style artistry. It's not that it's bad, but it looks "simple" and grainy. The colors are likewise very simplistic and often in primary hues (easily represented on a 256-color palette). Lines between shading and light are hard and unblended. The entire presentation is very reminiscent of Scott McCloud's pyramid of iconic abstraction, reality, and language (51). Each edge of the triangle represents one of those features, though a comic is not necessarily bounded in one area or another and can change as freely as the artist wishes. Goodbrey's comics are consistently abstract enough to be considered somewhere in the middle of the pyramid, leaning more towards the language border. Goodbrey frequently illustrates commentary from pop culture to abstract ideas about animals and people.

The comic follows a format. There are always 4 frames: the first is the title frame that introduces the topic of the next three. In this particular example, it presents the oxymoron of "recognizing the nondescript." That is, something that shouldn't be describable because of its too common features. The second through fourth frames demonstrate the qualities that a nondescript person has, including "normal" behavior and "typical" clothing. I love the irony of the description.

The frames serve to make one important point or punchline. Using the six transitional descriptions of Scott McCloud, this comic falls into one of three. The unchanging art in the three non-title frames could be considered a part of McCloud's "Moment-to-Moment" transition, in which each frame is a brief moment captured in time, and then slowly drawn out over several frames, much like a motion picture or flip-book animation.

I also feel that this comic has a place in McCloud's "Action-to-Action" category since the panels switch between no action and a sudden or implied action. The particular comic I linked doesn't represent this as well as this one does.

I also include the possibility of "Subject-to-Subject" transition because of the level of reader involvement. "The next type takes us from Subject-to-Subject while staying withing a scene or idea. Note the degree of reader involvement necessary to render these transitions meaningful" (McCloud 71). The action here takes place outside the panel, but there is implied action that the reader is encouraged to imagine happening. The poop joke here is especially powerful in evoking a response from the reader.

Picturing Texts on the Web

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Peer Review Recap, Part Deux

I enjoyed the wiki assignment thoroughly. The concept of easily sharing writing examples with a class should be expanded to more of the education system. I think it would really help students to cooperate and give better constructive criticism through the peer editing format.

I loved the advice that I was given on my paper. There were clear suggestions on what I could do to make my rule more understandable. I had one comment that I hadn't really stated or created my own rule. Maybe I didn't, but I understood that I could rephrase a rule from Williams or Strunk and White. What I did was paraphrase an idea from Williams and condensed it into a simplified rule for organizing paragraphs in (mostly) my own words. The comment made me raise a concerned eyebrow and a little red flag; I'll mostly likely go back and try to edit the essay so that my rule is clearly spelled out. My goal will be to leave no room for doubts as to my intent. I made a few minor comments and corrections on the essays I edited, which were great for the most part. I read some really good papers that had everything organized and was super-easy to follow and then I read some that needed a bit of polishing to finish. I tried to be helpful and offer as many suggestions as I thought appropriate, but the exposure to a variety of writers really brings out the differences. Some of the pages on the wiki hadn't been updated with the student's essay, and some essays had to be hunted down from the wrong locations. It was a good experience, though. Being able to see other students' corrections is great for checking my own opinion against the group's. I can test myself as an outlier or as just going with the flow.

If I were to do this project for another class, I could make a few suggestions to better streamline the process: There should be more uniformity in the naming of the pages, or instead of having the essays under a students own wiki page, just add the essay under the home page with the title of the rule as the page name.

The wetpaint site is fairly intuitive, which is great. The formatting is slightly off, which isn't so great. The feeling of the general wetpaint environment isn't the same as a true wiki website with searchable articles. Wetpaint behaves more like a regular webpage with frames set up for a navigable sidebar of the entire website. This worked fine for what our classes needed, but for larger projects or more people it would just collapse into confusion with so many pages. It did allow for the simple editing of our essays, and the thread posting under the essay is great for long comments and corrections instead of writing them right into the bottom of the essay. Between this and googledocs, I'd still probably use Google because of the realtime updating of the text. Googledocs is more flexible with the editing, and the formatting isn't nearly as messed up.

What are others saying?

Others are saying that Strunk is pedantic, pontificating, and pretentious; I tend to agree with them. His rules lack explanation and are frequently pointless. In his section on 'Misused Words and Expressions' he includes an article on thrust. "This showy noun, suggestive of power, hinting of sex, is the darling of executives, politicos, and speechwriters. Use it sparingly. Save it for specific application." Why should I? Thrust all you like, I say. Let reader decide if it's misused or abused. The book reads like a textbook; all information is the truth and should be accepted at face value.

All the information does find it's place, however. Gordon wrote "The question as to which book is more effective, to me, seems to be the wrong question. I think that the books swim in different waters. I think what I got from Williams will be helpful, but I don't see myself going back to it again and again. It is very dense and it was difficult to get through. For me, the primary function of Strunk & White is as a reference, or a reminder of things easily forgotten; Williams deals with the most basic level of style--clarity, cohesion, emphasis, coherence..."
Gordon's summary of Strunk's role places the book squarely in reference material. Elements of Style is therefore a book that the writer will open to check a usage or a technical question and not a book that will dictate an entire body of prose.

The blogs I reviewed tell me that each book has a different role, which I believe is accurate. There is a consensus that Williams' book is more difficult reading, and that much of his information is more specific and helpful to improving the majority of a written work. Steve's blog frequently comments on the level of detail in Williams' book and often about how much is too much information. The book makes itself confusing by providing too much information in an effort to make writing clear. The fact that the chapter on concision is 15 pages long while the clarity chapter is almost 30 leads me to believe that certain lengths must be taken to cover a topic fully, in a concise manner or not.