ENG 1131: Writing Through Media

Project 3 due Tuesday, April 14

Read/View

* Text Book on textual transformation
* On your own about your event/band/artist
* Music Videos, Bruce Conner's Report

Web

You should be comfortable experimenting with graphic tools. We'll add animation and a navigation bar to our repetoire.

ASSIGNMENT:

Taking a cue from the music videos and experimental film we've watched, create a textual transformation "music video" of your event. Like the ones we've watched the music video allows you to organize information according to images, rather than narrative or argument. Like the textual transformations we've read and viewed, we can "steal" images or text from preexisting texts and, using the principles of intertextuality, compose new ones.

You should be review the readings and the viewings, seeking compositional strategies that you can implement in your own "video." Unless you are really ambitious, you don't need to make an actual video, but can use some of the techniques we've learned and will learn to create a collage of images and text that replicates a video's techniques. Many of the texts that we've looked at use repetition as a composition strategy. You can use animation techniques from photoshop to replicate that technique for example.

You should use the band or singer that you choose as the star of your video to help organize the images you use. Think about their "star image," that quality that makes them appealing over and above what their talent would suggest, as a way to select and compose your video collage.

We're using the examples of textual transformation to learn about how to organize our own thinking about our event according to an image. The genre of textual transformation that we're most concerned with is collage, which uses the principles of selection and juxtaposition as compositional strategies. Like Andy Warhol's Sixteen Jackies and Bruce Conner's Report feel free to use images from the news media for your source material. You'll want to modify them, add a "sound track" (in transcript form as text) and perhaps juxtapose them with images of your band/singer.

Project Design

Aim for about 7-8 web pages with both images and text.

The design of the Website is based on a collage of preexisting materials according to the image of a band/singer. The project transform text either from an official source for your event or in combination with song lyrics. Make the images, through animations and image manipulation, do the work for you. Ingredients for the design include the following:

• Text Book: Knowledge of textual transformation
• Your knowledge of popular culture (and specific musicians) including your sense of their "style"
• Research on your historical event

Brief example: What if Justin Timberlake had a music video using material from 2008 election? 

Project 3 Presentation:

• Due: Tuesday, April 14.
• Points: 25
• Length: 5-7 minutes
• Objective: Present your website in 5-7 minutes. Walk us through your video and discuss how your thinking developed throughout this process.
• Your goal should be to convey what you learned and what that experience of learning felt like. Be prepared to answer questions regarding why you made your decisions and how your learning experience differed than if you have simply analyzed a video rather than created one. This presentation is also designed to help you develop a crucial skill: to be able to think on your feet.