Dear Reader,

Thank you for taking the time to look over my projects and thoughts on this class. I hope this portfolio reflects how much fun I have had, the amount of work I put into each assignment, and how I have grown in my ability to analyze literature and use technology creatively. Each time a new project was assigned, I doubted my ability to complete the assignment, but always proved myself wrong. This class showed me that I really can be creative.

At orientation this past summer, I was encouraged to enroll in a first year seminar. I decided this was a good idea because it would give me a chance to be in a small class in comparison to the big lecture classes that would consume most of my schedule. When looking through the list of freshman seminars, Computers and English immediately caught my attention. Even though I plan to major in business or science, the description of this class really appealed to me. While I don’t exactly have a passion for literature, I loved the idea of mixing literature with technology. I looked forward to working with computers and hoped to strengthen my skills and knowledge in this area.

As I hoped, we have worked on many different projects that have allowed me to explore new aspects of technology. The playlist assignment made me more familiar with html code, making the podcast introduced me to the Audacity program, the collages taught me many new skills in Photoshop, and the video project allowed me to use a mixture of movie clips, audio, and text to make a single video composition. Consequently, these activities have given me a whole new outlook on literature and my ability to analyze it. When analyzing literature, I often have trouble finding the words to communicate my views. However, each of these projects has taught me to express my thoughts in other ways. Instead of simply relying on words to portray a character, poem, or work of literature, I can incorporate music, video clips, images, lyrics, and even layout designs into my explanation. These new ideas have allowed me to really explore each literary topic and what it means to me personally, and my ability to interpret literary works has really improved. It was great being able to view each class member's work, give others advice, and learn from each other. I never thought that analyzing literature could be so interesting and entertaining!

Signing up for this seminar was a great decision, and I have honestly enjoyed each class. I loved the layed-back setting of the classroom, and our professor, Dan, was very approachable. It was obvious that he was very passionate about our class, and his dedication made me want to excel and develop a strong collection of projects.

Simply click the red links to view each of my projects. Enjoy!

After reading our midterm portfolios, Dan gave each of us a challenge for the rest of the semester. I was challenged to make my portfolio even stronger through my cover letter and by giving elaborate details as I talk about each of my projects. He also challenged me to take my work to the next level and make it top-notch. Although I have worked hard on my projects since the beginning, I pushed myself to devote more time to each assignment and produce numerous drafts. I feel that I rose to the occasion by setting high expectations for myself and creating successful revisions of each project, no matter how many tries it took (I recorded my Ben Harper Podcast five times!). This challenge was definitely effective and made me strive for perfection.

Playlist

When we were first told of this assignment, I was really excited! I love music, and making a playlist was a great way to explore one of my favorite characters in literature. Still, I was a little intimidated. Although I enjoy working with computers, I had never really used html code and wasn't sure what to expect. Experimenting with the layout, however, gave me a chance to learn about formatting and become more comfortable with this process. This assignment gave me a better understanding of the character of Clarissa Dalloway as well as the book as a whole. The playlist assignment was enjoyable and a great way to link literature, music, and technology.

First Draft
Choosing the subject of my playlist was difficult at first, but after thinking about the purpose of this project, Clarissa Dalloway became a clear choice. Because Virigina Woolf's book Mrs. Dalloway is based on the thoughts and memories of Clarissa, I could create a playlist that was more complex than just a plot summary. From her superficial appearance to her youthful memories to her eventual understanding of life, this character had many aspects that I hoped to portray through song choice. Finding songs that related not only through lyrics but through the music as well was harder than I expected. Being a big Dave Matthews fan, I immediately looked through my collection of Dave songs and found that Grey Street described Clarissa perfectly. The rest of the songs just seemed to fall into place as I thought more about the Clarissa's emotional development. I was able to use a good variety of music, including Battles, Aretha Franklin, and even Bon Jovi, and I was able to put the songs in an order that effectively captured the essence Clarissa.

Second Draft
On my revised version, I took Dan's advice and added more discussion on the musical elements of the playlist. I went into more detail on Beck's Strange Apparition, Time by Hootie and the Blowfish, Funny How Time Slips Away by Willie Nelson, and Aretha Franklin's Respect. I think my revision was successful. This version gives a the reader a good, clear sense of the character of Clarissa Dalloway while also giving sufficient reasons for my song selection.

Podcast

The podcast assignment was definitely a challenge. I had never heard of the Audacity program and wasn't sure how successful I would be in using it. I decided to do my podcast on Ben Harper and the literary elements of his music. I felt like I knew enough about Harper to construct a natural, conversational podcast.

First Draft
I began by making an outline of the points I wanted to express in my podcast. I knew that a lot of Harper's work was based on social issues and that he strongly promoted change. I also wanted to focus on the blues and how much emotion he puts into his music. I took these ideas and easily made a connection to literature. I then went through Ben Harper’s songs and picked a few that would relate to each of my talking segments, being sure to highlight some of his best music. After developing my thoughts and collecting the songs, I went to YouTube and found two Ben Harper interviews that definitely strengthened my argument. I cut clips of the interviews and incorporated them in the appropriate parts of my podcast.

Second Draft
After comments from a few classmates, my lack of experience with the Audacity program proved to show. I quickly realized that I needed to adjust the sound levels for my second draft. It was difficult making the high quality audio files match the volume of my voice recordings, but I eventually made the sound more consistent after experimenting with the amplifying feature.

Third Draft
After listening to my second version, I was still unhappy with the podcast. I liked the length of each segment and felt like the material seemed to flow well for the most part. However, I decided to begin the third draft with a more upbeat song that would catch the audience's attention. I chose Harper's song Steal My Kisses and also added the ending of the song at the end of my podcast so it didn't end abruptly. Additionally, I rerecorded each of my talking segments to make them sound even more conversational than before.

Fourth Draft
This assignment proved to be as difficult as I had expected. So many elements are involved in making a podcast, and I didn't feel like I had gotten it just right yet; however, after reading Dan's comments and receiving more feedback from my peers, I felt like I could successfully make a final revision. I was now more familiar with the Audacity program, so the quality and sound levels were much better. I worked on my explanations in my voice segments in order to make a connection among the different ideas conveyed in the podcast. This change in transitions sharpened my work and helped the topics flow together better.

Final Version
After some smoothing and polishing, this is my final version. I layered the audio and added low music to a few more places during my conversations.

Collages

Photoshop was a challenge at first. Although it already came on my computer, I had never really experimented with it. I was unsure about the tools and layers, but with help from others in the class, I became pretty comfortable with the program.

Character Collage
My character collage portrays Janie Crawford from Zora Neale Hurston's book Their Eyes Were Watching God. This is a story of Janie's search for independence and a sense of identity. I began with a dark background of the sky with light beams coming from the clouds. I thought this picture was a good way to express the quote I used, "They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God." I kept this image at 100% opacity to represent God’s power shining through the darkness of the story. For the focus of the collage, I used a picture of Janie from the movie adaptation of the book. Like the background, I kept this image at 100% opacity and added contrast in order to make it stand out while fading all other images to a lighter opacity. In this photo, she is looking over her shoulder and appears worried and unsure. By keeping this picture as the central image, I hoped to create a mood of uncertainty and hope. I flipped the picture horizontally so that she was looking toward the beams of light coming from the sky. I then duplicated the picture of Janie and flipped it horizontally as well to make a mirror image of the first. I cut a wooden-framed mirror out of another picture and placed the second image of Janie inside the mirror. This technique was used to represent Janie's inner search for a true sense of identity. This part was probably the most difficult part of my collages. There was a lamp in the mirror which also covered part of the mirror’s wooden frame. I had to erase the lamp and use the clone tool to restore the outside frame. After finishing my work with the mirror, I then used the picture of two girls whispering to signify the rumors about Janie that circulate the town. Her neighbors constantly judge and criticize her, yet Janie's new found strength and confidence allow her to ignore the gossip. Because the gossipers in my collage are looking at Janie while she is looking away in the mirror, I feel like I captured the essence of Janie's attitude towards the them. She is living for herself and does not care that the town is talking behind her back. She no longer looks toward others for happiness but instead searches deep within for this self-fulfillment. Lastly, the hands praying with the Bible symbolize Janie's relationship with God and her reliance on Him to get through hardships and struggles.

Character Collage - Revision
On the revised version, I made the picture of Janie and the mirror image bigger since it's the main part collage. The picture of Janie is more centered now instead of all the focus being on the left side. I also changed the text and added a bigger picture of girls gossiping. I wasn't sure about the smaller picture in my previous collage, and it seemed to be floating at the top. Although I liked the picture of the Bible and hands, I took it out because there was a lot going on in the first collage. I think the background with the beams of light coming from the sky captures the religious part without having to use the other picture too.

Poetry Collage
For my poetry collage, I chose "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost. To begin my representation, I found a picture of a wood with two diverging paths. I used the gradient tool to fade out the first path. I then used a picture of a yellow stop light to signify the caution of choosing which path to take. This represents the idea of “slowing down” and choosing your path wisely. I cut a green turning arrow out of another picture and duplicated it. The original green arrow faces the left, so I flipped the duplicate to produce another green arrow facing the opposite direction. This signified that both paths “equally lay.” They were both inviting, and either path was approachable. However, I then used descending arrow signs that draw attention to the second path. Because these arrow signs are often used at sharp curves, I thought this image would not only draw the viewer’s eyes toward the path of success, but also portray the risk and difficulty of this path. This poem describes the road less traveled as more difficult and risky, and I wanted this image to relay that message. Finally, I used three flowers to represent the ending of the poem which says, “And I—I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” The road less traveled leads to success, happiness, and prosperity, and these flowers prove to reflect these ideas. The pink chrysanthemum means a long life, the baby’s breath stands for happiness, and the yellow poppy represents wealth and success. Websites with flower explanations: chrysanthemum, baby’s breath and poppy

Poetry Collage - Revision 1
I really wasn't sure how to revise this collage. I liked the idea of the two green arrows pointing in each direction, but since I knew they were creating some confusion, I removed them from the traffic light. I still left the yellow traffic light, however, and instead added two opposing arrow signs to the bottom of pole. I then moved the descending yellow arrows to the left of the page so that the first arrow wasn't so big and didn't take away from the traffic light. I also increased the opacity of the traffic light to make it stand out and keep everything from blurring together.

Poetry Collage - Revision 2
I felt like my revisions were effective, but there was still a lot going on. Instead of the two opposing arrows at the bottom of the traffic light, I used one arrow that points both ways. This way, there were less arrows, and the yellow sign blended better with the color scheme of the collage than the white arrows.

Overall, I was pleased with the outcome of my collages. I feel like they both effectively expressed the points I wanted to make. The comments on both collages pointed out a few things that needed to be revised, and I was able to make them more clear. I put a lot of thought into my image selection and worked hard to develop a deeper meaning for each image and Photoshop technique I used. I learned a lot about Photoshop through this project and had a great time doing it!

Live Podcast

The Evolution of Censorship in Music
I liked this assignment because it gave us a chance to work with a group. The topic of each live podcast was left for the group to decide, and my group chose to do ours on the evolution of censorship in music. I really like this topic and thought it was interesting to consider the types of songs that used to be banned in comparison to songs played on the radio today. As our podcast reflects, songs such as Louie, Louie were banned in the 1960s simply because the lyrics were unclear and could possibly contain sexual content, while songs today are much more direct and explicit, often using little censorship. Our podcast also highlighted the fact that censorship is a controversial topic, as different people have different morals, beliefs, and personal preferences towards this subject. I actually had bronchitis the week of the live podcast, so my job was to gather information on our topic and also play the audio clips during our presentation. I was happy with our podcast. I think my group made a lot of good points and that our podcast had enough content without being too long or losing the class's interest.

Video

For the video assignment, we were given two options: a video essay or a trailer mashup. When first learning of this assignment, I immediately decided that I would choose one of the videos we watched in class, No Country for Old Men or O Brother, Where Art Thou?, and compose a video essay making an argument about the film. The trailer mashup seemed like it would require too much creativity, which tends to be a challenge for me. After opening Microsoft Word and beginning to develop an angle for my video essay, I quickly changed my mind. The video would be my last project for this class, and I wanted to prove that I could turn from the traditional assignment and show my originality.

Deciding which movies to combine for my trailer mashup was a lot harder than I expected. I love comedy movies, so I knew I wanted to put a more serious twist on one of my favorite comedies. Anchorman with Will Ferrell immediately came to mind, but I was unsure whether I wanted to use the audio or video clips from Anchorman. After searching YouTube, I was able to find many short clips from the movie and decided to use the video clips I found. Anchorman had a few humorous fight scenes, so I tried to think of action or adventure movies whose audio might mix well with these clips. First, I tried using the audio from the new Indiana Jones trailer. The concept seemed to be working okay, but I eventually decided that the audio from Indiana Jones had too much music and not enough dialogue to make an entertaining mashup.

My next idea was to combine Anchorman and Harry Potter. I thought that using the audio from Harry's battles scenes would create a funny mashup. However, I had trouble finding appropriate audio clips, and the idea of mixing a wizard battle with a news team brawl didn't turn out as well as I had originally thought.

After two failed attempts, I looked away from the adventure movie genre and focused on more action-packed movies. I went to YouTube and watched a few trailers of newly released action movies and thought that 300 would work very nicely. The audio for the 300 trailer captured the sounds of battle while also incorporating narration and a few clips of dialogue. I worked on my trailer mashup of Anchorman and 300 for the next few days until I realized that my classmate Mark was creating a mashup using video clips from Ice Age and audio from the 300 trailer. I didn't want my mashup to be similar and wanted something original, so I scratched my idea for the third time.

You're probably wondering if I ever successfully created a trailer mashup. I guess the third fourth time is a charm! Because my 300 idea was working pretty well, I knew that I wanted to use the audio of a similar movie. The 1995 movie Braveheart suddenly came to mind. After looking up the trailer on YouTube, I realized that this audio would be even more successful than the audio from 300. Not only does the Braveheart trailer have battle scenes, but it also focuses on the love story in the movie. I knew I would be able to directly connect the Braveheart audio to scenes from Anchorman, as this movie contains a "battle" and "love story" as well (although it is satirical).

First Draft of my Braveheart/Anchorman Mashup

The main challenge of this project was matching the dialogue in the audio to the motion of the characters' mouths. On my first draft, this technical difficulty was noted in a comment from a classmate, so I worked to improve the video by editing the conversational parts of my mashup. Another suggestion was made by Dan to come up with a creative title. In the previous version, I kept the title of Braveheart because the title was mentioned at the end of the trailer's audio. I had originally planned to give the mashup a different name but wasn't sure how to mix the two titles of such different movies. When creating my first draft of the mashup, the only alternative titles I could think of were The Brave Anchor and The Brave Anchorman, but neither seemed to make sense. Finally, I realized that the full title of Anchorman was actually Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgandy. The perfect title then came to mind, and I changed the still image at the end of my mashup to read "Braveheart: The Legend of Ron Burgandy." I then edited the text and animation to make it resemble the actual font and effects used in the original Anchorman trailer. I also changed a few scenes toward the middle of the mashup to complete my final version.

Braveheart: The Legend of Ron Burgandy

Comments

I enjoyed having a class website and the discussions that develop on the site. As far as the readings go, I really liked the stories we read the first few weeks of class, especially the poems. I think the class had trouble discussing them because it was so early in the semester. As we became more familiar with each other, class discussions began to flow more smoothly. Over time, we began to focus on our projects during class and instead used the website to discuss our thoughts. It was great reading others' thoughts on the assignments and readings, and it opened my mind to many new ideas. I also enjoyed helping each other improve our work and receiving constructive feedback from my peers.

I made my first cast on the website to give my opinion of Ben Harper as a poetic musical artist.

I commented in response to Sarah's thoughts on John Mayer as a literary artist.

Here, I replied to Scott's ideas on repetition in the story Cathedral.

In my first blog entry, I gave my thoughts on Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

I discussed the short story Barn Burning in this comment.

This blog post gave me reflection on the playlist assignment.

Here, I talked about the genre and song selection of our playlist assignment.

I commented on Joey's hilarious Bo Burnham podcast and also gave him my suggestions for improvement.

In this comment to Kevin, I pointed out some of the strengths of his Third Eye Blind podcast.

This comment was in response to Mark's professional sounding recording of his podcast on The Clash.

Here, I gave feedback to Kelsey's podcast on the Beatles.

In this blog post, I gave my reflection on the collage assignment and explained my work.

I commented on Joey's Joker collage to tell him that he was on the right track.

I posted this comment to give Jordan some suggestions on enhancing her The Tyger collage.

I commented on Caitlin's collage to tell her that she did a great job!

In response to Jordan’s comment on my collage, I posted a link to my reflection and tried to better explain the purpose of the images I chose.

I responded to the revision of Anthony's poetry collage.

Here, I responded to the revision of Jordan's Edward Cullen collage.

I discussed the absence of music in the movie No Country for Old Men in this blog.

In this blog, I gave my opinion of the character Chigurh.

I commented on the improvement of Emily's collage.