Hello and welcome to anyone who might be reading this, and thanks for checking out my semester's work in ENGL 052: English and Computer Studies. This class has been an interesting experience for me, and a welcome release from the generally tedious extensive readings, papers, and exams in my other classes. For me English classes have always been a sort of love/hate relationship. I have always enjoyed the writing portion of English classes, but dreaded doing nightly reading assignments. But this class has truly been more than a good English class--it has been fun, as well. I'm not going to pretend that I enjoyed doing every assignment when I first started to work on them; in fact, I got so frustrated with my difficulty in working with GIMP that the collages began to become a real burden. I'm not the best with computers, so this became a common theme for many of my projects. Yet once I got the hang of the technological side of things, I genuinely enjoyed making each one. To be able to utilize a different media form each time you do an assignment prevents the projects themselves from becoming tedious, and each assignment had a novel quality to it. Even the collages became light work as I was able to get a bit of a handle on the GIMP program and refine them over the past few weeks.

The other part of class that I enjoyed was the structure of the class itself. Assistance was always available if you needed it, but I'm glad that Dan let us work out our problems on our own and ask our classmates how they did something in one of the programs. It never really even seemed like a class at all since we were able to chat with the people around us while we worked, creating a relaxed atmosphere that made this a class that I really looked forward to going to each day. Sure, I probably had a tab on my browser dedicated to Facebook in every class, but for the most part I was working on my projects or helping someone else with theirs for almost all of the time.

So with no further ado, here are my projects. Enjoy!

Playlist

The playlist assignment was one of my favorite projects this semester. I've always enjoyed listening to music in my free time, and the challenge to find songs that match up with a character's identity was an exciting first project. I chose the character of Maximus from Ridley Scott's Gladiator because I thought his wide range of emotions (from family man to warrior) would allow me to use a wide variety of songs and make for an intriguing project. I also think the playlist concept worked well as our first assignment because it allowed us to ease into the technological side of the class and focus mostly on the literary aspects. Though the html was tricky at first, we were able to figure out the basic idea of the layout by looking at sheet we got in class, which was quite useful.

Still, I'll admit that when we first were assigned this playlist project, I thought it would be simple. I figured I would just go into iTunes, find some songs that related to the topic, throw them up here, and be done with it. However, as I ran through my library I realized how difficult it is to find 7-8 songs that fit both lyrically and melodically with the story of a character (in my case, Maximus), considering the range of emotions most of them experience. Additionally, it took me a long time to arrange my posting exactly the way I wanted it to look on the page. Between posting photos, manipulating fonts, and linking to iTunes, each of the eight entries on my posting probably took an average of 30-45 minutes from start to finish--a long time considering that each description was not more than a paragraph in length. In the end, though, I'm glad we did it. I learned a great deal about formatting and using the html codes, and genuinely enjoyed this assignment on the whole. Because I found this project interesting, I think I was able to analyze the emotions of Maximus a whole lot better than if I were forced to write a paper on the subject.

Here is the first version of my Maximus Playlist

As the due date for the Midterm Portfolio approached, I decided to polish up my first version. I made a few revisions, mostly to the wording and content of my explanations, which I thought left a little to be desired in the first version. I didn't want to mess around with the layout, as I was pleased with the way my first one turned out, and the songs seemed to still mesh with Maximus' character when explained properly.

Here is my Second Maximus Playlist

I was pretty happy with the way my second version turned out and had planned on making it my final version, but when I went home for Thanksgiving break, I listened to a song I had not heard in a while and realized that it was really a perfect fit with Maximus' mindset during the movie. The ending of my playlist wasn't the best in the first place, so I decided to add it. I also cleaned up some of the wording in the last song's description to account for the new addition.

Here is my Third Maximus Playlist

Podcast

The podcast assignment was easily my favorite project of the semester. In this assignment, we were asked to make a podcast about a favorite band, artist, or even poet and analyze the manner in which they employ their form of expression. As a journalism major, the idea of using the podcast form excited me because it was as if I was writing a story about the artist, but using a different medium to construct it. Instead of writing my ideas down on paper, I had to convey them with my words, and instead of writing out quotes, I was able to gather interviews of Youtube and insert them in between my narration. It was a really neat experience because the composition was almost identical to that of writing a hard-copy story, but the elements that composed it were so drastically different.

When I had to decide which artist to work with, it was a tough choice. I don't really have a single favorite band or singer, so I looked through my iTunes to see which artist would work well with the project at hand. There were several good possibilities, but in the end I decided on Third Eye Blind. Third Eye Blind is one of my favorite artists, but I was most inclined to do my project on them because their songs always have a positive message, yet each of their pieces is entirely different than the others. In my podcast, I showed the way that Third eye Blind is always able to bring a positive message through without sacrificing creativity in composing their lyrics and melodies.

Working with the Audacity program was a challenge at first, especially since I'd never really done anything like it. One of my biggest problems was the volume level of my entire piece. Since I was getting the audio from several different sources and since I opted to record my own voice with the microphone on my laptop, which isn't the best, the volume was up and down throughout the entire podcast at first. To fix this, I learned how to shift the volume of the actual playback so that the quieter parts could be played louder and therefore be just as loud as the louder parts. Once I got this smoothed out, my biggest challenge was fading in and out the audio, which took a good bit of trial and error to get right, but in the end it was a good experience to learn how to manipulate the controls and learn them as I went.

Here's the first version of my Third Eye Blind Podcast

In my first version, I thought I did a good job with the literary aspects, making my points and clearly illustrating what I wanted to say, but the technological refinements were simply not there. The volume levels were all off and there was a long pause in between two of the clips. Also, it didn't really even have an ending, but instead just sort of stopped with a song. Overall, I thought it had a very unfinished look, so I went back and made a revision where I fixed the long pause but accidentally saved it over the old version and posted it over the old one on the blog, so only my revision remains in my first posting.

For my midterm portfolio, I made a few more revisions, including adding an ending at the conclusion of the final song. I also fixed the volume levels and smoothed the transitions between songs to make it an easier listen on the whole. I kept the content relatively the same, but added a lot more polish to make it a much more professional and finished composition.

Here's the Second Version of my Third Eye Blind Podcast.

In my third and final version of the podcast, I simply added some needed polish and cleared up some minor problems. First, I added a little bit more commentary before the song "Wounded" which didn't really have much of an introduction before. I think the new intro makes the message of the song, as well as the way in which it ties into the overall theme of my podcast, a whole lot clearer. In addition, I also changed up the ending, adding some further analysis of "Slow Motion," and tying the whole thing up in a less rushed manner. I think I've made this podcast about as good as it can be, and I was really pleased with the end result.

Here's the Final Version of my Third eye Blind Podcast

Collages

The two collage projects in this class were easily the most personally challenging for me. For starters, I have never had a passion for art, mostly because I don't have much artistic talent either, so I knew from the beginning that making two quality collages would be a difficult task. In addition, the GIMP program was very tough for me to grasp at first, and although I had some decent ideas, I couldn't seem to get them to show up the way I wanted in the collage itself. Finally, I don't have much of an idea of what makes a good or bad picture, so even when I got things to work, I wasn't sure if they were improvements or a step backwards.

My main problem with GIMP was my inability to smoothly merge images together. At some points I had one image that I really liked and was able to do some things in GIMP to make it stand out the way I wanted it to, but I was unable to tie in other pictures to complete the idea. The first trick I learned was the opacity tool, which initially helped a bit in fusing a background and a foreground, but I was unable to crop my other images the way I wanted to in order to implement them as well. This was one case where the class structure really helped me to solve my problems, though. One day in class I was telling some of the people at my table that I could not seem to get the right cut on my secondary images and that they looked really rough. When I told everyone this, Travis Lowman showed me how to use the lasso tool and the eraser to get a much cleaner cut on my images, and I have been using that method ever since.

The first collage I created was the character collage, for which I chose the character of Harry Potter. Though I had thought of using a few others, including Jason Bourne and John Clark, I thought that Harry would be an interesting subject to do because the series of seven books does a great job of developing Harry as a dynamic character who experiences the classic teenage struggle of asserting his own self in a world of peer pressure. The main premise for my Harry Potter collage was that although Harry has multiple and powerful forces pulling him in all different directions, he is able to keep them close, yet depend on his own internal drive when necessary. While I think this is a good vision, my first collages were not able to illustrate this very well, as I was still having a great deal of difficulty with GIMP. However, I think they progressed very nicely from first draft to final revision.

My first attempt was pretty miserable, so view this First Harry Potter Collage at your own risk.

I obviously wasn't very happy with my first effort, so I took some time outside of class to work with the program by myself and work out some of the problems I'd been having. After a lot of trial and error, I was able to figure out some new and useful methods of editing that I used to create my first revision. I decided to scrap the first attempt, as there really wasn't much to be done with it, and start from scratch. I used the same initial image from the first one of Harry and his friends, but added in the image of the Hogwarts castle and Quidditch field in the back to give a bit more storyline and to clean up the boring blank space above Harry. I also added in James Potter, Harry's father, over Harry's right shoulder to indicate the guiding force he provides in Harry's life.

Here's the Second Version of my Harry Potter Collage, a big step up from the first one.

I was pretty pleased with this version, but I knew that no attempt at telling Harry Potter's development as a character would be complete without including Lord Voldemort, Harry's chief adversary, in some form. So after a few attempts, I settled for putting him on the opposite shoulder from James. The placement of Voldemort was, at least to me, a critical aspect of the collage. Not only do he and James both influence Harry in opposite directions (almost in a "devil vs. angel" type way), but their influence is even closer to Harry than that of his friends, so I thought it important to place them closer to Harry.

Here's the Third Version of my Harry Potter Collage

I liked this last version of my collage, but I really wasn't sure that I couldn't implement the same ideas in a little bit stronger form. The images of James and Voldemort seemed a little out of place and pretty obviously cut in to the image. So I decided to make a fourth revision, in which I found a better picture of Voldemort, removed the two shoulder faces, and placed Voldemort in what I conceived as a sort of "dark cloud" over Hogwarts, since his presence seems to perpetually haunt the place, as well as the back of Harry's mind. Also, I really liked how Voldemort's hand seems to have a grasp on Harry's head, illustrating the type of control he has over Harry's mind at many points throughout the series.

Here's the Fourth Version of my Harry Potter Collage

As I indicated before, though, I'm very bad about distinguishing the qualities that make a piece of art successful, so I'm not sure that this version is any better than the 3rd one. In fact, it might be worse. Still, I prefer the fourth version myself, and the beauty of art is that there can be many different interpretations of any piece, so I'll let y'all decide which is the stronger of the two.

For the second of my two collages, the poetry collage, I chose the poem "The Red Wheelbarrow" by William Carlos Williams. I thought that this would be a good selection because the poem itself is straightforward, yet allows for a great deal of interpretation, which I thought would allow me a lot of freedom in creating a collage, where I'd need to use pictures to express my ideas. Again, the first couple tries were a bit below average as I still learned to GIMP, but as I continued polishing them, I was finally able to get to the heart of my premise, which focuses on the key phrase of the poem: "So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow." y goal was to try to explain all the perceived dependants of the red wheelbarrow through pictures.

Here is my first attempt, Red Wheelbarrow Collage #1

I was pretty pleased with this first attempt, but clearly there were a few technical issues that needed to be cleared up. First, it was necessary to clean up the edges around the chicken, which made it clearly evident that it had been poorly cropped. Second, I wanted to emphasize the red wheelbarrow more, since it is the main feature of the poem, so I did a brief revision of my first draft, clearing up these two things.

Here is my second version, Red Wheelbarrow Collage #2

The first revision was good in the sense that the collage was much smoother and looked like it could conceivably be one picture. Yet the wheelbarrow remained too transparent, so I removed one of the background images and turned up the opacity on the wheelbarrow in order to make it pop a bit more.

Here is my third version, Red Wheelbarrow Collage #3

When I looked at my third version of the collage, I saw an image that did a good job of representing the elements of the poem, but didn't really even hint at the deeper meaning of the lines at all. So I decided to alter the collage radically, removing another of the background pictures and adding in two other images, one of the farmer, who is dependent on the wheelbarrow for his livelihood, and the apples, which represent the produce that the wheelbarrow's labors help to produce. I also increased the opacity on the chicken to emphasize its importance as not just an element of the poem, but also a dependent of the wheelbarrow as well. I wanted to implement these new images strongly, but kept getting rough edges when I imported them, so I decided to do some smudging on the edges to integrate them a little more smoothly. I also wanted to use the font from the first draft again in this one, but I couldn't seem to figure out how to change it again, and I'm not sure that its style is vital to the collage's success in a crucial way anyway, so I decided to leave it be. Still, I think the present and final form is a huge improvement over the first one.

Here is my fourth and final version, Red Wheelbarrow Collage #4

Video

The video project seemed, at least to me anyways, to be very similar to the podcast in terms of its literary elements. As I mentioned previously when talking about my podcast, this kind of assignment allows you to have the most enjoyable essay writing experience you have ever had, because essentially it challenged us to write a paper, but use technology to speak for us. Windows MovieMaker was probably the most straightforward program we used all year. There were no really tricky elements, and the program was very user friendly, even to someone who isn't great with computers like me.

When we got the assignment, it took me a while to decide what I wanted to focus on in my video. I had a number of topics on my mind, including a movie mash-up or a spoof, but I ended up deciding on what I like to call a video essay. To me, a video essay is a type of media in which you mostly let the video clips speak for themselves and use narration to bind them together. As I was looking over movie clips to use for my project, I noticed that music was a key factor in almost every big scene in the movie; moreover, in each of these scenes, the music played a different role. Sometimes it could be a joyous, sing-song melody, while at other points it became a memorizing, trance-inducing rhythm. Following from this discovery, I decided that my video essay would focus on the many different powers of music in the movie, and the way the Coen Brothers use each of these influential powers to help tell their story.

In my first draft, I knew that I could show the different instances where music exerted great power, but I wasn't sure where it was all leading me. The first few minutes worked well, but I pretty much stalled out after that.

Here's my First Music Analysis Video

I had posted my first draft with an eye to revise it in the first place, so I asked Dan if he could give me a some ideas as to where to go with it. After viewing his suggestions, as well as some of those posted by my classmates on the blog, I was able to add a few more elements that tie the whole thing up pretty nicely. I would have liked it to have turned out a little better, but as it stands, I'm not displeased with the end result. The one lingering problem that I couldn't seem to remove was the formatting of the movie title. For some reason, I couldn't find a method in MovieMaker that would allow me to make a single portion of a title italic while leaving the rest the same. I wished we had started these earlier in the semester because I think these projects are the ones that need the most fine tuning. With a couple extra weeks, I think a lot of us could have made some really nice videos.

Here's my Final Music Analysis Video

Blog Posts

As I mentioned in the my earlier portfolio, the postings to the class blog were one of my favorite elements of the class. When we were told at the beginning of the semester that we'd have to post on this site pretty regularly, I thought it would be a big hassle. But once I saw how much enthusiasm and encouragement my other classmates were putting into their postings, it really became something I would do pretty regularly. Whenever I went to post a new project, I tried to comment on or give feedback for a classmate's project. The reason I did this is because I always looked forward to see what other people thought of my work. It's hard to notice some imperfections when its your creation, but the more people that read it, the more constructive the feedback becomes. There were many occasions on which I took the suggestion of a classmate on how to improve a project. Here is a collection of a few of my most recent and/or lengthier postings to the blog this semester:

I commented here on Caitlin's Love Story Collage

I added to the class discussion on the music in O Brother Where Art Thou

I commented on Sarah's Sarah Palin Collage

I gave Joey feedback on his Why So Serious? Collage

I commented on Ashton's Wagon Wheel Collage

I made a blog post concerning Something I Noticed in No Country for Old Men

I gave Meredith feedback on her Road Not Taken Collage

I commented on Ashton's John Mayer Podcast here

I shared my opinions on political satire here