Final Project Blog #10

The workshopping we did today really helped me in ironing out the details. First of all where to cut my clips was really helpful because that seems to be one of my week points on most of these projects. I get so wrapped up into driving the point home I forget how long the clip really is. After someone said that Abby was in a lot of the clips I started looking for clips that had more Ducky and less Abby. Unfortunately most of the clips I found on YouTube involved Abby. The fact that she has a ton of clips on You Tube makes perfect sense because she has A LOT of fans out there. After hearing everyone's reponse to my project I realized that most of the people in the class have never heard of NCIS, much less watched an episode- which changes my audience more than I thought it would. Because I am doing my project for two classes my audience needs to be redefined, because clearly NCIS doesn't target college students. Becausde of that I think I will take a suggestion made in class- which is break each remix into a seperate character and then do a wiki page on it. That or a website. This way I can do some deeper descriptions of each character- including some background information, and explain what ideologies they represent, and then people can watch my video. This broadens my audience because like Stephanie said people that already know a lot about NCIS can just go to the remix, and the people that don't can read a little background information first. This will also solve the problem I was having with transitions between characters. I will definitely need help for a website if I decide to do that because I have never made a website before and at this point I am on a bit of a timeline. I have to present this project in my other class next week, and considering we are workshopping everyone's stuff this week, our time is short. I need to find out if I can just finish the iMovie project I am working on and then be able to split it up by each character- or if I have to reimport each clip into seperate iMovie projects and re-edit them- which would not be very efficient or fun. I also need help with my volume levels, because I have no clue how to fix them in iMovie. Whatever happens I know the workshopping really helped me figure out a lot of grey areas! So thanks everyone!

Director's Commentary on Remix

I chose to remix the song "Letters From Home" by John Michael Montgomery with its original video and still photos. Originally I wanted to simply highlight the communications the deployed military troops use to keep in contact with family back in the U.S.A. After workshopping however, I decided that I really needed to add to my argument with more, different photos and less video. I still wanted to keep my general idea of communication between troops and loved ones, but I added how important it is to communicate with the troops whether you communicate with a family member in the military or not. I also began to think of the general support this country provided for the troops when we started the war, directly after the World Trade Center was attacked- and now. On September 11th this year there was very little recognition of what happened a mere eight years ago. Whether you support the war or not is irrelevant when it comes to supporting our troops because they sacrifice more than most of us can even imagine- sometimes this includes their life. This is why I added the quote at the beginning "We often take for granted the very things that most deserve our gratitude." ~Cynthia Ozick. My uncle has been in the military for over 20 years and he is on his fourth tour to Iraq. The conditions the men and women that serve our country live in while deployed is nothing desirable. We send a care package to him as often as possible, and the number one thing he asks for is baby wipes because it is a rare occasion that he experiences the luxury of a shower. Considering the fact that most of us consider a shower every day a neccesity-we often don't give the soldiers fighting for us the gratitude they deserve. I did this remix project to remind all of us of what soldiers are doing and why they deserve our gratitude and a word of encouragment. We often get so wrapped up in our own lives enjoying our freedom we forget what an important job the soldiers are doing for us. This is why I added the pictures of the mother grocery shopping, the college kids in class and the farmer working. I contrasted them with multiple pictures of soldiers working and soldiers excitement and gratitude for the care packages and letters they received. I really wanted to show the difference in our every day lives and a day in the life of a soldier. The least we can do for these soldiers that put their life on the line daily is support them. I chose to do the entire song, even though it becomes a little repetitive because I really the song itself is a story- and when the father writes "Son, you make me proud" it showcases my call to action- because it doesn't have to be just family members supporting their soldier by writing- I could be anyone. I also added the pictures of soldiers reuniting with their families to show that they have families and loved ones just like the rest of us which makes it that much more important to drop them a line of positive encouragement supporting them so the time of seperation from their family passes as quickly as possible.

Blog #9

There are a variety of interactive media that we have learned to do as a class. Throughout the class I have really came to appreciate the user friendliness of Mac computers when it comes to dealing with media- especially iMovie. I love having the ability to cut, split and otherwise mangle my own work and other people's work to make an argument- whether it be for or against what the media form was originally saying. Because of my new found fondness of iMovie I would like to do some sort of remix/mash up of NCIS for my final project. I have just finished a research paper on NCIS and I think it would be interesting to extend my paper into a non traditional academic medium(I stole the previous term from Dr. Malach). In my paper I analyzed each character on NCIS and discussed how each one represents seperate ideologies. In this project I was thinking of analyzing one character, most likely Ziva or Gibbs- and maybe adding some music. I could also do a mash up of all the characters and showcase their stark contrasts. I noticed while doing research for my paper that there is a ton of fan culture stuff that I could just go wild with- but connecting that to my previous ideas might be a challenge. I would like to work alone unless there is someone else in the class that knows a lot about NCIS. I realize this is a very infant idea, but the topic is something I have commited a lot of my time to this semester. On the other hand I could do something completely different- like maybe do a mash up of sexual connotations Scrat (the squirrel) in Ice Age 3: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and another movie that is recognized for having some very adult sexual content. Here are a couple clips-one from NCIS and one from Ice Age.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dP-xFvTIdNk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=htev-XpND_k