Reflection Blog

I have learned a ton in this class. Being a communications major it is absolutely vital that I learn how to do a bunch of this stuff for my career. At some points during this class I wanted to kill the Mac computers, mostly because (yes I will admit it) operator malfunction. Perhaps this is because I had never even signed onto a Mac, but in general there was a huge learning curve for all of us involved with the Mac's, and that might be extremely beneficial in the future. As far as the final project goes- it has been both challenging and rewarding from the beginning. One of the challenging things is the fact that I am completely addicted to NCIS, and I have done a lot of work with it this semester. Because of this my original remix was speaking to an audience that was very familiar with NCIS and I was very attached to my clips, making the whole thing about 20 minutes long. Clearly this didn't work for the audience I was going for, so I took a suggestion from work shopping and made it into a website. That presented a whole different set of issues. Macs and PC's don't get along when it comes to websites- we found that out a little late in the game- so it didn't turn out exactly how we had expected. Also websites are EXTREMELY picky about their links which is understandable, but still very annoying. Then the videos were not showing up- nor did they ever, which is certainly not from a lack of trying on both Stephanie and my part, and my fiance's for that matter. If I could go back and change something I think I would force the video to work and possibly add something about the rise in popularity of forensic science shows and the effect that has on society today. I talked a little bit about that in my paper for my other class but I didn't have time to add to the website with all the problems that come up before it was due. In the remix project I learned a lot about how to operate iMovie and make a good argument in less than 5 minutes- which definitely prepared me for the remix part of my final project, even if they didn't show up on the website. Although the website was really annoying at times I would like to continue to learn more about them because I think the more I learn about them, the better and easier they will become. I would like to possibly make a website where Matthew and I can show pictures of our wedding and maybe even a live stream of the wedding itself for those people in our family that don't come- because our wedding is going to be on a cruise and our grandparents won't be able to come because of health problems, but they do have Internet access. They could potentially watch the wedding and look at photos etc. That doesn't even touch on the career opportunities that would open up if I was familiar with websites design. It would definitely be challenging and rewarding work to do. My final project showcases my abilities as a media maker in many ways. For one when I began this class I was somewhat scared of the computers, especially because they were Macs. After the wiki I somewhat understood how to put stuff on the web, the PSA will be really helpful if I go into radio- or even advertising for that matter. The remix project helped me out the most because a big part of my final project. The challenge for the website was huge. I had no clue how to even begin to make a website and now I know a lot. I am proudest about the fact that in the end all of my links worked within my website and each of the background colors symbolize something- which I thought was very creative. Each of the color symbols are as follows: Ducky- red with white text because he always has a red pock-a-dotted bow tie which contributes to his personality. Abby- black with red text because she is Gothic- and that makes up for a huge part of her personality. Tony- silver/grey background with black text because he used to have a prized car that color that he adored. Ziva- sand colored background because she is from Israel, and that is a huge part of the show. Gibbs- dark green background with lighter green text because he has been a Marine since he was eighteen- and those are similar to the colors Marines wear(I couldn't use brown for the text because it was too hard to read). And finally, last but certainly not least is McGee, which is a simple black and white because he is a computer programmer, and everything must be black on white paper.
My project has the underlying argument that each of the characters in NCIS present specific ideologies that effect it's viewers. My project is significant because there are millions of people that watch this show religiously, but there has been very little academic stuff written that analyzes it- and that is very important for show that is this popular.