I know I’m suppose to upload the video to the blog, but I’m having trouble at the moment so this is my backup, still trying though.
Update:
Final Below, hopefully it finishes processing.
http://youtu.be/Jg5ktmTFATU
Note: This is my first draft of it. It’s not completely done but tell me what you think and what can be improved.
The poem I’m doing is Every Single Day by John Straley
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8BdPInl9xY&feature=youtu.be
After having the individual conferences with Professor Kaufman. I realized that I have to focus more on the structure and how the author write what she writes. Even though her personal life would be interesting to know, I have to understand why she writes what she writes and who are the people who have inspired her to write such poems like these.
I have also planned out a slideshow to represent the different stanza’s in my poem and hopefully show my thesis from the slideshow. My biggest challenge would be to get my idea across and base it on the poem itself. Like everyone else, there are very few sources from the poem which is my major struggle. I felt as though having the conferences has helped a lot and have made me think more of how the author structures her poem rather than just focusing on the author itself.
I have been looking over my paper and I realized that I have not been creative or specific enough. Going to the individual conference really helped. During that time, I wrote a whole different thesis and got it approved by Prof. Kaufman. The title of the poem that I chose, “Smile,” is very simple and vague. I had a tough time thinking about what to write about, also since this paper gives us the most freedom to explore other areas compared to the previous papers. However, I realized that I don’t need to have a hard time writing my paper because my topic is something everyone does. Smiling is natural and sometimes we smile unconsciously.
For my digital essay, I have prepared a film that incorporates different people smiling. Hopefully, during my editing process, I will be able to fully capture my vision for this short film. I want people to realize something that they rarely think of or never think of. This is going to be a simple film, however, this is the part where my paper and the poem connects fully. I want my digital essay to support my paper as well as my paper doing the same for the digital part.
For my first draft i did not have a thesis statement at all and neither was creating an argument. I really wanted to work on ”The Raven” by Edgar Allen Poe. At first, i thought it was going to be easy and just use his background to prove my thesis, but it came out to all wrong. This wasn’t high school where i can write about his background and be finished with this paper. After couple of days of work and research i think i might not have the best thesis statement, but it will help me improve the paper.
My digital essay isn’t completed yet, but i have the ideas and tools i need to make this digital essay good. I’m trying to to make my digital essay relate to my thesis statement as much as possible. I might even make big changes in it because i’m still not sure whether it will interesting or not.
A lot of my ideas has changed since starting this paper. Right now I feel like I have total control over this paper which is exactly what I want. Thankfully Professor Kaufman was able to help me find that thesis statement that allowed me to that control of this paper. All what I need left is to lengthen it a bit more. My weakest area, my introduction, has already been fixed and possibly my strongest introduction yet. I also need to just focus on using breaking my poem into pieces which shouldn’t be too hard now. But I’m still lacking in the source department which I’m heavily focusing on at the moment, probably a little too much.
As for the digital essay, I have the script written out and all I need to do is just film and edit it. The digital project doesn’t seem as nightmarish as I pictured it before. I feel pretty excited just on the thought of all the editing I get to do and create something out of it. But that kind of things might get tedious but might also be fun.
Today me and Maura had finished recording our digital essay project. Now we all have to do is edit the clips that we had worked on. Hopefully the video will come out to be okay and get our meaning across. I thought that the process of recording for the digital essay was fun and difficult since we didn’t have three people. Though our video maybe very short compared to the other people in class, we put a lot of effort recording and putting it together.
So far my revision for my third paper is a little troublesome. I had forgot to ask Professor Kaufman about how the rest of my paper was. When I had met with her I remember her helping me formulate my thesis, but had forgot to ask how the argument and analysis of the quotes in my paper were. Hopefully I can ask her tomorrow when I see her. Right now I’m just trying my best to get a higher grade on my last paper because I know that there is no rewrite for it and that my grades for my last two papers had been horrific. I really hope I can obtain a higher grade for this class.
I finished recording today for my digital project. There was a lot of editing that had to be done. Overall, it was a pretty fun project to do. However, when I uploaded it to YouTube as an HD 720p file, it only came out at 480p. I’m trying to fix that so when it is played on the big screen TV, the quality will be better.
I got some helpful advice from Professor Kaufman from the meeting to improve and strengthen my thesis. I always had trouble making my thesis statement more specific, but hopefully this time it will come out strong and not cliché. This will also help me write more to make my paper at least 5 pages.
The idea for my blog came at the last minute. I was spending most of my time worrying about how to make my thesis specific, and then while doing something completely unrelated, the idea sparked. I was able to write a paper connecting my poem and my idea. I was able to analyze a lot of the sentences and twist them to fit with my thesis. My digital essay, which I am working on with another student, goes by the same ideas and I think that it fits really well.
After my meeting with Professor Kaufman, I am ready to finalize my draft. She gave me a lot of positive feedback, and a lot of good ideas that I am willing to work with. I need to make my paper a little longer, and add in a source or two, but other than that I just need to work on explaining my ideas more. This paper allowed me a lot of freedom, which made writing it a little difficult because there was so much to work with. I think that I have done a good job on this one.
I was inspired after talked with Professor Kaufman because she gave some helpful suggestions about how to figure out a strong thesis base on a poem. But, the sad thing was, she misunderstood my original thesis statement and led me to slightly change my thesis to another one…which burdened me because I had to reorganize my entire paper. Fortunately, I’m striving for a better result right now.
For the digital part, I’m doing fine and I have recorded my video segments. But I still need to include some subtitles and background music into the video in order to make it understandable.
