ENG 2150: Writing Through New York

So the poem, I mean song that I am using for this project is “Coming of Age” by Jay-Z featuring Memphis Bleek. “Coming of Age” is one of my favorite songs from Jay-Z’s classic album, “Reasonable Doubt”.  “Coming of Age” is a song about how a head honcho of the streets (Jay-Z) is commissioning a young lad to come and join his ranks. The basic idea of this song is how the streets in the ‘hood’ and the people who inhabit of New York operate. It is often an idea many cannot grasp due to the fact that they are not familiar to the ways of the street.

I plan to incorporate this idea into my digital essay by capturing a modern day reenactment of what goes on in the song “Coming of Age”. And if one does not know the song, you can listen below

http://youtu.be/UzdsygJmDqs

For my paper, I’m using the poem The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus. Since the general focus in the poem is the Statue of Liberty, I will definitely incorporate her into my digital essay. I am not even sure if my thesis is acceptable or what it exactly is yet. Generally, I would like to depict the idea that freedom isn’t free. If you want to live here and be successful, you have to work hard for it. Those that move to America, New York specifically, for a better life and expect it to be easy are disillusioned and unrealistic. They complain about their jobs and their lives, but that’s life in general. New York is no different. Yes, we are all about freedom and democracy. What that really means is you’re free to choose how to be successful and what kind of life you want.

What I may want to do for this digital essay is depict the difference between these two types of people in a type of picture story. They all arrive at Ellis Island in front of the Statue of Liberty, desperate to be accepted into another land and life. She accepts them with open arms and tells them the type of life here, including the work. One group is realistic and knows the price of success as well as the value of work. The other group is naive and stubborn. They are discouraged by this life because it is not fitting to their high expectations, but they refuse to accept that and kind of give up on their goals. Throughout the video, I want to show the transitions both the successful group and the failed group make. I’m also thinking about a song I could put it in the background that symbolizes this, but I haven’t thought of one yet.

For this research paper I have decided to base my essay around the poem Light Night by James Schuyler. Atheistically I am very interested in the poem because it revolves the themes of nature and conflict. As for my digital essay I have no idea exactly how I am going to go about it, but I wanted to stage a fight that is heavily choreographed. The reason I feel this would be an appropriate digital essay is because the poem refers greatly to the isolation of particular items and how it creates something, I feel it to be beauty, but the outside disturbance of our surround destroys or alters or experience. This is not going to be a street fight, the friends I have chosen to is also a martial artist so when creating this video the goal will to be make the movement look as “beautiful” as possible.

The general outline for this digital essay will be, a solitary practice that is suddenly interrupted by a nearby martial artist resulting in a fight. At this point my digital essay has the content of the poem present in it, but I feel more research and interpretation of the poem/development of my thesis will be incorporated into the digital essay through the results of the fight and the couple of actions we decide to catch on camera afterwards.

I’m not exactly sure as to what I’m specifically making my digital essay. What I am trying to do though is make something as original as I can, meaning using my own footage. It’s probably gonna be a hell lot of work considering editing/rendering time but I think in the end, it’s all gonna be worth it.

So most likely, it WILL incorporate footage of my own, and I’m trying to make it as professional as possible. The idea is to be centered around New York. What we (by we, I mean group members because I plan to work in a group if possible)  were planning to do before was making a full-fledged music video, but with the time being given, I don’t think that’s possible so we may have to resort to something else.

My idea of this is still processing, but I’m sure once I get a thesis down for my essay, I’ll be able to think of and work on a digital essay that supports my paper properly. And one that’s cool. Because cool is awesome.

For the poem, “Square Root of 3,” I want to make an animation video, or stop motion video. I want to actually recreate my poem in a literal way, like a picture story. The poem focuses on the irrational number root 3, so I want to personify the number and create a story that the poem tells. That’s my first thought, but I’ve never done any animation before, so either I’d have to ask someone who does or learn it myself. If it turns out that the animation doesn’t go well, then perhaps I’ll make a flip book. I’d record it and perhaps add or take away a few things. I’ll probably add some music to it as well.

The last digital essay I did I made a stop motion video, although I didn’t know exactly how I just experimented. For this digital essay I’m not sure exactly what I want to do. I know I would rather make some sort of video with pictures, not necessarily dialogue. I chose the poem “To Brooklyn Bridge” by Hart Crane (pages 485-486). This poem spoke to me in other ways, I have never walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, nor were any of the other famous brides really in New York, besides the George Washington Bridge but those mostly bike rides. For this digital essay I was thinking of taking photos from all the bridges at different times of day and make some sort of slide show, then turning into a panoramic view of the city- to demonstrate the huge skyline somehow condensed into this island. The way hart crane describes the city is endless, he uses a lot of movement in his poem and I would like to embody both the endlessness and the movement of the city through pictures, and then either read the poem over it or have some sort of accompanied music. I’m still iffy about this, because it seems really easy in theory but so did my stop motion video.

I think I want to use the Steps poem we read in class last Thursday.  I’d like to try a stop motion video this time. The image in my mind is creating a skit type of thing with music in the background-something not literally portraying the poems but clearly emphasizing the themes.If I don’t end up doing a stop-motion video, I’d like to film random people in the city because I feel for the Steps poem (I’ll get the exact name and poet later) that it would be perfect- to show different routines of the city.

My biggest issue is that I’m worried about editing and putting the video together because this isn’t exactly my forte.

If anyone has any suggestions or anything please comment ! Thanks 🙂

For the digital essay portion, I am planning to make a video that combines all sorts of musicians performing jazz and bebop. I am also going to include photos of musicians as well as parts of New York City during the 60’s and now to reflect on the music aspect of the city and how it differs from today. I am planning to add clips from musicians performing in Minton’s if they are available and give a visual of what the atmosphere was like in the club. I think it will help the reader understand what it was like to be in the room while this new type of music was being developed. I am planning to add photos that compares the 17th-century to present-day New York City because I feel like the music aspect of the city has changed over time. There were many more musicians roaming the streets going from jazz club to jazz club performing. Nowadays, a larger number of people are interested in going to clubs and listening to music by Lady Gaga or LMFAO. I think walking the streets during the 60’s, one would have heard saxophones and complex harmonies running down the piano keys. Now when you walk down the street, you hear pop songs and R&B songs. I feel as though Jazz music has become rare in a way. To hear authentic jazz music, you have to be dressed up, buy tickets, or search for jazz clubs. Jazz music isn’t rare as in seeing a polar bear in Hawaii just walking down the beach. What I mean is that not many people are appreciating the greatness of Jazz music. Therefore, through my digital essay, I want to portray my thesis as well as emphasis the greatness of jazz and bebop.

I took this picture one day on my ride to Baruch.

At first sight the digital essay part of our third paper scared me. I’m not great with technology and had no idea what I would do. After thinking about it for a few days I’ve come up with something that I think I would be able to do.

My poem is about New York at sunrise and how peaceful it can be. This brought be to think of my ride from Brooklyn to Baruch. I take the x28 which goes through some very quiet streets in Brooklyn and Manhattan. I get to the city really early in the morning, before all of the chaos sets in, which is what I pictured when I first read the poem. For my paper I would like to explain the different view of the city that the author portrays. The author shows a quiet and mysterious city, which is what I would like to show in my digital essay.

I think I will film my ride to Baruch to visually express my point of view of the poem. My only worry is how to do film it and edit and upload, which I will hopefully figure out once I do some research. If anyone has any tips on how I can do that, I would highly appreciate it ! I was planning to use my camera to video it but I’m not sure if I would be able to edit it and how I would upload it.