Congratulations on a terrific presentation yesterday! As Kim said, you “rawked” the house. Nice work. And here we go into the final stretch of the semester–so take a look at our schedule to get a sense of where we need to go in the next three weeks. From here on out, you’re done with the blog posts (you finished with #20) and we’re done with the collective reading. Your job now is to turn your focus, energy, and time to your own final video project. To this end, we’d like you to do the following in preparation for Tuesday’s class (plan to share your findings with us):
1. Research, research, research: Locate, read, and take careful notes on at least two new sources on your topic. Be sure one of these comes from a scholarly source (use the library databases to see what you can come up with). You might also want to scour local newspapers or major news sources like The New York Times for pertinent articles. We’ll want to know what you’re discovering, what’s most interesting, and how your research is adding to (or perhaps even changing) your ideas about your topic.
2. Consider your audience for this final video project. Who do you imagine watching your video? What will they know, believe, and assume about your topic? How will you teach them something they didn’t already know? How will you invite them to consider this topic from a different angle? How will you make your topic matter to them? Connected to this question of audience is one of purpose. Do some writing about what you think your purpose is in making this video about the topic you’ve chosen. What are you attempting to do and why is it important?
3. Brainstorm potential visual resources. What kinds of footage are you planning on getting? How and where? What can you locate on the internet to re-purpose, remix, and work with? We’ll bring cameras to class on Tuesday for those who need them.
Bring this freewriting with you to class on Tuesday (along with your sources and notes).
