Throughout this semester I have been pushed out of my comfort zone and almost beyond my limits in order to create interesting content on the web. The fact that I am typing up this Final Portfolio in Word is telling in and of itself considering that I usually map all of my essays out on paper and then do extensive editing all before I ever touch a keyboard. English majors need to become more comfortable with technology and this class has thrown me right in the deep end…I know I floundered quite a bit but I hope I didn’t outright sink. It was fun learning how to use all of the programs, from Audacity to Adobe Premiere Elements, and all of the websites, from Flickr to Weebly. I feel I have grown greatly and now I am not afraid of doing anything web-based (although, I know that I need a lot more training to become anywhere near proficient). This has been the first class I’ve taken at UNC that has inspired me to create and has really challenged me to learn things on my own (like HTML code). All in all, this was a wonderful experience and I feel like I might have solidly decent works to add to my actual portfolio.

Quick Poetry Assignment: Our very first task on TeachMix was to start us thinking critically about the inherent sounds and rhythms of poetry. This also eased us into the new (well, at least for me) world of online blogging. My response to the poetry assignment was posting a link to “We Are Seven” by William Wordsworth. This is an extremely lyrical poem and it works perfectly in examining the musical quality of poetry. I enjoyed this assignment greatly because I got to read everyone else’s posts and was exposed to some great poetry.

Your Brain on Music : This article opened class discussion pertaining to mental perception of music. I posted a link to an interesting article from the Harvard Gazette by William J. Cromie. It is an article that explains how the capacity to comprehend and appreciate music is innate and that musical taste is shaped by culture at a very early age. It goes on to explain the "biology of music" and particular areas of the brain involved in processing music. I learned a lot from reading these articles and the class really began interacting. This was also good preparation for the next assignment, the music montage.

Blog Entry: In preparation for creating our montages we introduced our prospective topic. Mine was Guitar Hero’s Impact. This exercise made me think critically about where my montage was going and how to go about creating it. It also hopefully raised some interest in the rest of the class.

Podcast: For this assignment I read the poem “How Doth the Little Crocodile” in two different ways. It was frustrating working with the program Audacity. My laptop’s microphone is not of the highest quality and it is always embarrassing for me to hear my voice recorded. After I got over the embarrassment and initial frustration I ended up really liking editing the sound bites with Audacity. It was also fun finding two ways of reading the poem and really analyzing how tone of voice, speed, and varying emphasis affected the overall portrayal of the poem. It also gave me a greater appreciation for the hard work that goes into voice training for newscasters and radio personalities (I know that I could never do it).

Montage:

This was my first foray into web development and it is admittedly rough. It was exciting to write html code and have it work and be published on the internet. At the same time it was impossibly frustrating to write the code and not have it work and simply not know how to fix it (For example, the video I embedded has mysteriously disappeared). This initial page was really just me feeling out how to write code and so the content was lacking. If I could do this over I would really use more page space to explore my topic. At this point in the semester this page has pretty much fallen through the cracks and I honestly don’t think that I will have time to revisit it to make it spectacular. I like that this exhibits my very initial attempts at creating a coherent and eye-pleasing web page. Even though this montage is brief it served as a very good starting point for my later work. It was also really nice to get some feedback and encouraging words from the professor.

Podcast: This is my first podcast attempt. I was proud of myself for making something even remotely entertaining. It was too short and needed a lot of polishing. My microphone quality was still poor and the background music was too loud. The comments were extremely helpful and complimentary; apparently my voice is very calm and nice to listen to.
This is my second attempt. This podcast is pretty much as good as I can make it. I borrowed a microphone from Mr. Anderson and really took my time to write out and prepare everything I wanted to say. I also found more audio clips and really worked to integrate them smoothly. I think the breakup of me speaking and the interview clips keeps it interesting to listen to. I intended on having subtle background music throughout, but trying to get the music files to sync and play softly enough was tedious beyond belief and I reached a wall where I simply could not work on it any longer. The more I listened to it the more I knit-picked it. I still want to put in the background music to make it completely finished and polished, but I won’t have time to dedicate to it for awhile.

Image Analysis: We were told to choose an interesting photograph. This would get us thinking about what makes an interesting/good photograph. I chose “Famous Kiss” because it is so incredibly iconic. I’m still not sure if it has the technical merit to be call “art” but it does an excellent job of representing the joy of victory and bringing forth an emotion from its audience.

Our second image assignment was to photoshop a picture in order to make an interesting statement. I don’t really know what my statement is, but I really like Ina Von Count hahaha.
For anyone who does not watch the Food Network this would be really confusing (and even people who do watch probably wouldn’t get it without a little bit of explanation since this is an inside joke between my roommate and I) but Ina Garten is a chef who has a show called The Barefoot Contessa and she has a habit of wearing very high popped collars. I wanted to add a spatula to the image’s hand but alas, my technical inabilities would only go so far as to produce this gem.

Flickr page: This was my first experience with the website Flickr. I never knew there were so many photographers out there posting their work to be viewed for free. I kind of had a field day and it was extremely difficult for me to focus on one point. I didn’t feel qualified to determine what was art and what was not and so I went with what I liked to look at and that is really awesome cakes. I’ve always been fascinated by professional cake decorators (I love all of the tv shows) and so to find pictures of beautiful cakes on flickr was fantastic. I wanted to explore the idea that cakes are both beautiful art and extremely utilizable objects (I mean, someone’s got to eat them). Thinking about this now reminds me really strongly about John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and the easy I wrote for English 437 about its mutability (or lack thereof) and how that ties in with art’s permanence and love’s quick duration. Here is Have Your Cake and Eat It Too

Media Page: Okay, so I ended up doing my photography media page using Weebly. I kind of felt like I was cheating, but I was about to go off the deep end using our class website. I’ve always been interested in photography, but sadly my experience lies mostly in lugging around my mother’s clunky Polaroid and snapping pictures of my pets. I have no idea about any famous photographers or really many famous photographs so I took this assignment in another direction and ended up plotting the timeline and evolution of a camera company—Polaroid. There was some buzz in the media at this time that Polaroid was discontinuing production of its film, but I found out that it is simply moving to a more digital-friendly interface with a smaller design and more eco-friendly film.

Next we worked on our midterm portfolios and I finally got to evaluate my work so far. I had done a surprising amount of work (even if I hadn’t made many comments on other people’s work) and I was proud of what I had produced, considering I was a complete novice in virtually every aspect of our work.

Stop Motion Video: This was by far the coolest assignment. Don’t get me wrong, it was extremely nerve wracking and I had no end of trouble deciding on what I wanted to do, but once I settled on creating my own stop motion film it just flew by. Taking thousands of pictures didn’t exactly fly by, but it was so rewarding that I would do it over and over. I might just have found my calling. It is such a fascinating process all around and everyone had such wonderful feedback for me (it even got shown in class!) The only problem is how to tie this in to the fact that this is an English class…heh. I would like to point out the fact that nothing else I did really had to do with literature—it was all about creation and freethinking in the world of the internet. I gained much more (and spent much more time) from creating this single 2 minute video than I have from reading Frankenstein in three different English classes. I had to use every one of my abilities (even artistic and spatial relations, stuff that you learn about in 5th grade Talent Development classes) to create something that is fun to watch. And here it is again, because I am just that proud of it.

Melissa's Stop Motion from Melissa Stevenson on Vimeo.

Stop Motion Animation Media Page: Here is the media page I made to go along with my video. I will admit that I spent so much time actually making the video that this media page ended up being more of a blog about my process than any in depth analysis of Stop motion animation as a genre. If I had more time (and patience with html coding) I would have gone back in and jazzed it up with more pictures and more intelligent content. (I seem to be doing the same old song and dance on each of these about how if I had more time and ability all of my pages would have looked better…but I guess that is true in everything and this is what I have to put forth—my best effort)

Comments:
I commented on Amanda Smith’s blog entry titled Video Games and Music . She was interested in the effect background music had while playing video games. I sent her a link to a video on CollegeHumor.com about a band who creates music using video game noises. I found the video extremely interesting and fun and I hope it inspired her project even though it did not exactly concern her topic.

I commented on Cameron McClain’s podcast titled iMusic Education Podcast. His podcast was excellent, because his voice was conversational and engaging. My advice was for him to get one of his interviewees to re-do his part because it sounded too scripted. The stilted manner of Kyle’s speaking is especially noticeable in comparison to Cameron’s fluid narration.

I commented on Taylor Bunch’s podcast titled Guttural Poetry. My advice was to cut down on ambient noise by using a better microphone and to smooth out the amplifications for a more uniform sound. Her recorded segments were choppy where they were put together in Audacity, so I thought it would be better if she re-recorded it as one segment. She took my advice and her podcast was very interesting and turned out fantastically.

I commented on Taylor Bunch’s blog post about her flikr page titled Fruit Gallery. I wanted to let her know that her way of pairing images demonstrated her point very effectively.

I commented on Amanda Smith’s blog post about her fikr page titled Gallery. I just had to tell her how much I enjoyed her cute cat photos. It was fascinating to see the difference between quick amateur shots and professional photographs of all the same subject.

I commented on Erin Black’s photoshopped image titled Cult of the Converse. It was so expertly done that I only had praise for it. I mean, it could be an ad campaign for Converse (except quite a few Catholics would get upset). I wish I had her skills in photoshop.

I commented on Hallum’s blog post Sick of HTML? and boy was I. He introduced us to the website Weebly and, frankly, restored my faith in the Internet. I was drowning in codes and gets headaches every time I even looked at my computer screen so to find something that worked and made an even remotely professional looking page just made my day. I ended up only using Weebly for one page and that one page didn’t even turn out exactly as I wanted it, but it definitely got me through a road block I was having at the time.

I commented on Forest Leker’s video mash-up titled Wall e vs. iron man Mash-up. I love the film Wall-e. I pointed out that his mash-up was interesting in multiple ways; 1) Wall-e is a robot so he is literally an "iron man", 2)in the movie he is actually a very timid little robot left behind on Earth, so matching him with this song is ironic but, 3) he is saving and bettering the world so he deserves the power bestowed upon him through this song. I thought it was an excellent idea.

I commented on Taylor Bunch’s mash-up titled Tragic Villains. The only bad thing I had to say was that without prior knowledge of the films and/or villains this mash-up would be pretty confusing. Some of the clips were just difficult to see and understand what exactly was happening. It was the perfect choice for background song though (and that is always what I struggle with the most so I was impressed).

I commented on Cameron McClain’s media page titled Apocalyptic Movies. His page was very interesting and extremely reader friendly and brought to mind the idea of fin de siècle literature. I don’t know if he would even want to include that in his page but it is a very strong tie-in to literature, in what would otherwise be a purely film based assignment.

*I realize that I have only made 10 comments (not including my replies to others’ comments) and the goal was 30. I would like to say that it was really hard for me to use the website itself. I was so worried about posting my own things that often I overlooked what had be posted just before me and so I know I missed a lot of fascinating work. I usually love giving feedback, but it was difficult to get a feel for the topics considering that they were so wide ranging and the fact that I didn’t really know who had posted what. I ended up commenting mostly on the people I knew ’s work. If the class had been more cohesive I would have eagerly commented on everyone’s work (I’m a little bit too shy to comment where I don’t know if I’ll be welcome, but I know that that is silly).