Hannah's Final Portfolio

Hannah's English and Creative Arts Portfolio

Dear Online Readers and Classmate

Professor Anderson had opened this course with an essay written by Robert Scholes called "A Fortunate Fall". At first I was not too thrilled about this essay because it was so long and uninteresting. But the class discussion made me understan the importance of what Scholes had to say. I really like how he focuses on the discipline of English studies, and what it means to be an English major student. Some questions this raised for me was, why do we limit English studies to strictly to literature? How can art be more incorporated into the way we read and analyze the world? This was a great segway into the types of projects we would be dealing with for this class.

I would first like to express the fun and joy I've had in using modern tools to help explore English studies and Art. Using technology to explore English and Art was a new way of structuring your thoughts, feelings, and arguments. I think each of the projects I did, relayed a message just as effectively as a traditional essay. The four projects I have completed in my ENGL 366 class affectively allowed me to explore the outer bounds of my creativity, and use art to translate these ideas. What I hated most about these assignments were the initial frustration you get when you have to learn how to do something completely new. Especiallly in today's world, we experience a lot of techno stress, especilly when programs and computers are not acting the way we want them to. But because theres so much frustration and hardships ahead in these types of projects, the greatest feeling is achieving a piece of work that you are really proud of. What I loved about these assignments was that it was not limiting, and therefore each student was able to uniquely utilize their tools as to how they envision English and Art as two subjects that are interchangeably related to each other

In this portfolio, we will explore the products of my assignments throughout the semester. One thing we will realize is how much time goes into completing any one of these assignments, until satisfactionis reached. But like any great work of literature of art, the change in progress helps fully appreciate the end product.

Playlist: Character of Dr. House

link to final draft of playlist

I was really excited about this assignment because I had just begun to watch endless amounts of "House" episodes during winter break. I immediately knew that I wanted to do a character analysis of Dr. House. His character intrigues me because he is a selfish jerk, but people fight to impress him. He is very repulsive in behavior, but his ability to be rational in dire times makes him a medical hero . He is an infallible diagostician, and audiences love to watch him because he is a medical Sherlock Holmes.

This playlist took me a long time to complete, I went under about three full revisions before I was completely satisfied. I saw this playlist project as an opportunity to explore the different dimensions of his personality that makes him widely different from other doctors. Due to his complex nature, I found a lot of reoccuring themes that makes him so unique. This is why I decided to organize my playlist the way I did. I had to do a lot of rearranging in the past few revisions, and now I am satisfied with the layout and the ordering of the themes. The structure of the playlist is relly important, beecause it helps support my thesis, which is arguing that Dr. House has a multi dimensional and complicated personality.

Podcast: Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd

link to first draft of podcast

link to second draft of podcast>

At first I was really nervous about this project. Editing music didn't sound like somthing I would be good at. Fortunately, the Audacity program seemed pretty simple, and it wasn't too different from arranging paragraphs in an essay.

I immediately knew I wanted to do "Free Bird". I actually had deep discussion about this song with someone, and since the discussion, I couldn't stop thinking about the meaning of the way the band organized and wroted the song. I knew I had a lot to work with in this song. I particularly liked this song because it was about a man unwilling to limit himself to a conventional lifestyle. In other words, he does not want to commit himself to a monogamous relationship and have an ordinarily structured lifestyle.

Rather than organizing this project through themes,like the playlist, I wanted to argue my thesis in chronological order. In other words, I felt like "Free Bird" flowed in a story-like progression. Therefore, I wanted to explain the different chapters of this song in the same order it was written.

The most challenging part in editing this podcast was shortening it. I shortened this podcast from 16 minutes down to 10-11 minutes. That was a lot of editing and cutting! It was especially hard, because you need to make sure its not obvious that you cut somewhere, and that it flows together. It is hard to leave anything out, because as the creator, you feel like everything is relevant and important. But its important to be concise with your argument, much like when you write an essay. You want to keep your audience entertained, and thats hard to achieve if you take too long to get to your point.

Collage: Free Bird as a Character

link to collage

I really wanted to continue to artistically examine the song "Free Bird". In the podcast, I examined the song as a story. However, for my collage, I wanted to analyze Free Bird as character and narrator of the song. I think this is probably a really different way to approach the assignment, but I am really content with the end product.

It was hard using just the photo editing software GIMP. I learned that Adobe Photo Shop has a lot more features that can help you with shadowing and light. So after I did some tinering with GIMP, I used Adobe to take me home with the end of this project. Originally, the left corner seemed to be the main concern. But I decided that I am not going to worry about fixing this. It is indeed the most busy part of this collage. But I highlighted with yellow the handcuffs to place a greater emphasis of what this left corner actually represents. If you look closely, it is pretty simple and straight foward, and that the left corner symbolizes complications and restrictions.

The overally picture is really simple. However, this polaroid has a lot to say of this snapshot moment and that is exactly what I wanted to achieve. This helped me structure my argument of Free Bird's character by using images, shadows, lighting, and colors. It is not a typical essay format, but I think the explanation of this picture really strums a chord on the complexity of Free Bird's nature, which would probably have been more wordy and boring if it were to be written as an essay.

Video Mashup: Obsessed Trailer (starring the Incrediblees)

link to Video Mashup

Original version of the Obsessed Trailer:

My edited version of the Obsessed Trailer:

Using Camtashia for this project was amazing! I was so annoyed at first, because I really couldn't figure out how to work this software. But once you learn the basics, its really fun and amusing. Whats great about using this type of software to explore different outlets of expression is that you have to tinker and make a lot of adjustments. With this particular assignment, you have to figure out what works and what doesn't work for these clips.

What I wanted to achieve out of this project was to show how you need voice and facial expression to achieve a specific type of reaction from the audience. I soemtimes chose images that closely resembled the image from the original trailer from the movie, "Obsessed". However, some of the facial expressions were slightly different, so the tone that was achieved was vastly different. I thought that was the most amusing part of learning how to do a video mashup like this.

I also uploaded it on to YouTube, and it helps a lot that I'm getting positive feedback from the public. I already got 4.5 stars from two votes!!! I can't believe people have already seen it!

Blogs and Comments

comment posting to Jill Dwiggin's midtern Portfolio

comment posting to Alex Slater's collage

comment posting to Gabby Gioia's collage

comment posting to Shannon Church's revised collage

commont posting to Sarah Katherine's blog on No Country for Old Men

comment posting to Anna Kim's revised collage

comment posting to John Reitz's playlist

comment posting to Anna Winker's podcast

comment posting to Tori Lineberry's podcast

my photography assignment

comment posting to Amanda Edwards' playlist

comment posting to Jamie Ratliff's playlist

comment posting to Professor Anderson's assignment for posting music examples

comment posting to Professor Anderson's "Big Question"

blog posting to Billy Collin's Poems"

Conclusion

I hope that the English studies continues to have more courses that offers analyzing characters, art, and literature in a creative and artistic outlet. This course helped me realize that there are many outlets to expression, and that Art and English studies is very interwoven with eachother. Unfortunately, these two departments are independent and seperated from eachother. I see that in the future that more courses, such as this, will be offered. I think future generations will have the options to use more modern technology to artisically express themselves as well. My concern is that we will lose our traditional literatures and texts, and therefore its important that we make sure that the old and the new ways of study is in view.