Olivia Murphy's Final Portfolio

Why Save English?
...A Personal Statement From a Confused English Major
When I signed up for this class, honestly, I had no clue what to expect. The class description sounded different than your run-of-the-mill English classes, and, upon asking around, Professor Anderson himself received very favorable reviews from friends of mine who had taken his classes. So I signed up. Then, on the first day of class, we got hit with a question which I had never encountered: "why/how do we save English studies?"

I have spent considerable time pondering this question- as someone who has no clue which career she wants to pursue and is not heavily considering teaching (which is always the assumption), why am I an English major- what is so attractive about literature? Slowly but surely, the answer has become manifest- besides the fact that I simply love to read, the mission of literature is to tell a story, and stories are, hands down, the most powerful mode of expression and communication.

When reviewing the concept of “majoring” in a particular field at a university, and examining the fields from which students choose, the decision clearly comes down to the appeal of skill sets. Which skills set, as a student, is the most desirable to further one’s progress as a productive and contributing member of society (or, to some, a wealthy member of society)- medicine? Science? Geology? It is almost like the board game of life- you pick three, evaluate their advantages, then choose the winner. However, most people seem to lose sight of the fact that, fundamentally, without the “English major skills set,” all others are futile. Fundamentally, English and literature studies are superior. Knowledge of other subjects, no matter how profound, is rendered useless if it cannot be obtained from books or people, or shared back with the world via some medium. Communication, in every sense of the word, is dependent upon literature. At the most obvious and basic level there is reading and writing, but beyond these fundamentals, our diction- the words we carefully utilize to explicate our thoughts, ideas, and emotions- are drawn mostly from what we read and communication with other people and would be impossible without literature.

More important than the fundamentals, however, is the power of the story. Every single person, regardless of age, background, or culture, wants to be heard and make his or her story known. There are cultures and religions centered entirely around the power and tradition of stories. In this way, the stories that comprise the books we read bring us face to face with humanity. Virtually every part of human knowledge can be relevant to a great work of literature, but, unlike generalities, abstractions, or statistics, these pieces of literature capture the spirit of the subject and the complex feelings and emotions of the author. Reading presents us with the passions, hopes, fears, and perplexities of humans who may or may not be similar to ourselves, or a culture that has been dead for a thousand years, or the story of the lady with ten cats who lives down the block. The possibilities are endless; there is nothing that cannot be learned from opening a book. In this same way, no individual could ever exist on his own- the constant interaction with outside ideas and the ideas and experiences of people in the past make us who we are, and none of these communications would be possible or understood without literature.

My answer to the complex question of “why do we read- what is the purpose of literature?”, though broadened to include “English” as a whole, does not easily lend itself to selecting a particular text over the others that clarifies the “mission” of literature. To me, every text that we have read, from the romantic expressions of Keats to the modern musings of time of Virginia Woolf, they all serve to further my argument. Every author that we have read had a story to tell and a reason to tell it, and there is much to be learned about why and how they did so. So why do we read- what good is literature? The easiest answer lies in the imagination- picture a world full of illiterate people, moving about carelessly with no concept of the emotions of history. A world devoid of literate professionals or friendly bystanders to ask directions, and a world in which your frustrations and passions cannot be expressed to or understood by anyone else. Now step back, thank literature for the creativity of imagination it just provided, and appreciate the beauty and necessity of stories.

As the following breakdowns of my assignments will show, English is not only an integral part of many other forms of art, but is actually critical to their existence. I feel certain and assured in the future of English studies; stories are timeless.

The playlist assignment was the first of the semester, and I really was not expecting it to be very hard or time consuming when Professor Anderson first described it. However, when I started thinking about the project and it took me four days to even pick which character I wanted to use, it became immediately apparent that it was going to warrant much more time and effort than I had originally expected. The playlist assignment was a good introductory project to the class and was quite challenging. I had previously never used html to do anything, and completely underestimated the trying nature of composing a page and organizing text entirely in a frustratingly complex code.

Original Playlist Version
My playlist is centered around Humbert Humbert, the main character/narrator of Vladimir Nabokov’s novel Lolita. It is structured loosely around the progression of Humbert Humbert’s thoughts and actions as they develop throughout the novel. Also, a large part of his character is dependent not upon how he acts, but how he can make other’s perceive him, and this is reflected in my playlist (the song choices alternate between Humbert Humbert’s, his wife, and Lolita’s points of view). I like my original song choices and the way I organized them and will probably not change them. I took careful time to make sure that not only the lyrics matched the character’s mindsets, but that the music matched also. At first, the html severely inhibited my options, because I had no clue what I was doing. I would successfully center something, then try to bold it and it would go back to left align. Then I would try to remove the “bold” part and all the gibberish code I had tinkered with would show up around my un-centered, un-bolded text in the preview. [Insert angry computer curses here.] However, after reading almost every html tutorial written in English and going through hundreds of trial and error processes, I got a pretty good beginner’s handle on it, and am pleased with what I was able to accomplish.
As far as corrections the revision was a complete technical overhaul. First and foremost, the technology needed help. The music actually plays now, and the entire playlist is not just black and white, lyrics-picture-description monotony anymore. I’m very picky about things being completely organized and symmetrical, which usually works to my benefit. With the playlist, however, my original strict adherence to the aforementioned format along with the fact that everything was centered in a perfect straight line was monotonous and boring. The revamped playlist contains a few new song selections, and better explanations of all the songs. Visually, I added different colors, texts, and changed up the format to keep things interesting. Besides being more visually appealing, I feel like I have also made the podcast more interesting to read and listen to.

Humbert Humbert Revamped
I'm proud of the work I put in and the improvements I made. The differences between the original playlist and the final revised product, more than any of the other projects, showcases the great technological discrepancy between where I began and where I ended up- and how much this project really taught me.
As far as literature overall, the playlist required literary techniques to describe the songs, and every song is a story, so I was essentially telling the story of Humbert Humbert using the stories of a dozen other people.

The podcast was the second assigned project, and hands down my favorite. I spent 1/8 of my senior year of high school working on daily visual and musical productions, and went into the podcast with a pretty detailed understanding of the specifics of the technology (a welcome relief from the stress of the playlist html!) When it came down to choosing a topic/artist/genre of music to focus the podcast around, I took no time and had no hesitations choosing Bruce Springsteen as my focus. He is one of my favorite artists of all time, boasting significant contributions to not only rock-n-roll, but other genres of music as well, influencing an entire era of music. Because these are the qualities I most admire about Springsteen, I chose to focus the thesis of my podcast around the roles of influence within music, using Springsteen’s work to explicate.

The Original

Technically speaking, as I have mentioned, I encountered very few issues. I have used both Audacity and several similar programs before, so I already had a pretty good handle on the editing tools and which ones to use to obtain certain desired effects. The one downfall on the technical side of my podcast was the sound quality of my vocal recording, which was scratchy at best. I mistakenly thought that recording on my computers microphone would work fine, as long as I was in a completely silent room. Unfortunately, I was VERY wrong, and my blunder manifests itself in the form of hissy sounding s’s and an overall scratchy quality not unlike a radio station that is experience static problems or has a DJ speaking too close to the mike. When I edit my podcast, the biggest part will be rerecording my voice (which I hate listening to over and over…ew) using a real microphone instead of the crappy computer microphone. This should eliminate the scratchy sounds and give the new podcast a much more polished sound.

Content wise, I was took a lot of time on the original, and was pleased enough with it to keep it. I chose to structure the podcast like a radio talk show, beginning first with a clearly stated thesis about literature and music, and using various interviews, clips, and "callers" to prove my thesis. I scripted the entire podcast, down to every single pause and “umm” to ensure both that I would not forget anything or freeze up and to make the process of rerecording a bit easier. This turned out to be a surprisingly good strategy, because it helped me remember exactly what I wanted to say and not miss any crucial elements. Some parts of the podcast did sound overly-scripted, so when I re-dubbed my own voice, I practiced beforehand to make it sound as smooth and natural as possible. I revised my podcast using a microphone, which eliminated all the scratchy sounds and made everything sound more smooth and less "made-in-the-basement-of-a-club."

Listen to my Revised Podcast Here!

After reviewing the podcast, I really like the idea of choosing an artist and then using several different mediums- interviews, song clips, phone calls, and scripted opinions to explain him. The podcast was the most fun for me, and is the project of which I am the most proud.

The collage assignment began, in my mind, in the same way that the playlist did- I immediately assumed that it would be elementary in nature and a simple task. My early presumptions on this assignment too met a similar fate- it was MUCH harder than anticipated. The topic was not hard, and I even knew (generally) what I wanted the finished product to look like from the get go. I wanted to pictorially represent the struggle between good and evil that encompasses John Steinbeck’s entire East of Eden. Upon commencement, however, I realized that this would be much easier said than done.

First things first, my initial discovery was that whichever program Professor Anderson gave us to make the collage with did not make any sense to me whatsoever. I played with it, I tried to work on sample pictures just to get the hang of it, but it just would not work for me. So I finally switched over to Photoshop, and was immediately at least a little more successful. The second issue I encountered was in the form of the physical pictures themselves that were to comprise my collage. In my mind, I knew exactly which photos I needed and wanted to depict the preset image in my head. Unfortunately, it seems that nobody else has shared my creative photo thoughts, or the photos I wanted to use have just never been made, which presented a problem. The collage I had envisioned in my head was quickly slipping away as I realized I couldn’t make a collage out of pictures that don’t exist.

After finally deciding upon the pictures that were as close as possible to what I had envisioned, the technology still stood in my way. Once I got all the pictures situated, I could not for the life of me figure out how to blend the edges between the photos, and I spent entirely too much time focused on this element instead of some other crucial ones. These “extra” forgotten crucial factors including but are not limited to strength of certain images (I apparently have a tenancy to make everything opaque in nature- perhaps this was in hopes of making things blend better?) and a focus on lighting and focus in the collage.

The Original
http://teachmix.com/litflow/node/103

What follows is the revision of my East of Eden Collage. Instead of simply using opacity to blend and edit my images, professor Anderson showed me how to use some of the more complex tools of Photoshop, including the mask tool and the elements that come with it. Because of this, I did not rely on opacity to blend things, so the images are more bold and the collage has more depth. I also changed two physical elements: the first was switching the man on the balance beam to a pair of scales to reiterate the theme of consequences. Any action belonging to one side of the scale will tip fate towards good or evil. The second change was exchanging the word "changes" in the original collage to "timshel" in the second. "Timshel" is the Hebrew word found in the bible meaning "thou mayest." Biblical references and the theme of choice both saturate the novel, and the "timshel" discussion is one of the most important passages of the novel.

This is my New and Improved Collage:
http://teachmix.com/litflow/node/140

Retrospectively, this collage involved a lot more than just slapping some pictures together like I had originally thought. Trying to find appropriate images to express an entire 600 page narrative was difficult, and really made me analyze the novel in order to decide what the real underlying themes were, and how I could appropriately represent them through a collage of singularly unrelated photos.

The video was an interesting assignment for me, to say the least. First and foremost, it was assigned to us during the most hectic and worst possible time of year- pre-exam time. I kept putting it off and putting it off because A)I had no idea what to do the mashup on, I only knew that I wanted to do a mashup over the other options, and B)I kept having work, or schoolwork, or to go to the hospital to work on my research. Finally, I was sitting with my boyfriend watching Old School and browsing through movie trailers of movies we wanted to see online, and Braveheart came up. Almost immediately- I realized I had found my two subjects. In my mind, it was going to be perfect.

Then, I actually started trying to download the programs and use the video-producing software (my only previous experience in such a department was imovie in my production class in high school, which was grossly different than any of the advised programs. Eventually, I resorted back to good ol' Windows Moviemaker, because its the only one I could figure out how to work. Then there was the technical issue of getting the Old School dvd onto my computer to edit (Braveheart was not difficult because I used zamzar to rip it from a youtube video and I had used zamzar a lot for the podcast). Overall, getting Old School from dvd into my computer and then into Windows Moviemaker took roughly sixteen hours, 9 separate downloaded and failed dvd ripping programs, and one file transfer because when I finally got it ripped, it was in the wrong form.

After these struggles were over and I finally had all my clips in the movie editing software, I was ready to make my vision come to life! While all the software had been downloading and ripping and doing whatever other magic it takes to get a dvd onto my computer, I scrutinized both the Braveheart trailer and the Old School movie for hours to find the perfect scene selections to match the music. I had very high expectations for my mashup.

Then, low and behold, more technical issues! Apparently Windows Moviemaker is not equipped with any kind of audio editing software, so I ended up utilizing two computers- one with the moviemaker and the clips, and the other with Audacity open to mess with the music. Overall, it was a very complicated process.

Looking over my finished product, it is one of my favorites. I still giggle a little bit when I watch it. Making the sound match up took me forever, but I think things finally ended up pretty precise (I had it all figured out once, and then had to edit two of the movie clips which threw the whole thing into another 4 hour editing process). The only qualm I have with the mashup is really an unsolvable one with the technology I have. When the dvd ripped to my computer, the sound files got off from the video files, so the vocals do not line up with the mouth movements of the characters in the clips where I actually use the movie instead of the soundtrack. Other than that, I am very pleased and proud of my work, and this was the first project I actually bothered to show someone outside our class that wasn't my mom.

So here it is! My Braveheart/Old School Mashup:
http://teachmix.com/litflow/node/190