Final Reflection

                The Main Event documentary came with many challenges; all of which were able to be overcome, but challenges all the same. My biggest struggle was filming and getting people to do interviews. I personally am not a big fan of asking for favors so it’s always a struggle for me asking for someone to take time out of their day to help me with a project. I am most proud of the way it is laid out and how well the montages turned out. If I could change anything it would have been to cover all the bases and interview other fighters. The fighter I chose lost but another one of my friends that fought knocked his guy out in about 15 seconds; his story would have made for a much more exciting end. I personally was responsible for many things in the documentary. I coordinated when and where the interviews would be, contacted Hannah Maddox about the documentary and reached out to Jacob Sanders to ask for his help as well. I also did a lot of filming and coordinated some of our group meetings as well as doing a little bit of editing too. To promote a healthy group atmosphere I just tried to get everybody involved and to participate evenly. Looking back I would say that everybody did their fair share on this project. Personally I wish I could have done more editing but besides that I feel I did a pretty solid job.

                This course has brought me a long way in my critical thinking skills, I used to wonder “How do I write 500 words about this?” but now I think deeper and formulate full ideas. One article that sticks out in my mind is the one about all the celebrity nudes being released. I looked past the writer blaming the problem on our culture and blamed it on him/the media. Whether my opinion was right or wrong is irrelevant but I feel I got past “well this guy wrote an article, and this is what it was about, and I agree with him”. You may have helped me with that a little bit in your informal approach to teaching. You took the intimidation out of turning an assignment in to a professor and I felt I could turn in my actual opinion without criticism. The public speaking portion of this course was nothing to me, I received some really helpful tips and am overall a better public speaker, but I was never one of those people that gets hives standing in front of class; I generally am pretty comfortable in front of an audience. I would have most definitely not preferred writing four essays. They’re much too time consuming, plus I got to get a little experience blogging and learning about iMovie that I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

                I definitely feel like a better writer and communicator after taking your course; your style was helpful and there’s nothing I would have preferred more of, I was pretty content with the amount of work we got. I honestly can’t think of anything to make the class better for next time; I was a pretty big fan of the way you did it this time.

                If you’re looking for criticism you won’t find it here, your class was one of my favorites. I feel like you really understand what it’s like to be a student and you don’t assign any bullshit waste of time assignments, everything seemed to have a purpose from my perspective. Thanks for making your class enjoyable and just being a good teacher in general.

Music Video

The music video I chose was Dirt by Florida Georgia Line. I chose it because unlike many other music videos it reveals something about the song not heard through audio alone. Turns out it symbolizes the life of a couple, and the video periodically stops to hear the old man talk about how much of a positive impact "Rosie" had on his life. The longest shot is towards the end, it is about 8 seconds long and it is Rosie's eulogy. It is followed by the family throwing dirt over her grave. Definitely worth the watch.

Born Into Coal

      The short documentary "Born Into Coal" is a hybrid between a human interest and a standard narrative film. The story of Arianna Bailey trying to win the Coal Queen pageant is told while also making a political argument in favor of coal mines. At the start of the documentary it appears to be focused on the beauty pageant, but evolves into a focus on the importance of the coal mining industry to families in West Virginia.

      Various film shot techniques are used throughout the film, but the most compelling in my opinion is the extreme close up. I have attached one of the examples of extreme close up. It is so compelling because it is shot while at the beauty pageant. Look at the black in his cuticles. This is an event you clean up for, but no matter how much he cleans himself up, he can't get rid of the remains of the coal stuck in his fingernails. Without coal this man would be nothing, it is his only means of feeding his family.
     This shot stands out to me because it is clear what they were trying to focus on in it. There are plenty of other extreme close-ups, especially of their faces covered in coal, but I liked this one the most because this is shown after he cleaned himself up.
      I'm not sure I can recreate this shot in my documentary, but the idea of extreme close-ups interest me very much. My documentary has endless possibilities for extreme close-ups such as looking at the eyes of a fighter between rounds, or the classic shot of the hands being taped up in every film involving boxing ever made.
      This documentary does a good job of getting its point across in a heart warming way. Much of this is done by using the appropriate shots at the appropriate times.

Final Meal

      Both No Seconds and The Last Meal Project are extraordinarily compelling websites. That being said, they both do some things better than the other. But in the end one clearly comes out on top as more compelling.
      The Last Meals Project does a good job of humanizing the convicts through showing a picture of the person along with their last meal. The creator is a little one-sided with their viewpoint in that they don't show the crime of the offender. One looks at the picture of Tim McVeigh and thinks, "poor guy, he ate two pints of ice cream before he was killed, the death penalty is unjust!"Little do they know, he killed 168 people in an act of terrorism against his own country. Sure, The Last Meals Project gets their point across that the death penalty is bad; but at what cost? Some uneducated person could look at the website and actually feel sympathy for one of the most despicable Americans to ever live.
      What "The Last Meals Project" lacks is what I love about "No Seconds". No Seconds tells what the person is convicted of. It lets one choose whether the death penalty was just or not. With some you can see that they may have been a little too liberal with the death penalty, but with some you can see that anything less than death would have been unjust.
      They both present the information on opposite ends of the spectrum. The Last Meals Project is a little more scary; it has a way of making you feel the pain of someone in prison with the dirty black and white mugshots, the crumpled paper, and the red lettering in old type writer font. The feel when browsing the sight is an eerie one without a doubt. Whereas when reading the No Seconds site, the attention isn't on old school prison stereotypes. The artist shows the plates on what appears to be picnic tables and other tables we might eat off of on any given day. He still uses the old type writer font to show the information, but the photograph is a little less somber. The artist does this on purpose; he tries to show how nice of a thing giving one a final meal is before we take their life. He feels that it is ironic the kind gesture we give to them before we make them pay the ultimate price.
      Both websites get across the point they are trying to convey, but one does a better job than the other. No Seconds is the clear winner in my eyes because it gives a full point of view while still getting its point across. The Last Meal Project was just a little too one sided in my opinion, it's hard to get a point across when the whole story isn't being told.

Shark Tank Proposal

      Going into my speech I expected much more of myself. I started by writing a one page outline using bullet points all the way down. Hannah Maddox from ADPi was a huge help to me because once I got in contact with her she emailed me an entire list of details about the speech that made writing it nearly effortless. My one flaw of being "scattered" in the beginning came from weak memorization of my bullet points.
      Public Speaking has never been a huge fear of mine; whereas many of my peers have trouble speaking in front of the class, it has always come pretty naturally to me. Unfortunately, like I said, I forgot some of my bullet points for a moment. Fortunately I was always taught that if you screw up in front of a crowd, just roll with it and act like it didn't happen, so this is how I caught myself and continued to make the speech presentable.
      I caught myself by separating my proposal into two halves. The first half explaining the event, and the second half explaining why a documentary should be filmed on The Main Event. So once I forgot one of my bullet points and started rambling I just went straight to the introduction of the second half.
      Next time the goal is to just memorize my points better and perhaps rehearse a little more, after that I'll be golden. Public Speaking is one of my strengths and with time I could hone it to be a very strong asset in my future.

The NBA Nerd's Cultural Influence

      The apathetic "in your face" style of black culture in the 90's and early 2000's is beginning to die. Having their buddies call them "Carlton" isn't necessarily as much of an insult as it used to be. At least according Wesley Morris, the writer of "The Rise of the NBA Nerd", an article addressing black culture shown through the NBA.
      It wasn't too long ago that if a black male wore nice clothes or spoke appropriately he was referred to as "Carlton". I've seen it happen before, but in recent years the culture has been changing. Some young black males are starting to realize that in order to be treated with the same respect white people receive they have to earn it and become a respectable individual. They have to speak proper English and dress appropriately.
      This isn't an essay about race relations but it is a topic that needs to be addressed. Racism still exists in America, but from what I've heard from many the hatred isn't toward the race anymore. Many people that could be considered racist don't immediately discredit a person because of the color of their skin, many of them hate the culture and the stereotypes many live out. The culture of putting one of their friends down for wearing nice clothes or trying hard in school. I'm not speaking about this subject trying to convey my understanding of black culture, because I've never been in their shoes; but going off of what Wesley Morris said, it seemed as if having nice things and having an education was a very negative thing in black culture in recent years.
      It is my belief that many of the top NBA players dressing like "nerds" is a strategy designed to battle this attitude. Players like Lebron James and Kevin Durant know the clout they have in the black community and the affects they can have on their culture. Black "fashion" changing is something I've noticed in the past couple years before I ever read this article.
      When it all comes down to it, when sitting across from somebody in a job interview in any setting, skin color will be looked past and the best dress and most well spoken will be the person that gets the job, plain and simple. This is a fact of life that I think many in both Black and White culture are beginning to realize and prepare for.

TED Talks Speech Tactics

Shubhendu Sharma: How to grow a tiny forest anywhere

      I opened up the TED website and the first thing I noticed was a video on the home page titled how to grow a tiny forest anywhere. I don't know about anybody else, but that title alone intrigued the hell out of me. The speaker on the issue did a very good job with his speech, he transitioned extremely well and he had a great start to the speech.
      One thing I noticed about his speech was his opening. He started out with back story, which seems to be the best way to go when it comes to explaining an idea. Sure you can sit in front of a crowd and talk about growing mini forests, but doing so doesn't tell the audience how the idea came about, or what qualifies you to run this project. A big negative of mine is how brief he was, I'd love to know more about this process, how it works, how this is going to change the world. I was left high and dry at the end with little knowledge other than that this guy can make a dense forest in a short amount of time.
     This speech was well presented, with great transition and flow, but when it came down to it lacked the substance I was yearning to hear after reading such an intriguing headline.

Isabel Allende: How to live passionately—no matter your age

      The second Ted talk I watched was also on the front page of TED, it was an older Latina woman talking about how she lives passionately at her old age. Although she didn't have a ton of material to talk about, her speech was so well presented that she held my attention. A trend I'm beginning to pick up on in any good speech is an attention grabber. The first sentence is the most important. She starts with a comical approach, whereas others may start with a question that leaves one with inquiries; the first sentence is always the most important.
      Transitions are everything. I'm a huge fan of her use of a quote as a transition to more points. In any form of presentation, quotes always seem to grab attention. Another good transitional technique for transitions is asking oneself a question then answering it with a more in depth explanation of the point one is trying to make.
      When presenting information the most important thing one can do is keep the audience's attention. For some topics this task may be easier than others, this reality is the difference between an easy and a hard speech. Whether the topic is basket weaving or cliff diving, the greatest public speakers can hold the attention of the audience throughout the duration of the presentation.