There may never be a better time than today to grow and develop digital literacy skills. It just so happens, we are living during a global pandemic, which has wholly altered life as we know it. Digital technology was already well into making our daily lives more comfortable, whether it be dating through an app or ordering food at the touch of a button. However, I may never be more grateful than I am today to have this much access to the outside world.
It seems ages ago when, in reality, it has only been four months that I started taking Digital Writing 315. The projects outlined in the syllabus were intriguing and exciting to me and allowed me to mix creativity with academia. I found that this class would provide me with the foundational knowledge needed to put me on a path towards future goals. For example, I have thought about developing a website where I might blog about films. I've also considered creating a podcast about classic movies. I am a screenwriting major, but my real passion lies within the history of classic Hollywood cinema. In words going forward, I would like to discuss the projects that I have posted within my portfolio and explain why I feel they will provide value for me.
My Digital Literacy Narrative briefly summarizes my experience with technology. Growing up in the 90s, we had an old computer with unsupervised parental access. Interestingly, parents today have to pay attention to what their kids are doing on "screens." Before the internet, there wasn't too much trouble to be had on a computer, at least not for me. When I was in middle school, we finally upgraded our IBM to a much more sophisticated desktop that gave us dial-up access to the internet. These were exciting days as I discovered Napster, and could download music for free. I had an AOL account and spent more time talking on Instant Messenger than on the phone. (I suppose my generation is the one who killed the idea of actual phone calls with friends.) I also created an eBay account before credit cards were required and sold many things on there, while also spending that money on some LP records.
Today, a computer with a stable internet connection is the only way that I can work my day job, and as it so happens, finish out this school semester!
My Audio Movie Review was a lot of fun to write and create. I love podcasts and would love to be a part of one someday. This felt like a real opportunity to create something similar to a podcast as it involved mixing different kinds of audio tracks. I used a microphone for the voiceover, which I prewrote like a script. Next, I downloaded clips from the film that I reviewed, which happened to be Quentin Tarantino's 2019 award-winning film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. I also took a brief clip from one of the songs on the movie soundtrack and added it underneath the voiceover. This project was a bit time-consuming. Finding and downloading clips was easy, but learning Garage Band and making sure everything synced up was a valuable education. Overall, I felt satisfied with this finished product, which has inspired me to want to create similar content in the future.
The Documentary Film was probably the most challenging part of this entire class and truly the best part of this portfolio. This assignment was meant to be a group project. The four of us had chosen a topic about education in America, but as fears of the COVID 19 pandemic started to take over the news cycle, we switched our topic. We used Google docs as a way to share notes and research, and initially, it seemed like we were on a cohesive path to a solid collaboration. I utilized people in my workplace and sought their thoughts and opinions about COVID. Two weeks later, everything started to change. CSUN halted in-person classes and transitioned to virtual learning overnight. The panic in the markets was growing increasingly worse. Luckily, I had the opportunity to go back to work to recapture the thoughts of my coworkers. This proved invaluable as we were able to develop an arc in our story. This assignment also required looking for a lot of news footage, which took hours to download and cut.
One unexpected aspect of this project was due to the social distancing requirements and the stay at home orders. It was impossible to meet with one classmate who was still actively participating in this project. There were some real stresses with uploading videos and sharing videos due to prolonged internet speeds. Not being able to meet at school and share our edits via a flash drive was incredibly frustrating. Our final challenge presented itself when one of our partners could not provide their section of the documentary. We scrambled to come up with an entire section of the documentary at the last minute. Ultimately, the two of us created an excellent documentary that showed the realities of March 2020, the month that COVID 19 took over our lives. Although it is only May, that month feels like it was ages ago. We named it COVID-19, The Invisible Enemy of 2020.
The Wikipedia article was another adventure. I was paired to work with my documentary partner. We discussed our shared love for Los Angeles and its history, as well as fiction and film noir. This led to an idea to explore all the Los Angles locations used in Raymond Chandler novels. We split his books among the two of us and then went about our way looking up these places, with the intent to discuss how they feature in the novels, their real-life history, and if they still exist today. We used Google Docs again to collaborate with our notes. Wikipedia is a fascinating site. We created accounts and started to explore the ins and outs of posting work, which was unfortunately rejected pretty immediately. There are people, who patrol the content that is listed, and who I like to refer to as the "Wikipedia God" They told us we did not have enough to merit an article. However, a happy miracle occurred. My partner managed to connect with one of these "Wikipedians," who noticed that one of our locations was a nationally registered historic site in Hollywood. It did not have a page. They gave us this page to create, and so with two days left before the due date, we cranked out a pretty solid article. Luckily, I had a lot of books on the history of the city of Hollywood and was able to use those and not require many internet sources. I also drove to Hollywood and took some photos to include so as not to worry about copyrights. Our article was published almost right away.
The final part of my portfolio is a brief explanation of why I love the city I live in, Los Angeles. I compiled images and videos that I had of my favorite city, highlighting the places that I frequent in my spare time. Among these various theatres and landmarks is the Hollywood Bowl. It is my ideal way to spend a summer evening. The main can’t-miss event is experiencing John Williams conduct the L.A. Philharmonic. What was fun about this video is how much quicker I was at adding a voiceover. Once I wrote the script, I managed to record and export from Garage Band in less than 30 minutes. I had pre-cut the footage on IMovie in the order that I wanted the video to run. I had practiced reading the script over the footage so that when I recorded and put it over the visual, I had the perfect spacing. I used music stored in IMovie, which I felt complemented the video quite nicely. All in all, this was pretty fun to make!