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We’ll Always Have Paris

Posted by
| February 11, 2018

Hello everyone! So this is it for Week 4. Despite the lighter workload, I still struggled this week to keep up. Below I am going to give you a quick overview of the work I did and analyze it a little bit.

To start off the week, I created a Hot Pocket meme for my Daily Create. I am a meme master, so needless to say, I got into this. I started by finding a Hot Pocket meme and then getting rid of their text/memeage. I had an idea for what I wanted to put inside my hotpocket. I was inspired by Kevin Hodgson’s tweet about dead hyperlinks. I was also further inspired by the hundreds of broken images on my own domain (I deleted things from my media library, I was dumb). I then found the broken image, the uncategorized and yum pictures and added them to my meme. After I added the text (font was close to real Hot Pockets packaging) with a spicy drop shadow.

The next Daily Create I did was to color an image from the Europeana Coloring Book. I decided to do this digitally (I mean it is *digital* storytelling). I did my editing through Photoshop and used the paint bucket, brush and a myriad of selection tools to color my image. When I was done, I tweeted it and used the #ColorOurCollections hashtag. The Europeana twitter actually retweeted me and replied that they thought mine was pretty (*blushes*). It is always nice to get recognized for your work, even if it only took you 15 minutes.

My first assignment I did this week was to write a blog post in which I share what I learned through the Tips page, analyze an Abandoned America album and complete a Photoblitz. This assignment was deceivingly large so I broke it up into three sections. An annoying issue I keep running into with this post is inserting my Instagram images. I have tried using the Insert From URL function, auto embed and actually pasting the embed code in the Text tab. No matter what I do, I keep getting this glitch (see below). I decided to cut my losses and upload my images to Flickr. Not like that’s a loss, since Flickr can definitely handle my high quality images better than Instagram can.

My next assignment was to take a before/after photo of a person, place, or thing that has survived the apocalypse. After taking the photos I was supposed to use Juxtapose to show the difference between my two photos. One of the criteria of this assignment was to not rely too heavily on Photoshop. I, of course, being a badass ignored this. To call myself out here, I think that if I could go back and do this assignment again, I would. I really did a sloppy job editing my images. Also, because I decided to be a rule breaker and use an old photo of mine, I really missed an opportunity to try out more of my photography. To roast myself, I was pretty lazy in this post.

Also, this week I tried to do this typography assignment. I am not even kidding when I say I spent about an hour and a half trying to do this. I have decided that TYPOGRAPHY IMAGES AREN’T POSSIBLE. I watched so many Photoshop tutorials, but I could not make it work. So, I had to stop myself from wasting another hour on it and instead do the following assignment.

Instead of wasting more time on the typography assignment, I decided to do this billboard assignment instead. This was a fun post to make as it allowed me to be creative and insert a narrative into an object that I don’t normally get to do that with. One thing that annoys me a little about this post is how low quality my featured image is. For some weird reason, my site *butchered* the quality of the image. When I have the time, I will try and diagnose that. I have a sneaking suspicion that it is because of JetPack’s image quality controls (unconfirmed, but will investigate).

The last assignment I did was to watch “La Jetée” and “Mad Max”. I really enjoyed these movies (except for Mel Gibson). I think that this is the work I am proud of this week as I really analyzed the techniques in both movies. I also demonstrated to my reader what I was talking about through my use of screenshots. I also have to say that I am kind of obsessed with the gif I made.

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This week I have been able to read a couple of my classmates posts. I really want to shout them out because their work is impressive to say in the least.

The first post I really recommend reading is Lauren Sargent’s Tips/Tricks post. It was really cool to read her thoughts on the Abandoned America church album she analyzed. It was also fascinating to read her behind the scenes of her Photo Blitz. Seeing the images is one thing, but hearing the process and thoughts that go into the photos is really revealing.

One of my classmate’s assignments that I lowkey fell in love with this week is Katie’s Brady Bunch goes Apocalyptic post. I am not even kidding when I say that I am obsessed with this post. She used this amazing 3D effect to really draw in her viewer. Katie’s post was super creative and just really fun.  

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Another great work one of my classmates produced, was Joshua Jenkins’ “La Jetée” and “The Road” post. Joshua’s analysis of “La Jetée” was superb. I especially love how he connected the museum to the protagonists’ death. This actually made me re-analyze that part of the movie and come to the conclusion that Chris Marker, the director, was showing us how the protagonist is like the preserved animals. Definitely give his analysis a read as it is very thought provoking.

This week has been a lot for me, but it meant discussing photography (one of my favorite things to discuss). This week gave me an opportunity to analyze framing, lighting and contrast. All of these discussions I rarely get to have. Something I am looking forward to is audio week next week. This week at my job I had to show someone how to produce and edit audio. I haven’t done it in a couple of months, so it kind of sparked that drive in me again.

This week Martha asked us:

Do you think an animated GIF can be considered a story? Why or why not? It would be great to include some examples to illustrate your thoughts.

Personally, I think that gifs cannot be considered a story. I think that gifs show a sliver of a story. A story is recounting events, connected with dialogue and can (not always) follow a structure (linear or causal). Thus, a gif’s format is not conducive to a story. It isn’t long enough to show events, connect those events and have a structure. I think that the main thing gifs are missing is context. In the gif below, we can see a man shocked. But why is he shocked? What are his traits (physical, moral, ethical)? Are we at the inciting incident or the climax?

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In essence, I think one gif is not a story as it doesn’t meet the criteria for a story. However, a series of gifs together…now that can be a story. 

Well, that is it for now folks. I’ll catch you on the flipside.

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