Meme

My top favorite memes [in no particular order]:

I think that memes are a part of fan culture. Most of the memes that are circulating in today’s society are derived off of popular or current movies/tv shows/what is current in the news. With that said, Ang’s paradigms of “media in everyday life” is really reflected in the user generated memes because people usually pick what they think is interesting at the time to make a meme out of that. People really respond to what is popular in their current life.

The memes that I selected are interesting for many reasons. The first one is of a panda on the playground. I really like the message that this meme sends out; do what you want to do and don’t care what other people say, “haters gonna hate.” The next meme is based on two popular movies that everyone knows and loves; Titanic and Inception. While the screenshots are from Inception, everyone understand the reference to Titanic which gives our community a sense of unity. The last meme I chose was also in reference to a popular media; The Office.

Memes could be incorporated into our final project by taking the picture of a guy yelling at a girl and say, “I’m not verbally abusing you, just talking really loudly.

Creative Process Reflection

Two major milestones that my group has surpassed is deciding on a topic and deciding on how to execute our ideas. We had many topics that we wanted to cover but in the end we settled on Domestic Violence because we felt that domestic violence isn’t always publicized and we wanted to let the victims know that they are not alone.

Two hurdles that we anticipate running into are the filming and putting the video together.

We have really been utilizing technology to brainstorm our ideas. For example going on YouTube to find clips on different examples of “domestic violence.”

Creative Commons

This can be one of the last images that we show. Domestic violence isn’t just beating but it is also emotional. This image shows the stereotypical way people see domestic violence which is why it is a good picture because even without the words, people will still know what the image is trying to say.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJdmrexUNjo

This is actually from DayOneNY and it is a video about Domestic Violence. This video can provide us with facts and information that we need to make our video as accurate as possible.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ats5zCuOTXI&feature=relmfu

This is a song that we can use for our video. It isn’t exactly what we are looking for but it has a heartbeat in it and maybe we can reorganize the song to be our own.

After: CDR Storyboard

Creating this storyboard was actually a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. I think that this is because all of my group members, myself included, had many projects and exams this week so it was difficult to collaborate at a certain time. We split the video into two parts, the “Shit my loving boyfriend video” part, and then the PSA at the end. In general, the story board was a pretty easy idea to accomplish, it was just coordinating times to finish the assignment that was difficult.

Before: CDR Storyboard

My group’s creative process was really relaxed and productive. How we approached our project was by picking our top three favorite topics and then from there we discussed what we could do with each. In the end, we came through with the topic “Is it Love?” This topic meant to combine the different aspects of domestic violence. We originally thought of things such as “What is love?” but then we want our audience to know that we are questioning the actions of the abuser.

We also took into consideration different songs for our video. One of the songs that we felt really demonstrated domestic violence was Rihanna’s “We Found Love.” I think that this video really embodies the vision that we are going for with a happy relationship in the beginning but underneath the surface of happiness, there is a lot of abuse and controlling.

Google Docs

This assignment was more difficult that it should have been. I didn’t really understand what the question was asking me. I think that the time between Monday and Wednesday was too short to have a collaboration between the group members. My group did a lot of brainstorming in class but it isn’t not relevant to the GoogleDocs assignment that we are doing now. Which confuses me because I don’t actually know what the assignment we have to do is. Is it about domestic violence or is it about the school library? It helps that the ecollege site lists out exactly what we need to do so i can get the work done but while I doing it I don’t see a clear ending. I don’t know what the goal of my final project is. So I don’t know what all the work I am doing is going towards.

 

Top 5 Midterm Blogs!

These are my top 5 favorite blogs (in no particular order):

http://www.koshlendrapatel.com/

This blog had potentially one of the most professional layouts that I’ve seen among my peers. It is both sophisticated and functional. My favorite part of the blog and the thing that got my attention is the scrolling header. WOW!! I wish I had that for my blog! The theme of this blog is actually very close to the theme that I had visualized in my head. I like the popular posts at the side.
http://allstarcustomhr.com/

My favorite part of this blog is the Contact Us section. I think that the blog links on the side are useful and very relevant to this blog. My only criticism is the header picture. It is very pixelated and is not uniform with the rest of the blog because the rest of the blog is quite professional. This website is also missing categories.

http://rualeader.tumblr.com/

I like this blog because it shows different leadership positions at Rutgers. I personally like the tumblr platform more for something social, which this is. Good job! I like the layout because it is fun and you can see many posts on one page which is exactly the aura that you want to emit to get people involved at Rutgers.

http://lesecretdejulie.blogspot.com/

I liked this blog because it was very feminine. I like the soft background image. The header picture is kind of faded though. Although there are only 3 posts an only two are related to what the website is going to be used for, I particularly enjoyed the second post. I like reading about fashion and having a link to what the piece of clothing is.

http://itstimeformovies.wordpress.com/

I enjoyed reading this blog because it not only had pictures but it had videos and trailers as well. I particularly like how the blog started with a Top 5 Best and Top 5 Worst Movies. That really got me into reading what else the blog had to offer. The layout of the blog is very simple, which is my favorite type of layout. I would suggest a few more links on the side though!

Midterm Blog: rutgerscso.wordpress.com

My midterm blog was based around and organization that I am currently in, the Rutgers Chinese Student Organization. I chose to make my blog about this because I felt that there was a lot for me to write about and many topics for me to make “headers” on. Also, it helps because I can just post the blog to my group and ask them for feedback and stuff.

I had a vision of what I wanted the blog to look like. I was going for a more picture with a summary look on the home page but I could not find the right theme that included that. The theme that I settled with after using another one for about a day is a simple yet visual theme. I like that the banner is over the picture because it makes the banner stand out more.

As for new pages I started out with only four: About, Contact, Meet the E-Board and Meet the Interns. I then condensed the About with the Contact and added an Upcoming Events page because I thought that it was necessary to keep general members involved and in the loop. The weekend before the midterm was assigned, I attended this conference at Duke University. From there, we had a lot of inside jokes and laughs. I thought that with the recent craze regarding Memes, it would be a great opportunity to get our members involved by letting them in on some of our inside jokes. Which is where the last page CSO MEMES comes into play.

Overall, making this blog was fun for me. I laughed as I posted pictures and I got to reminisce about past events. I actually really enjoyed organizing this blog and the only thing that bothered me was the resizing of the pictures but even that was fun!

Screencast

http://screencast.com/t/RW4RxyJy

I did my screen cast with Wendy’s Lookbook. I think that she is a very talented blogger and her posts are very professional and her videos are very unique. I chose this blog to do my screen cast about because I feel that her blog is very simple and classy. Like her outfits, they can be casual and fancy. I feel like the black and white background of the blog makes the blog’s feeling a blank canvas for her outfits to decide. If one day she posts something about a colorful outfit then her blog has the fun feeling and if it’s a sophisticated dress, then her blog feels more professional.

I didn’t like doing the screencast because I don’t like talking into microphones. I get super nervous and forget what I am about to say. However, this was a lot easier to manage than doing the PodCast. The only problem I ran into was the uploading of the video to Jing.com for sharing. I think that’s only because RUWireless is awful and made me wait like 10 minutes for a 38.8MB file. Besides the recording of my voice and the uploading of the file, this was assignment did not give me many obstacles to hurdle over.

I enjoyed this assignment because I always wondered how people recorded their desktops. I know that you could “PRT SC” for an image of the desktop but I didn’t know how to do the video. Actually, the blogger that I did the screencast on has a video where she brings the users to her desktop. I’m not sure if it was using Jing or not but I think that’s really cool!

One thing I like about Jing is that it is easy to use and you can select which part of your desktop you want to be in the picture.

YouTube Video