Reflecting on the Making of “Ethnic Identity of Italian Americans”

To start off Project Four we were put into groups and then given the task of selecting one of our group member’s autoethnography from Project Three to transform into a video. The goal of this project was to turn an autoethnography, from the previous project, into a video which would be interesting for our peers to watch but still informative about the in-group it focused on. Individually we read our other three group member’s essays from the previous project, compared them, and then wrote a writing journal about which project we thought would make the most sense to use. Then in class the next day we came to the collaborative decision to use Nick Rosso’s autoethnography on Fourth Generation Italian Americans for our Project Four topic. The primary reason we choose his project was because we would be the most passionate about it, and it would work best for the project four video.

This project is interesting because for three-fourths of this group, it focused on someone else’s in-group, but for Nick R. it is simply another adaptation of his autoethnography. When coming up with ideas for our video, working in a group was really useful because we were constantly throwing out ideas to bounce off of one another, and it was helpful to hear everyone’s suggestions. Earlier in the week we had watched a sample autoethnography video of a previous student of Professor G, and this was useful to have seen when trying to decide whose project to make into a video and how. We decided that we could model our video similarly to the one we watched in class by using a recording of Nick’s voice while pictures were being shown on the screen. While obviously our video is not identical to the one in class, it was nice to have some ideas in mind about sample autoethnographies before we started the actual video making process.

The Process:

In this project, we were tasked with turning a research paper that was written for a scholarly audience into a video that would appeal to a largely popular audience. At first, we really didn’t know how to start and spent a considerable amount of time brainstorming. We went through Nick R.’s scholarly paper to see the current conversation on the topic of Italian Americans. Ultimately, we found that Nick R.’s gap was fourth generation Italian Americans because all of the scholarly sources focused on older generations of Italian Americans. The scholarly sources said that food and community had always been very important in the lives of Italian Americans. The Italian Americans that lived in the early to mid-1900s lived in close-knit communities, called “Little Italies”, full of almost 100% Italians. These communities became so close because of the discrimination and stereotypes that they faced. However, as time passed, the “Little Italies” of the 1900s shrunk and are virtually non-existent today. After we had a good understanding of the current conversation, we focused on Nick R.’s experience as an Italian American and found that it is mainly focused on food and family.

Our next step was to adapt Nick R.’s paper into a script for our video that would add to the current conversation about Italian Americans, while successfully capturing our audience’s attention. First, we took Nick R.’s first paragraph from his project three paper and used that as our introduction for the video. We thought that starting with a story about Italian food would really help to grab our audience’s attention and begin to focus the video around food, one of the most important things in Nick R.’s experience as an Italian American. Then, we chose to have Nick R. introduce himself and what the video would be about so we could start to add to the conversation. This gave our video more credibility because we included the voice of the author, who is Italian American. However, in order to add to the conversation, we had to establish that there is in fact a conversation to add to. Instead of naming every source and their respective authors using APA format to cite them, we decided to just sum up all of the information we got from our sources by saying, “Researchers say that…”. We made this rhetorical decision because a popular audience would not appreciate APA format citation like a scholarly audience would. When we did use specific quotes, we decided to give the audience a brief background on their credentials to increase our ethos. Nick R. had already interviewed his grandmother about her experience as an Italian American, but we decided that we would also interview his sister, age 17, because she was in his in-group. We used the two interviews to show the contrast between the older generations and fourth generation Italian Americans. This helped to focus the gap on fourth generation Italian Americans. Next, we decided to tell Nick R.’s experience as an Italian American. We took pieces from Nick R.’s autoethnography section of his project three paper and condensed them so that we still captured the essence of what he said.

The task that Nick H. had was to fit together the video so that our project is clearly portrayed to the audience in a fun, informative manner. He brought to the table ideas and different ways we can approach the different aspects of the video. With him having done video editing in the past we could offer the group things that we could and could not do with Windows Movie Maker. Adapting an autoethnography into a video kept our group coming back to this question of how we would grab the viewer’s attention through visual appeals, while at the same time presenting them a concise package of relevant and useful information. We all decided that a script was the best way to begin our process of video making. Our script was the most important piece of this project and helped the video making process tremendously; we were able to take Nick R.’s autoethnography and script it in a way that a more visual audience could digest. If we were to just read his paper as it was written there would just be lots of information that our intended audience, the Writing 111 students, would not care about. The video would lose attention fast simply because of the sheer mass of content. The first thing we did was pinpoint key information in Nick R.’s autoethnography that was essential for developing his thesis about fourth generation Italian Americans. With that information we started compiling our rough draft skit, and collaborated on what kind of video we should present. We wanted something that was interesting to watch, while adding to everything Nick R. was going to narrate during the video.

Our discussion about this lead us back to the videos that we watched as a class; what our class seemed to enjoy as well as retain the best information from was the animated videography. With Nick H.’s previous video editing experience we knew that animation was an option, but we also wanted our audience to feel a little more emotionally invested in what Nick R. had to narrate; we decided that a hybrid of slides showing relevant pictures, videos of the author, and animations would appeal to most, if not all, of our audience. In this case we thought it would most effective to create a video where everyone would get something out of it, more than just reading words on a screen. But, we also recognize that in doing this we run the risk of making it harder for some to feel connected to certain parts of the video. For example, in the beginning of the project Nick R. narrates the cooking process of an Italian dish, and for that we animate the ingredients used as well as some of the processes itself. This could be a really engaging beginning for some, but some people may get more out of it if they had seen an ingredients list or pictures of Nick R.’s Grandmother making the dish. We cannot know how to appeal to everyone, but if given the chance to do this project again we would use the same process of assessing the type of audience we are dealing with and then produce something accordingly.

Group Work:

Going into project four, the four of us had little experience with working in groups and weren’t sure exactly what to expect. Before starting the project, we discussed that it would be important for us to communicate, contribute to the group equally, stay on track with the deadlines, and challenge one another. We immediately created a Google document that allowed us to work on our script and references simultaneously. The four of us met often to write our script, record clips for our video, give feedback, and never had issues with finding time to meet. While Nick H. was in charge of editing the video, he asked for our feedback frequently in our meetings so that the final product would reflect all of our visions rather than just his.

Going forward, the four of us feel that we have gained a better understanding on how to work in groups and why group work is beneficial. The main thing we have learned is the importance of everyone’s contribution. By receiving everyone’s thoughts and feedback, we were able to make many changes to the script and video in order to create the best final result. An aspect that we lacked as a group was communication. We did not have one leader who was in charge of deciding deadlines, times to meet, and final decisions on our project, which we feel may have benefited our group, and will definitely be considered in future projects.

Ultimately, the four of us feel that we were able to work on project four successfully as a group, and abandoned the stereotype of group work where one person carries the weight of the entire project.

Margo Tschantz, Nick Rosso, Nick Hyman, and Madison Bloomfield