How to Write Like a Film Studies Scholar: A Reflection of Adapting Mediums

For the first step in our project ” How to Writer Like a Film Studies Scholar”, we sat down and discussed which paper we wanted to create into a video. Even though the overall organization and diction of Caroline’s paper was smoother, we ultimately decided on Katherine’s paper. First, we thought it would be visually appealing to discuss Hyland in the beginning of our video, and finish with Porter, as Katherine did in her paper. We also thought it would be visually appealing to show the three different audiences. Next, we found it very “meta” to choose Katherine’s paper since our video would be created by a film studies student, on her paper about her film studies professor discussing work on film. In addition, Katherine has found in the past that when she discusses film to students not studying film that their attention is instantly sparked. In other words, film is genuinely a more popular and interesting subject to discuss!

Process:

We began the drafting process by each taking two sections of the paper and writing a script. This allowed all members to engage fully with the text. The script was a useful tool for it allowed us to clearly record our voices and then match the audio with visual content. Having the entire script on a shared Google Doc made it very easy to collaborate on different parts and see how the different segments of the video would interact once content was added. Due to our combined effort and time management, we were able to have footage of Katherine and Tim, along with all of our audio for the first peer edit review. The main feedback was to make sure the whole video was not just us lecturing at a chalkboard. The next step was to add more visual content for the second peer review.

At the second workshop we had even more progress made on the draft with almost all of our audio and visual content completed. The major feedback we received from the second peer review was to define any terms that a popular audience would not be familiar with. The rest of the feedback was minor editing choices such as adding more text on the screen and pictures of Hyland and Porter.

Organization:

The first step was coming up with a storyboard and script. The script was adapted from Katherine’s case study on Dr. Mary Dalton. We decided that Katherine should open and close the video, since she wrote the original paper. Due to our popular audience, having a student introduce and conclude the video adds pathos for it is much easier to “connect” and relate to a person, then to just have a voice over. With this, the video’s organization ended up being seven different scenes: Katherine Introduction, Hyland, Paper and Audience #1, Paper and Audience #2, Paper and Audience #3, Porter and Katherine Conclusion. This organization would be easy for a popular audience to follow because it is clear and methodical.

Evidence and Rhetorical Choices:

Throughout the video we tried to translate the evidence in the paper to adapt to the video format for a popular audience. First, we knew the concepts in the paper were familiar to our discourse community, but that a popular audience would not understand them as easily, so we decided to start the video with a section defining key terms that we would be using to enhance their understanding of the video. We then chose to explain Hyland and Porter in a classroom setting to signal to the audience that we are discussing another person’s work, almost as if we are teachers in a classroom. This added ethos to our video, as it showed that we connected to rhetorical theory outside of Dalton’s three papers. For each paper, we showed visuals of the actual paper in order to illustrate the different structures of the papers. We also chose to incorporate clips from trailers, images of movie posters, and stills from films in order to keep the audience engaged. This added pathos since it was visually appealing for the audience, especially if an audience member had seen one of the films before. In order to add kairos, we added headlines of news articles at the time when the original paper was published. We used Prezi to visualize the key points during denser material. In terms of citation, we thought it would be best to include them at the end rather than throughout the video. We abandoned the APA format so that a popular audience could clearly see the citations without getting lost in the APA style.

Learning Experience:

Overall, we had great group dynamic due to our diverse backgrounds and versatile skill sets. In total we met five times, making all rhetorical decisions together. We took advantage of resources on campus such as the media equipment from Barry Davis and study rooms in ZSR Library. We found the process of creating a video to be rewarding in certain ways different to writing a paper. First, we always discussed the importance of adapting to your different audiences, but we never had the opportunity to truly do that until now. We were able to transform a paper from an academic audience to a more popular one with the help of graphics and our unique tone. Second, we had the chance to respond to feedback in a group setting which opened larger debates about the changes we would be making to our draft. Third, we had the opportunity to leverage each team member’s unique skill sets to create the best possible video. For example, Tim brought an analytical and creative perspective, Katherine kept the team on track with her organization skills and depth of knowledge, and Caroline brought her video editing skills and aesthetic appeal along with her attention to detail. We were able to balance each other out with our personalities to have a productive and rewarding group work experience for all. If given more time, we would have went for a longer video that provided more quotes and a more in-depth analysis of each piece, but given the constraints of this project we had to pick and choose things such as plot summary and analysis. We also would have liked to incorporate Dalton more into our video, but due to her time constraints, she was not available for additional filming. We ultimately decided that it was more valuable to focus on the rhetorical choices within each of her papers to create a clear picture of “How to Write Like a Film Studies Scholar” rather than her personal background. This idea of compromising with what content will be included or omitted was one that was even faced during the process of writing this reflection paper.

Project 4 gave us the opportunity to understand that in any medium, whether it’s film, television, literature, conversation or work task, there is an audience, exigence and discourse community that we have to adhere to the conventions and appeal to our audience in order to be successful. Katherine is looking forward to thinking of purpose when assigned tasks this summer at her internship. Tim plans on writing effectively to his new discourse community of colleagues in the Fall, and Caroline is looking forward to appealing to all of her audiences in the marketing field.

– Caroline McLaughlin, Katherine Naylor, Tim Saeli