Reflecting on “Vegetarianism”

Working in a new medium is difficult; working in a group is difficult. With these things in mind, working in a group to create a digital autoethnography on vegetarianism in college, a topic that only one group member had prior experience with, should sound impossible. However, this did not prove to be the case. Despite being the only multimedia presentation in the class curriculum, project 4 was not a complete curveball. With help from each member of our group, we were able to craft a unique look into the world of college vegetarians. We not only covered daily struggles and common public misconceptions, but we also delved into the importance of supporting the needs of this expanding minority. Throughout the process of developing our film, we made rhetorical choices to connect directly to our audience and display our purpose and argument through a new medium, film. Navigating these rhetorical choices has made us more rhetorically aware and overall, more effective writers which will help us throughout our writing.

Our purpose in the film was to present information from both researchers on the topic and Lisa’s own experience to an audience interested in college vegetarianism or college students in general. We wanted to show the viewers how vegetarians in college are perceived and discriminated against in the dining halls, specifically at Wake Forest but also at other universities in America, though the percentage of students that eat a vegetarian diet is growing. We used scenes of our own dining hall and had Chi-Chi, Scott, and John portray the different stereotypes that Lisa has experienced while attending Wake Forest in order to illustrate our argument and supply evidence to our viewer..

One of the biggest struggles we faced adapting a paper to film was the dramatic shift in audience. The paper was geared towards scholars in the anthropological community, but now we had to produce an informative piece geared towards our peers. This called for a lighter tone than the original paper, as well as a little humor. So we jumped feet first into the planning stages of the project. We set up a group meeting to discuss how we were going to go about converting Lisa’s paper on college vegetarians into a video that our peers would not only learn something from, but also enjoy. We started spitballing ideas, anything from visual concepts to storyboard-esque musings.

The first big rhetorical decision we made was to have the entire video narrated over top of the scenes as they play out. This way, the audience will feel as if the narrator is guiding them along, giving educational insight, whilst certain scenes are able to take a slightly more humorous tone to keep the audience interested. This idea was certainly founded in our group’s viewing of When Perri Met Aly; we really liked the friendly narrative, and the feel of the acting. Some aspects of the story were goofy and exaggerated, just like what we wanted to do with our own piece. However, unlike in When Perri Met Aly, we had a more scholarly topic and had to find some way to convey factual information so that our video would have a purpose.

To give our video a clear purpose and thesis, we needed to have a well written script that matched up with our scenes and would provide substantial claims and evidence to match our message. Writing the script fell mostly to Lisa, who after researching the topic when writing her paper, felt most comfortable talking about the topic. As a member of the in-group, she was able to incorporate her own experience and voice into the script while also connecting her experience to the larger conversation. While writing, she attempted to incorporate evidence in the narration that would connect to the visual evidence and present the argument to the popular audience. The evidence and organization of the narration script supported our thesis that vegetarians are stereotyped and discriminated against on campus though the number of vegetarians in college is growing. Once the first draft of the script had been made, Lisa continued to revise it as the scenes of the video were recorded and the edited together. The later revisions were especially important in integrating the narration with the visual aspects of the film. The creation of the script went smoothly because Lisa took on the bulk of the work, most aspects of the project however, needed more collaboration between all of us.

Working together with four separate people, each who have very different and sometimes conflicting schedules, made finding time to work together difficult. We were able to minimize the confusion of missing members during group meetings in the planning phase of the project by creating a GroupMe message so that the group could easily communicate in a single large electronic conversation. We were also able to use this large conversation to plan out the logistics of filming; we delegated jobs and kept each other in the loop, in regards to our progress. At times, only half of the group would meet so that progress could be made when not all of the members were available and no time was wasted.. Since communication is often the most difficult aspect of group work, we set ourselves up with a firm base so that the rest of the project could be as close to seamless as we could make it.

Our first day of filming was incredibly productive; we started out with a little help from a few of our fellow freshmen as extras to film our larger group scenes that we had plotted out earlier. Scott made sure that the scenes were large enough so that we would have enough material to work with when editing the video. We all had a say in certain shots and worked together to decided what would look best. Though sometimes individuals were outvoted on film decisions (i.e. John had to eat a leaf, not once but twice), an all-for-one and one-for-all mentality kept everyone in good humor and high morale. No idea was disregarded without careful discussion amongst the group, this led to more collaboration overall and avoided invalidating everyone’s ideas. After filming the first time, we decided that we needed to go back and re-film a few scenes but not the scenes involving the signs. Though we all agreed that we liked the idea of the scene, logistically it would have been difficult to get everyone involved together a second time.

Scott had some experience with computers and volunteered to take the lead editing the video. We started with a shitty first draft and after the first round of peer review, went back to work to fix some of the higher order concerns. In the first draft, the script needed a lot of work, the thesis need to be more clear to the audience and more evidence was needed to support our claims. We decided to reshoot some scenes to give the video a longer running time and allow time for more narration. Scott edited the video a second time and Chichi found upbeat music that we felt would help the video flow better. We had finally finished the main revisions to the video and were ready to submit our project 4.

There was, unfortunately, an 11th hour scare. When Scott went to export and upload the video, he realized that he transferred the video files directly from the camera into Windows Movie Maker. This was a problem because the video files needed to be saved somewhere else on the computer in order to export the files. The video camera had already been returned to the bridge, so Scott went back and checked to see if they happened to have the camera. Sadly, they did not and Scott had to project the preview version onto his TV and film that for the video. This was very frustrating because it slightly lowered the quality of the video, making the signs impossible to read. In the end, Scott was able to finalize the video and turn it in on time. It was another obstacle but we were able to work around it and put out a good video.

In the end we were able to put together a presentation that stayed true to the original material presented in Lisa’s autoethnography, but also added a lighthearted tone to approach our peers. We used a good network of communication to figure out our goals as well as to plan and carry out logistical aspects such as filming. Decisions were made as a group, and tasks were delegated to individuals with the skills to handle their assigned task. This project provided us with challenges to make new rhetorical decisions and work with a new medium that most of us were unfamiliar with at the beginning. Working collaboratively in an unfamiliar medium has provided us with new skills that we can carry on to future projects and continue to improve with time.

–John Cooper, Scott Franc, Chi-Chi Ogbonna, and Lisa Thiele