Self-Expressions on Self-Portraits

A self-portrait video is one's effort to express themselves visually; whether it be showing how a person got to be where they are today, or creating visuals on a value they strongly hold. In the most simplest of self-portrait videos, it pieces together different things that make-up a person's lifestyle.

I viewed 15 different self-portrait videos, and there were only a handful of videos that stood out and grabbed my attention. 

THE REALLY GOOD:

One of my favorite videos was done by a student named Alicia Scott, titled, "About Me-Revisited." This student illustrated 'a day in the life'... literally. 

Watch video on YouTube.com

While watching each video, I jotted down a few initial thoughts:

"VERY COOL!!" ... "LITERAL & METAPHORICAL"

Not only was this video very "cool" and unique, it was also literal and metaphorical. It was literal in the fact that it showed her daily routine, ending up at her iMac computer using different programs (Adobe InDesign, Adobe After Effects); yet metaphorical because she used her actual illustrations- which show that drawing and animating are an important part of her life. 

"VERY ARTISTIC"

What made the visuals even stronger was how the student used her [real] hands to interact with the animations. The video had good quality, good music and kept my attention.

"SHORT, SWEET & TO THE POINT"

This student clearly put a lot of time and effort into her video. Though I would enjoy more to this video, it's length is just one minute but easily got right down to the core of her lifestyle. To me, if you can get someone to know you in a minute without using any words, that's a job well done.

THE GOOD:

Another video that made my top favorites was made by James Barany.  The video, titled, My Most Important Self-Portrait takes the audience into his this man's head to understand his weight struggle. 

Watch video on YouTube.com

My Initial Thoughts:

Alright so maybe titling this video, "the FAT guy", on my notes isn't the most politically-correct or nicest thing. My apologies! Anyways....

POSITIVES:

Throughout the video, plays a voice-over of the man's thoughts; which are also cleverly animated on the chalkboard behind him. In my opinion, the chalkboard animations brought the video together for me, it grabbed my attention and kept it. Not to mention, without these words moving around in the background, our eyes would have to feast on the image of a clearly depressed, morbidly-obese man- not very visually-stimulating!

 The voice-over could have been removed from the video, and the video would still get its point across- BUT the voice-over adds to the overall mood of the video. The man's voice is very agitated, and depressed, which is fitting for theme of this black and white video.

NEGATIVES:

The video is seven minutes long, and after the first few minutes it started feeling redundant. There were 2 separate parts of the video where the chalkboard showed the fluctuations of the man's weight in numbers, as he stood up and turned around showing his body. When this was showed the second time, I thought I was watching the same thing. This could have been showed all at once and maybe cut down on the total length of the video. 

Despite the negatives, I thought this video was inspiring. After watching, you start to really feel for this guy and his struggle (hence my regrets of calling him 'the fat guy').

....AND THE NOT-SO-GOOD:

One video, titled, "Fragments" by Emily Esperanza, really caught my attention, in a bad way. If I had to sum this video up in a single word it would be: Awkward.

Watch video on YouTube.com
My Initial Thoughts:


The fact that there was no audio in this video (until the ending credits) was one of the biggest flaws. I was too distracted by the static-like noise to even know what was happening in the video, so I re-watched it... But I still didn't understand. The images/video clips playing in the background were of bad quality, and I'm not positive what exactly these images were. The message of this video wasn't clear to me at all.
The only recurring theme I saw in the video was women. There was a woman, perhaps the same woman who made the video, standing and doing poses the whole time. (And you could hear her movements because there was no background audio... awkward). Maybe it's just me, but I could not gather an idea of a central topic or message with any of the images of women that were used.
To make this video better, this person should have...
-Used some sort of background music throughout entire video or voice-over
-Had better quality visuals
-Made use of text to help viewers get some sort of an idea of a theme

It's not easy to create these self-portrait videos because you can't be too obvious with your theme but you also can't get too metaphorical with it, where you are the only one who understands it. All-in-all, it was interesting to watch the 15 self-portrait videos, and see how different people express their lives in video-form.

http://www.web2pt0.com/#WhatIsIt @WheresItGoing

WHAT IS WEB 2.0?

To me, when I hear the term "Web 2.0" a few things come to mind: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, social media in general, and smart phones. All of these things virtually connect individuals around the world, allowing us to interact. We have the power to post whatever we want, whenever we want. Web 2.0 has opened the door for new relationships along with new information. However, since everyone does have the power to post whatever we want, that doesn't mean that everything on the web is right or true. We must be careful and mindful while taking advantage of this dissemination of information.

WHERE IS IT GOING?

For as long as technology is evolving, Web 2.0 will be right there adapting along with it. The way we connect and get our information is expanding and changing at a fast rate- and to be totally honest, it's changing so fast that by the time I try to even guess what's next, it'll have already happened. 

DOES IT LIVE UP TO THE HYPE?

We can take pictures on our smart phones, upload them to Facebook (in a shorter time than it even took to get everyone to smile for the picture), tag everyone in the picture, and then comment back and forth with each other about how ugly we all look. We can post our resume on LinkedIn, connect with professionals around the world and land a job interview. So does Web 2.0 live up to the hype? I think yes. The endless opportunities that the web holds for us is unfathomable. Some people might take the Internet today for granted, while others might take advantage of it... either way, there's no ignoring it or stopping it.

SOCIAL MEDIA & WEB 2.0

One of the newest and biggest things to come out of Web 2.0 is social media. In an article written in the year 2009 on Mashable.com, it shows the emergence of the once foreign term, 'social media' compared to the term Web 2.0; social media overtook the term Web 2.0 for the first time in December 2009. The article predicted that in 2010, "social media is not going to look back as it rapidly becomes a mainstream term." They were right. An article from examiner.com on August 26, 2012 (the day before the start of the 2012 Republican National Convention) looks at how social media will "take the stage" at both this year's Republican and Democratic Conventions, the same way it did at the 2012 London Summer Olympics. For the 2008 Presidential Election and the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics, the term 'social media' or 'Twitter', although they existed, weren't even household names yet.

"The dynamics of the social media platforms along with Web 2.0 have replaced the TV. We now all live in a digital media eco-system where tablet, smartphone and laptop users are becoming more and more responsible for the increases in TV ratings and public opinion." -Gloria Buono-Daly, examiner.com

An article from the Huffington Post highlights the "death and life" of social media, ever since Facebook and Groupon stock prices have dropped recently, some media outlets have predicted the downfall of social media, but author Michael Moynihan of the Huffington post argues,

"Social media or Web 2.0, much Web 1.0 was in 2001, is if anything, only expanding."

Social media has a way of keeping people so connected but so far apart at the same time; this new phenomenon will be around for as long as people want to continue to keep in touch and share with one another.

The Gr8 Deb8

SOCIAL NETWORKING- GOOD OR BAD?
Unfortunately it isn't that black and white. I've always been pro-social media, but as I get older I can see  some of it's negative effects. Social networking isn't going anywhere, in fact it's only going to improve and advance, so any of you negative Nancy's toward social media should just accept the facts. (YES GRANDPA I'M TALKING TO YOU.)

Let's start with the bad.
I think most of social media's negative effects are on our youth.
Real life example:
Over the summer, my family rents a cottage in Fort Erie, Canada, RIGHT on the beach. It's beautiful and we have all the cousins there. One of the best parts about being there is not having cellular service or wireless Internet. A chance to unplug from the world and relax for a day or ten.
This year at the cottage, on a rainy day, my sister Megan (Age 12), had the nerve to ask me this question:
"Katie, will you drive me to the library down the street so I can check my Facebook?"
I LOST IT.
"MEGAN. DID YOU REALLY JUST ASK ME THAT?"
She's 12 and she wanted me to take her to the library, not to CHECK OUT A BOOK but to CHECK HER FACEBOOK.
It hit me that kids must not know what to do when they're bored anymore and I don't think Facebook is the right place to waste time, at such a young age.

Another example lies in the lost lives of a number of young teens who committed suicide after being cyber-bullied.
When you put a kid behind a computer, without having to be face-to-face with their victim, it gives them a confidence in getting away with saying the worst things they can think of. It's a shame that some victims of cyber-bullying were so emotionally-scarred by just typed words, that they would take their own life.

However, sometimes when kids get the right guidance and/or parental controls on the Internet, these scenarios can be prevented and we can start focusing on the POSITIVE side of social media.

Social Media connects us in an unbelievable way. We can stay in touch with friends from other countries on Facebook, we can join conversations on Twitter with our favorite companies or even celebrities. We can even post our resume, network with professionals and find jobs on the website LinkedIn. Some people have been lucky enough to earn their way in the spot light by simply posting videos of themselves singing on YouTube. (Cough, Justin Bieber, cough.) What about the people who are too busy or have a hard time getting out there and finding true love? We now have websites that find your match. I know most of my friends including myself don't read the paper, but we're kept up to date on current events by the convenience of the Internet at our fingertips.

Maybe all of this makes us lazy, or maybe it makes us 'stupid'. In my opinion, it all depends on how you use it and how much you use it. If you're smart enough to realize that talking to your friends on Facebook isn't a substitute for seeing them in real life, or if you're smart enough to realize that your child needs an off-line hobby, then you're smart enough.

A Walk Down Memory Lane

Today in class I met Victoria Church and we compared scars....

The scars that were left after getting kicked off of AOL because someone picked up the phone.

But mostly we reminisced about our early experiences with the Internet- AOL Instant Messenger, watching music videos online and the guy who says,

"You've Got Mail!" 

Victoria said, "At the time, I never really realized how big of an impact the 'Internet' would have on my life in the future, but now the Internet and my computer are everything- I use it for school, to keep in contact for business and to keep in touch with friends and family across the world."

It's true. Victoria and I are the same age, so we started using the Internet around the same time, and who would've thought that we could book a flight or video chat with our friends across the pond with the touch of a finger on a device as advanced as our iPhones??

 One thing that surprised me about Victoria was that she doesn't use Twitter!!                                               

Being Tweet-a-holic, I was taken back at first so I had to ask, WHY NOT?

She told me she doesn't care/need to know what people are doing at every minute of everyday. Understandable. BUT- I explained how, in my opinion, that's a very common misconception of Twitter.

I told her she only has to follow who/what she WANTS to follow- and it's a great source for receiving news updates on things/people/places etc. that you are interest you. I think it takes people a while to really get into the swing of Twitter, so I hope Victoria gives it a shot!