Course Enrichment Component

For my course enrichment component I watched the movie “Hackers” and the movie “Wall-E.” Hackers came out in 1995 and portrayed accurate technology that was available at the time. It is about a lack of protection that allows a child to send a computer virus that crashed 1,507. Mind you, the child who did this was eleven years old. He was not allowed to own or operate a computer until his eighteenth birthday. The themes of this movie relate to high school and trying to fit in, as well as technology’s impact on people. In “Hackers” a large company made their garbage folder easily accessible so that when their mineral tankers capsized and created oil spills, they could blame the hackers who were able to obtain information from their garbage file. This shows that during this time people were using the easily accessible system to trick others. “Wall-E” shows a horrific vision of the future of technology. It portrays an extremely obese population that uses solely screens to interact with one another. They also travel around in electronic floating chairs. The movie explains that humans abused Earth and were no longer able to live there so they were sent up into space on a ship called the Axiom. They send Eve probes to search for life on Earth to see whether they are able to move back to Earth at any point in the near future. The predictions made by this movie seem ridiculous and highly unlikely, however, we cannot be sure. Other themes involved in this movie are a heavy reliance on technology, laziness, and persistence in achieving ones goals. Although the two movies are very different, they both focus on technology and its impact on humans. Each shows potential dangers of technology.

Project Description

Create a narrative in a truly interdisciplinary, multimedia format.

One of our primary goals throughout the semester has been (and will continue to be) understanding the ways that media can affect our relationship to the creative content we encounter every day. Now you have an opportunity to leverage what you have learned to produce your own creative content.

First you should outline a narrative. It can be completely unique or it can be derivative of something you know or love. (I recommend basing it on something already written. This is what most great storytellers do anyhow.)

Once you have an idea of where it is going, create an online format that will host your narrative. WordPress is user friendly, and you have all had experience on the platform. But if Tumblr, Blogspot, or even a Facebook page can offer something unique to your story, you are welcome to use whatever platform best suits your idea. Just make sure that your chosen platform will accommodate the demands of this assignment.

The following is a list of guidelines for content to include. It is not a firm list of requirements. But remember that your final project should use digital media to its fullest extents. (i.e. a Tumblr page with nothing but running text doesn’t really push the envelope of storytelling.)
– Several paragraphs of original text.
– Several excerpts of quoted or directly paraphrased text.
– Several original images (can be photographs, drawings, images you made in illustrator, etc.)
– Several images that you found on the web
– Links to a social media site
– Links to a Google book
– Links to a Wikipedia page
– Embedded video
– Links to a news story
– A piece of music (via link or embedded)
– References to at least 2 authors from our readings

Every photo, video, link, etc. should relate to your story in some way, shape or form – but it can be a side note or reference.

There will undoubtedly be many variations on the approach to this assignment, so stating that it has to be 4 web pages, with 12 photos, etc. etc. would be constrictive to your process. But I do expect to see work that develops out of serious commitment to your concept and your narrative. The time and effort that you dedicate to this assignment should be equivalent to writing an 8-10 page paper, so plan ahead and work on something that you will be very proud of when its done!

Project Proposal

My final project will focus on three major events in Katy Perry’s career as a singer and new actor in the past year: her California Dreams tour, the Smurf’s movie, and her appearance on the show Raising Hope. I will relate Katy Perry’s California Dreams concert to an older example of a well-known singer, Elvis. I’ll compare their concerts to one another because they both wore strange outfits and changed many times during their concerts. I will also compare Katy Perry to Justin Timberlake because both started with a singing career and then were brought into the acting business. I will use pictures I took at the Katy Perry concert, along with music videos and videos from the concert. I also have a magazine that talks about her concert, and there is a Wikipedia page dedicated solely to her California Dreams tour. Most of the content will be text and music, since Katy Perry and the two people I’m comparing her to were involved in the music industry. The story will be told more through music, so it will alter the presentation of the story, although the parts referring to The Smurfs movie and the Raising Hope episode might be more text heavy. It will be a nice mix of different types of media. I will also include text to explain the pictures and videos I include, so the story will not be altered significantly, but it will be in my own words and from my own perspective because I went to one of Katy’s concerts. I will use Word Press for this project and I will probably make three separate pages that connect, so I can have a separate page for the concert, the movie, and the show. I will compare Katy to Elvis in the page regarding the concert, and compare her to Justin Timberlake in the page regarding the show, Raising Hope. I decided to relate her to people who had more in common with her than a character in a book would. I thought it would be interesting to compare the three stories, especially comparing her to Elvis because of the difference in time period. The biggest challenge for me is going to be the comparisons and relating this story to two of the readings from class, but I’ll find some way to do it.