The purpose of this multimodal course has focused on the empowerment of storytelling. Through my own writing, editing, and viewing others’ content, the course has shown that stories do not always need to be written down to be considered writing. Every assignment completed has been a form of writing whether it was presented visually or typed. Additionally, writing for a public audience has challenged me to focus on wording and presenting my work in clear and universal ways.
Through viewing What’s in a Name and The Olive Project, I have come to understand the meaning of multimodal and how different multimodal pieces can be. Pieces based in writing may also contain images, audio, and other mediums. Multimodal pieces may be linear or more jumbled in viewpoint.
In creating this video for a public audience, it was important to consider who we knew would definitely view the piece as well as those we couldn’t account for. Additionally, it was important to determine which clips our community partner wanted in the video and which parts she did not want publicized. Since we knew a portion of our viewers would not know much about the refugee crisis, it was our responsibility to contextualize the information we would be presenting. While the project allowed us to learn more details about the struggles refugees face, we wanted to be able to share this new perspective with our viewers as ethically as possible. It was important to know what tools were available to us as students and editors, and to know what these tools - specifically Wix and iMovie - were capable of. The capabilities of ourselves and our tools determined the limits of the results we could produce.
Overall, our target audience, available mediums, and designated applications required us to cut our one hour interview down to a video that was a little longer than five minutes (ours is eight so far). If allowed, my group would have loved to publish the entire video, but instead we had to cut out some of our favorite parts in order to tell the story that needed to be told. Some of those highlights for us included her “baby activist” daughter, her comments on Trump, and her emotional, loving stories about her family members.
When working on this project, we had to consider ethical guidelines including the fair use of images and sounds. Therefore, we used free music sites such as Jamendo as well as the creative commons license website in order to learn how to correctly cite others’ work and in what instances they can be used.
We had the opportunity to ask Chanda Womack and Sana Mustafa questions prior to the interview process and about our audio essays in order to be better prepared and as considerate as possible. Because we are only there to share the community partner’s story, we want to do it in the most ethical and moral way. We do not want to focus on their sadness, emotional displays, or on the negative aspects; we want to empower their stories. Additionally, we understood that we would not be highlighting the community partner if they become emotional during the interview; we would not be gaining off their emotional pains.
We went to a cultural center to conduct our interview and an improv group was performing upstairs. This created an environment that was not particularly conducive to filming. We had to accept the lighting, background, and sounds of activity that came with the environment. Until editing, we could not change the sound levels and thus just had to hope our community partner spoke loud enough to be heard once background noise was removed. Additionally, we learned that our interviewee’s voice level adapted to her comfortability with the topic being discussed. When she told us about her family or her past, her voice was quiet and soft. Conversely, when she told us about her daughter, her present activities, or her viewpoints on the world we live in, she was strong, confident, animated, and spoke with a more definitive enunciation. Therefore, we knew we would have to equalize her voice level during the editing process.
During editing, we realized we should have filmed at different angles in order to diversify the image viewers would be looking at for the entire video. Unfortunately, the room we filmed in offered only the yellow walls we chose or a mirrored wall. Regardless of our regrets, we are pleased that the video screen’s focus can rest solely on Chanda and her story. Chanda is able to tell her story in the video using all her own words in a way that you could not even know we were there. Chanda provided her own picture to us to use in the video and we could additional film of the images framed in the cultural center that related to Cambodia.
We prepared for the interview by researching refugees in many countries and then specifically in Cambodia. We then met with her to discuss interview protocols and then interviewed her. We developed a list of questions for the interview and an initial plan for the parts of the video, but we only asked four of those questions during the interview because Chanda answered them all on her own through telling stories. During the interview, I took notes to detail the topics we discussed and outline any important quotes to return to later on.
Prior to the interview, Chanda had provided us with topics she wished to focus on throughout the interview such as assimilation versus integration and her family’s story of coming to America. Then it became our mission to edit thevideo of the interview while focusing on those main topics she wanted to highlight. No matter what we thought was important, her wishes needed to be seen as the most important to keep in the final product.
When editing, we had to make sure this shortened version still contained the main points as well as effectively communicated the story as a whole to the audience. The in-class group edits helped my group especially when determining story flow and organization of topics within the video.
Through this process, I learned that the need for editing does not mean that the project is bad; it just could always be improved. I learned that writing does not always need to be written and that interaction in other ways can be beneficial to the story’s impact. Now when I view multimodal works, I will think about the process the authors went through to create the final product.
Purpose - empowerment W
Multimodal - What’s in a name/olive project V
Public - audience W
I am from V/W link
CSP Link
Ethical guidelines/ cc license W
Chanda and sana A
Audio essay A/link
Video/ interview V/W
Editing V/W
Preparation/Research W
Topics/Main points V/W
Final product W/link