"Once can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it." -A.R. Ammons

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1 From: Christopher Watts Subject: collaboration across the grades, continued Date: December 7, :13:06 AM EST To: Tansy Peplau Nathan Torres Dora Ehrhardt John Cummin Cc: Christopher Watts Here are the things I'll be thinking about as I evaluate your project, and the things I'd like you to address in you final critique. If you would like to tinker with this or add things, hit reply all and fire away. I'd like to have your critiques by the end of the week remember that you are to work on writing these privately, though you are certainly encouraged to have discussions about how it all turned out. Conceptual: Your central idea and how it is conveyed; how it changed; the value judgments that your project implies as related to technology culture? What are the relationships among the media that you employed? Art/Aesthetic: How true is the project to the conventions of the genre it parodies? In what ways did you deliberately defy these conventions and why? What did you get wrong? How does the pacing and structure of the piece work? Does it engage? Does it support the content effectively? Technical: How seamless is the combination of materials from imovie, PhotoShop, GarageBand/Logic, Flash? Which of these did you personally work on, and how would you judge the quality of these components from the standpoint of workmanship/craft? What were the technical obstacles your group faced? Process: What was the organizing principle for your project in terms of the group members' duties? How did everyone know what to do and when? What was the decision-making process like? How did the decision to change direction mid-semester come about? Are you pleased with that decision now? What were topics of friction or disagreement for the group, and how were they resolved? Reflexive: What did you learn about the ways that media are constructed? What did you learn in terms of technical skills? What did you learn about working with other people? What did you learn about you? What did you learn about the technology of culture or culture of technology? How pleased were you with the final product? How pleased were you with working through the process? What would you have done differently? What grade would you give yourself? Dr. Christopher Watts Director, Newell Center for Arts Technology Assistant Professor of Music St. Lawrence University Canton, NY fax ncat.stlawu.edu "Once can't have it both ways and both ways is the only way I want it." -A.R. Ammons

2 Collaboration Across the Arts John Cummin December 11, 2009 Final Self Critique The theme of our original movie was how much the modern day human being has become dependent on his or her technology, and in the case of our movie, the iphone. However, in the new and improved version, we focus more upon the actual benefits of the iphone, but with a far greater focus on parody. The movie can also be interpreted as a parody on Apple advertisement overall. To do this we utilized several programs in our effort to create a Collaborative piece, including Garage Band, the Adobe Suite, imovie, and itunes, which at certain points, were used all at the same time. The entirety of our piece was based on the 50s style instructional video by way of visual and audible standpoints. In the visual aspect of the project, we did our best to replicate the quality of film used at that time with the imovie filter tools, making the footage seem scratched and black and white. As an actor, I also attempted to mimic the kind of dress which might have been worn in a similar instructional video. In the audible aspect, music written and recorded in the 50s as well as pieces based off said music were used, not to mention audio filters used in GarageBand to diminish the high quality recordings made by our contemporary technology to make them seem more authentic. On top of this was my use of expressions which might have been used in such a video. Obviously including technology from our own time, such as the ipod, acted as a point of defiance from the genre. Also, any cartoon animations would have been done with paint and paper, and not in any other media. To add to this, there was undoubtedly a fault with my voice acting for the narrator. While recording, after time, my voice grew tired and slightly tremulous, which might not have happened if we had better anticipated scheduling circumstances. Finally,

3 some of the environments in which we filmed were not completely authentic, with contemporary furniture being used, as well as more modern forms of architecture. However, much of the generic furniture at St. Lawrence might be closer to 50s furniture than I know. As for pacing and structure, I thought the pacing was good, but the portions covering the instruction of the different applications could have been shortened by omitting certain applications for those that are more specialized to the iphone, like the weather, YouTube, and itunes applications. This point aside, the content is effective and engaging. Through effective combination of the different resources we used, I think we have achieved an admiral project. For instance, I pieced together a brief Flash animation, as a small introduction to our project. Prior to putting it into imovie and applying the filters, the animation was good, but really failed to achieve anything by itself. However, after the filters were added, and the animation was put into context with the rest of the project, it added to the authenticity. I wish I could say the music added to the effect of the animation, but I have heard the particular piece used on YouTube before and it detracted from my experience. Among the programs in our repertoire, I alone was involved in the Flash animation and PhotoShop aspects of the project, and used GarageBand quite a lot towards the end too. The workmanship was good overall. My animation from Flash fulfilled its purpose, but I would change some things. There were some brief, choppy frames that distract the audience from the content and force it to think critically of the work itself. Color was also something I regretted from the movie. If this were solely an animation piece I would have emphasized on color, but as the rest of the movie was done in black and white, it would have formed unnecessary inconsistencies. Obviously the overall quality of the animation would have been vastly improved if I had more time to work, but there's no benefit in playing the coulda', woulda' shoulda' game

4 when it comes to time constraints. Fortunately for myself and the group, I participated in almost none of the technical aspects of the project, Nate took care of most of that. I simply labored with the content of the work: music, animation, acting, etc. Organization might have been a little too up in the air for such a substantial project. In the original work, we spent several weeks deciding on dates, content, and other important details, but failed to actually begin filming until an appallingly late date, comparatively. Then, by the time we changed projects, we were all business. Though we might have benefited from a combination of them both at the same time, the finished product was a vast improvement upon what we might have completed had we stayed with the original. In the original plan, Nate and Tansy were editing/filming, Dora was doing music, and I would be in charge of animation and learning how to edit. The idea was that we would create the movie based on the strengths and specializations of each member. After the first two days of filming the other project, we were all so deeply unhappy with how serious the video was that we completely changed gears to an instructional video, which would set guidelines useful for making a movie. At this point, much of our careful and lengthy planning went completely to the dogs, and the rest was pretty much assembled in a few quick power meetings. I believed then, and I believe now that the change was a good one. Looking at the finished product, I believe that overall, the whole thing worked out very nicely and a well refined project was produced and believe it or not, there were few topics of friction. When Nate and Dora told me they had been thinking of scrapping the iphone dependence video in favor of an instructional video, despite the late date, I was wondrous relieved and the only member of the group who showed doubt was Tansy, but any doubt would have been understandable and expectable from anyone at that time.

5 In reflection on the whole, I found the entire project to be enjoyable and free of familiar feelings of terror and last minute anxiety which might be felt under different circumstances. Though vital last minute changes were made, they were done in such a way that all aspects were completed with time to spare and refine. I would like to take this opportunity to add some small clarifications concerning work division and disparity. Though the guidelines were fairly clear, many of the decisions had to be made on the run, and so sometimes the guidelines were ignored. For instance, Tansy was originally going to actively coordinate editing and filming with Nate, but scheduling put most of the filming and nearly all the editing in Nate's hands. The same happened with Dora and me. Though Dora was originally going to be entirely responsible for editing music, she completed the first few minutes, and I took on the rest. These were both examples of what generally happened on the whole, making Nate very much the director, and me the director's assistant. This, however, does not demean the work that Tansy and Dora did, which was indeed substantial and exemplary. By participating in this class, I have grown to understand the unbelievable, and unforeseeable that accompany a group project of this magnitude. Looking at the final project, I would say that I am very pleased, and though I have some regrets, the quality of the work is still good. I'm afraid I have never had much of a knack for guessing what grades I'll get on projects, but based on our final product, and the timely fashion in which we completed it, I would give us anything from a 3.5 to a 4.0 depending on how generous I am feeling.

6 Dorothea Ehrhardt Collaboration Across the Arts Christopher Watts December 10, 2009 Final Critique Our initial idea was to portray how technology is beginning to run our lives, or more appropriately, how we allow technology to do this. We wanted to show the compulsive Facebook updates, checking, texting, etc. that is deeply embedded in our daily lives. This idea shifted when we changed our project midway through. Our original project was going nowhere fast, and to put it simply, we just weren t motivated. After convincing Tansy that the project was a dud for about a week, we were finally able to go into a new direction. An instructional video on how to use an iphone was our new basis for a project. It wasn t too big a bite to chew, whereas our first project was. This automatically increased our chances for success. We got our plot and concept for this new project in one sitting, compared with the two-three weeks it took for the other one. So, our new central idea became instructing people on how to use an iphone in a 1940 s style that contradicts this idea of technology in a humorous way. Honestly, I can t imagine having done a serious video with John, Nate and Tansy, because the four of us are goons. It s perfectly understandable, though, that you mentioned to us to not try and make something funny, because it most likely won t be humorous to anyone else. Since we had a concrete idea, though, and didn t focus on making it funny, it became naturally funny as we went along. What I m trying to say is, we didn t make jokes and try to build a plot around it. We built a plot, and as we went along and recorded we discovered humorous lines or actions that could fit right in. How convenient. Our video just showed how our culture associates technology and material items with happiness, essentially. The elevator scene portrayed this quite well. Little Timmy was cooler than the other people in the elevator, not because of his personality or morals, but because of something he owned. The line, you re only as good as the things you own, also ties in well with this idea. The video and audio components were the primary media we used. The flash video in the beginning was employed to enhance the video by giving it a mini-introduction. This is obviously a sarcastic video, and the flash video certainly adds to that vibe with the cartoon version of Little Timmy. The image at the end of the video, that showed another cartoon version of Little Timmy, was also secondary media. This image served a similar function to the opening video. It gave closure in a clear and concise manner. I d say this project looks very 1940s because of several reasons. The apparel of Little Timmy is right on target. The effects we placed on the movie itself (black and white film, the lines that scroll across the screen, etc.) give it an aged effect. We deliberately defied the conventions of the 1940s because our film was so technology-based. That makes it contradictory. We were also extremely sarcastic, and most videos from the 1940s aren t. The video is paced so that there are lots of little clips, rather than one big one, in order to keep our audiences attention and to show how to use an iphone in multiple settings. The structure starts out as introducing the iphone to Little Timmy, and goes through what you can do with an iphone, and from there discuss what you can t do with an iphone, and then concludes. It s a clear structure that makes sense from a formal viewpoint. The work seems to engage the audience well because it has a good forward motion, and even some moments of suspense (for example, when Little Timmy is trying to cheat on the test). I think the structure of our piece supported the content very well. It s an instructional video, so it isn t meant to have a plot, and short scenes of how-to s work effectively. The combination of materials wasn t entirely seamless. We unfortunately picked up a lot of static while recording Little Timmy on the video camera, as opposed to Mister, who we recorded on a Zoom. This made it difficult to have both their audio tracks match. The cartoon clip and final image fit in perfectly, though. The audio in the background worked out fairly well. There were a few points where it may have been too loud, and other points where it faded out too strongly. I worked on leveling the audio levels of the music and voice-overs. I think I did a fairly good job I tried my best, but at some points it was difficult to determine how loud to make Mister compared to Little Timmy, since Little Timmy s frequencies are higher, making him much more audible at a lower volume. Also, the recordings weren t entirely consistent, so while I may have found a good balance in decibels for part of it, the same numbers may of not worked for the rest of the movie. It also seems like it may

7 have gotten louder as the movie went along, and I wish I had caught this sooner, but the project was due and there wasn t much choice in the matter! It was also a challenge to make the music just loud enough without being distracting, and there are points where I missed the ball on this. I also had the music too soft sometimes, I think. I was trying to balance out the music compared to the voices, so when the voices got softer, I tried making the music softer. I think this ended up backfiring and making the audio appear less consistent. This is the only media I worked on, since Nate was really into doing everything. He did all of the editing in imovie, because I guess if we all worked on it there would be no consistency. I would have really liked to have done some imovie editing We faced a good amount of technical obstacles. The first time we recorded we had the camera on mute, so we picked up no audio. This meant we had to reshoot everything, since there was no possible way to do voice-overs cleanly. That was probably the most frustrating of technical difficulties we had. There was also an issue of trying to transfer the imovie file to my Macbook Pro, so that I could work on the audio with the video available (how else was I supposed to do it?) That was also frustrating. Those were the two most prominent technical difficulties in my opinion. The process was a long and painful one. The organizing principle is that Nate was the controller. Which is fine, we someone to be a leader. Our project got off to a slow start, and by the time we were getting somewhere I had other obligations kicking in. This left Nate and John, since Tansy started having more obligations too. After my couple weeks of hectic craziness died down, Nate had already taken over. Everyone knew what to do and when because we d ask Nate. I felt like I had to ask him before doing something. I tried to take some control too, but Nate would always beat me to the punch. Being that Nate and I have dominating personalities, one of us was going to end up being the big force. Now, he did motivate and drive our group (sort of, Tansy wasn t very motivated). I got really angry in the beginning because the meetings were basically between Nate and myself. John would just go with the flow, and Tansy just sat there on her laptop and didn t contribute much. Of course, though, when we wanted to change our direction she was opposed because we had already done so much work. The work quality sucked. Her video camera skills weren t doing much for the project. I m getting off track, though. The decision-making process was me asking Nate, do you like this music track? No, that s not what I envisioned. In my head I was thinking, So this is just your vision ok. I felt shafted, and it s my own fault for having fallen out for a few weeks. Now, don t get me wrong. Nate did a wonderful job!! I think he just really stressed about the project and ended up doing all the work because he was stressed. His very skillful though, and if it weren t for him this project would have fallen apart. The decision to change mid-semester was because no one was motivated about our project. Tansy pretended to be, but I think it s because she was too lazy to change directions at that point. Our project didn t make sense it was too much for us to take on. I m glad we made the decision to change. The largest topic of friction for the group was whether or not to change our project. This was resolved by developing a new idea in secret (Nate s doing) and then bringing it up to Tansy (and John too, if I m not mistaken). Another disagreement was imovie editing. Tansy really wanted to work on that. Nate didn t want her too, and understandably so. Her work ethic is less-than-optimal. Now, it might seem like my work-ethic sucks too, since this final critique is poorly written, but that s because I m trying to get everything out on paper before 3am and because to me, that s more important than proper grammar and sentence structure. Tansy would cut off peoples heads in the video clips she made. I mean, c mon, that s just messy. Tansy also wanted to do bloopers, but we didn t want her to do a bad job on that and ruin the video. Yeah, I guess we were a bit harsh in shafting her out like that, but, like I said, she had a different idea of good work, and that s a really hard situation to deal with in a group project. I m not sure what I learned about the ways media are constructed. I suppose I learned that a lot goes into editing a video, in terms of the medias that go into it. I learned how to balance out audio levels in a video. I also learned how to cut up music to make it fit into a video setting. I learned that I really dislike working with other people, even my own boyfriend. That means I m doomed. I got frustrated because I didn t like a lot of the ideas our group came up with. I was really unmotivated with our project, but while our second idea was better I still didn t like it. I learned that I can become quite passive-aggressive in a group setting. I learned that the culture of technology is rapidly evolving and is never static. It s very intricate and complicated. There are also so many things that can go wrong with it, and it poses a lot of scary questions. The whole idea of the internet looking like second life one day is overwhleming -- Or the google web browser that doesn t even a need a computer desktop. I wasn t pleased much working through this process, since it wasn t something I found

8 motivating or interesting. I would give myself a 3.0, and then ask you to switch my enrollment in this course from being music to PCA so that I could keep my music GPA above 3.5. I ll be heartbroken and feel like a failure if it gets below that. In hindsight this may have not been the class for me, but I did learn a great deal. It was certainly a different experience, in terms of a class. It was interesting taking this course while taking Amy Hauber s Digital Media and Culture. Taking them together just helped reinforce material that I learned. I d say that the project was successful, but perhaps the process leading up to it was not efficient or as productive as I d of liked.

9 An Introduction to the iphone Conceptual Your initial premise (people are dependent on technology to an absurd degree) is a rich source of material, and even though you changed directions mid- semester this idea is still very much present as a subtext. This is partly due to the tone that naturally develops from the over- the- top parody. The implicit argument of the piece is best summed up by the narrator: You re just as good as the things you own. Ultimately, the piece does not come across as being critical of technology at all, but very critical of our culture s relationship with technology. This distinction is fairly sophisticated, and you have made it well. The integration of multiple media is almost entirely seamless the piece is exceptionally well done in this regard. The components never vie for the audience s attention, but support and complement one another. Aesthetic Great job in capturing the look, sound, and feel of the 50s educational film. The piece is remarkably consistent from this standpoint. On the other hand, there is a delightful tension created by the anachronism of the piece, and you play off of this well (how deliberate was this?). For example, the references to Facebook and the malt shop are out of two completely different worlds, and that s lots of fun. It s tricky, though, to figure out where to draw that line. For example, near the beginning, the narrator says the iphone will do everything except scratch your own ass. This is one place, I think, where anachronism doesn t quite work probably because there s no specific reason for it, unlike the technology references. Something slightly different and dated, such as everything except scratch your own patoot, would be pitch perfect and probably utterly hilarious in context. The pacing and structure of the piece are quite good, and I know you did a lot of editing to get this down to where it is. Ultimately, I think it could have been a minute shorter. Easier said than done. Very engaging and a great vehicle for your content. Technical Production values are very, very high. Some of the best work I ve seen in this regard, particularly in the smooth combination of video and voiceover, and in the layering and transitioning between visual and audio elements. I ve already addressed some of this from an aesthetic standpoint, so I won t repeat myself other than to say that the level of technical sophistication exceeds the very good aesthetic work. Truly excellent.

10 Process The fact that you changed directions fairly late inevitably means a bumpy ride in terms of process and group interaction. I know that you didn t always agree on how to proceed from any given point, and the tight timeframe made it difficult to make democratic decisions. My sense, though, is that underlying tensions (that always result from such a situation) tended to be ignored rather than brought out and dealt with. That was okay in this case, as far as the product is concerned, but in thinking about the importance of the process, this is not a very good strategy and you should avoid it in your future dealings with groups as much as you can. I d also note that, while I praised you above for the high production values of your piece, my sense is that you got so wrapped up in the technical details of putting things together that there was not much space for ideas in the last few weeks of the process. Too much focus on the trees, not enough on the forest. It s hard to find that balance you have to commit to something so you can get it done; but you also have to be flexible to get the best possible version of the something you ve committed yourselves to doing. Ideally, at the end you want to be pleased with both the product and the process. In short, I think you have made an A product, certainly an A for effort, and a B- for process.