Remediation
My repurposing project transformed an argumentative essay on banking corruption into a personal blog reflecting on my own professional decision-making. The next step, the remediation project, involved presenting a similar argument to the same audience, but in a different medium. In the repurposing blog, I mention that the prevelance of fraud committed by investment banks concerns me, and draws me away from a career at a bank. I decided to remediate this argument - that banking fraud should be concerning - and present it in a satirical news video similar to The Daily Show or Last Week Tonight. My audience of college students remained the same, but this different medium changed almost every other aspect of the writing. Instead of writing personal anecdotes, the script for my remediation project involved weaving together visual pieces of evidence with cynical analysis and humor. This project really pushed me outside my comfort zone, and although I can already think of at least 20 things I'd do differently, I'm satisfied that my final product at least remotely similar to the examples I looked at. Here is my remediation journey, broken down into 6 steps:
Step 1 - Research the genre. This was probably the easiest step as it involved watching a lot of John Oliver and John Stewart:
Step 3 - Record myself reading the script in front of a green screen in the UGLI recording room. Avoid judgement from those studying outside the room, who might have heard me talking to myself while wearing business professional attire in a library. I had originally planned to record the footage at a desk in my living room, but Naomi suggested that I look into utilizing a green screen. It took me about 3 google searches to realize that any U of M student can reserve this room, and that's exactly what I did.
Step 5 - Spend 40 minutes trying to figure out how to split clips in iMovie, and later realize it simply requires pressing two keys together at the same time. Somehow spend only 2 minutes adding the green screen effect. Finish editing after hours of sweat, blood, tears, and (mostly) YouTube tutorials. Wait 8 hours for my archaic 2011 Macbook Pro to render/upload a 17 minute video:
Step 6 - Try to not be too embarrassed with my finished product. If I could go back and do it again, I'd definitely make two major changes. First and foremost, I'd add more enthusiasm (even if that means being judged by library-goers outside the recording room). One of the main reasons John Stewart and Stephen Colbert are so funny is because they really go "all-in" with their jokes and present a huge spectrum of ridiculous facial features. If I could do this again, I'd commit to my jokes more and make them more ridiculous and animated. The second thing I'd change would be to make the script much shorter. After reflecting on my product and watching more of this genre, I've realized that John Stewart (and his writers) don't waste a single word. Every thought, joke, or piece of analysis is presented in the most concise way possible. As somebody who has more experience with the sometimes long-winded style of academic essays, this is a very foreign concept to me. However, despite these potential revisions, I'm still very satisfied with my finished product:
Step 2 - Write a story-board, and then end up ditching everything in it because I didn't find many relevant clips to integrate. Then attempt to write a script, and find the pictures and clips I want to highlight in the segment (indicated in red below):
Step 4 - Realize that the camcorder audio sounds like it was recorded through a half-broken walkie-talkie. Learn how to reduce background noise using audacity, and clean the audio track: