La La Land Visual Analysis

Oral

This work is the best course example of my oral communication because it is the only assignment where I am speaking. I started this assignment with an outline and figured that would be enough for me. Instead I ended up having to write out my script word for word and reading that off. This helped me because I was better able to organize my thoughts. I was also able to reduce my stuttering/stammering and any ‘um’s. However, this harmed me because I did not proofread and edit the script much after the rough draft.

I could have edited the script to interest and cater to the audience a bit more, but I found the video intriguing and easy to follow along with. My decision to compare an official movie poster and a fan made poster for the movie La La Land is due to the plethora of awards it received, the fan support, and my own personal interest in the movie. Once I piqued the audience’s interest, I highlighted my main points by comparing the two posters. I was a little biased and tended to favor the official movie poster over the fan made one. I think my analysis ended up being a little harsh on the fan made poster but I did my best to remain unbiased.

I did not use feedback for this assignment because I waited too long to start it. I tried not to rush and produce a sloppy video, but I did run out of time to properly edit my script. I had a friend watch through the complete video a few minutes prior to submitting it and they informed me that they felt I was a little biased in my analysis and that they disagreed with a few of my points. Had I started this project earlier, I would have taken the time to make sure my preferences were not influencing my work.

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Visual

I chose this piece to represent my best visual work because I put the most thought into it. In order to capture and maintain my audience’s interest, I started with a dark, almost black, background. This allowed the components to stand out and made the bright colors appear even brighter. I also used a clean font for my title page and did not add any text within the video. To highlight my points, I added animations. I usually incorporated arrows to point out which part of the poster I was talking about. However, when I was discussing the kissing couple silhouette in the fan made poster, I drew around the outline and then animated it. I found this to be an effective way to both entertain the viewer and emphasize my point.

I also directed my audience’s attention by cropping the movie posters. When I only wanted to discuss the dancing couple in the poster, I cropped out the text and other unrelated content. This helped the viewer to focus on the part I was talking about and not get distracted by the other parts of the poster. I used the morph transition on power point which helped a lot with keeping the audience’s attention. For example, I transition from a side-by-side comparison of the movie posters to just the one poster. The transition removed the fan made poster and centered the official movie poster seamlessly.

This transition provided in power point taught me that to be good at visual communication does not always mean having an extensive knowledge of the software being used. I learned more about how to use power point during this project than previous classes in high school which required it. My ability to make a video using power point demonstrates my ability to adapt and learn the best way to communicate with the tools provided.