Reflection – Redesign of Advertisement Essay

Mitch Alters

Prof. Rinke

WRT 150

October 31, 2012

Reflection – Redesign of Advertisement Essay

            When first discussing about this essay in class. I was not really sure of where to start. After given it some thought, I came to a conclusion that this essay could be rather interesting because it gave me a chance to be creative and also it gave us and option of what the topic we would have to write on. I find it easier to write a paper when I can pick the topic. Since, we got to pick the advertisement we would analyze this made the essay easier than what I thought. Overall, the paper seemed overwhelming at first but after planning and preparing for the paper, it seemed rather easy.

            I was rather restricted to the ads I had to choose from because I did not have any magazines in my room or had a car to go find one. But I found an ad for Microsoft/Windows and I really liked it. The main reason I ended up choosing the advertisement was because the intended audience was college students. This ad appealed to me and I really liked that. It would make it easier to discover what all the intended purposes were. I did not think I would find any other ads that would appeal to my social class. That was my main reason for choosing my particular ad.

            It took my awhile to discover how I wanted to redesign the advertisement. I first thought of the new intended audience that I would want it to appeal too. I knew the complete opposite of the original audience, college students, would be the older generation or grandparents. That’s how I started my redesign. With the indented audience in mind, I brainstormed the layout and plans of the redesign in my head. I can usually picture things in my mind very easily so I did not need draw out my new plan.

            I actually did not have many troubles with this essay. Once I started the essay everything seemed to flow and it was a fun essay to write. Once I was done with my rough draft, I was worried that I may have not included enough detail and I was not sure if it had good flow. To overcome these problems I decided to take my essay to the writing center. They helped me out a lot with my paper. They showed me where I needed more detail and fixed the flow of my essay. After visiting them I felt my paper was great and ready to be turned in.

            I really liked the creativity we could use in this assignment. It was not a traditional essay that had to be on a certain topic. We could choose the advertisement and how we wanted to redesign it. This worked greatly to my advantage because I seem to write better papers when I have the option of choosing my topic. It’s easier to come up with ideas when you are already interested in the topic and this essay let me do that.

            The main thing that I learned while writing this essay is how to properly evaluate a advertisement. Before I did this essay I would just read advertisements. But now I properly know how to read and understand them. I feel I have gotten a better understanding of the rhetorical appeals. When we first learned about these in class I had trouble understanding them but now that I have used them in my essay, I feel like I understand them much better.

            I really don’t think I would change a thing in this essay. I really liked the advertisement I picked and I liked how my paper turned out. There wouldn’t be one thing that I would want to differently. Really enjoyed this paper and I think I did pretty well with it.

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Letter to Yourself

Mitch Alters

Prof Rinke

WRT 150

November 2, 2012

Letter to Yourself

Dear Past Mitch,

            I’m writing this letter to tell you that an accident is going to happen in a couple of days right before your big swim meet. You have a very bad habit of texting while your driving and you very ignorant towards the fact that you could hurt yourself or someone else. Listen to my advice and steps to stop texting and driving to avoid the following accident and missing the future swim meet that your team has prepared for all week. Here are a few steps that can help you from getting into the future accident.

            First thing is turn off your phone. I know that you have habit and like to text while driving because it seems harmless but all it takes is for you to look down from the road and anything can happen. Do not turn it on silent, or vibrate. Just power the phone off so that you will not notice any texts or phone calls while driving. This will help from the phone being tempting to see who has recently text you or to text someone else.

            Secondly, put the phone completely out of reach. Do not sit it in the cup holder nearest to you because then you will just power it back on and continue to txt. Put the phone in the opposite glove department so that it is not even reachable while you are driving. I know it will be tempting to reach over and pull I out during a red light but it is not worth the risk. This will help because you wont even see the phone to think that you need to text or check your phone.

            Next, drive the speed limit. You are always in a hurry to get one place to the next and continue you speed. You would think after your first speeding ticket you would slow down, but obviously you have not learned that yet. So watch your speeding from now on, you’ll get to you destination sooner or later.  No need to rush.

            Finally, be careful. Remember what Dad always says, “Be a defensive driver.” Don’t expect other cars to just move out of the way because you think you own the road. Drive with caution and do not let anything distract you. Stay focused on the road and that is it. Don’t turn the music up to load or do anything that could be dangerous while driving.

            All these steps are going to help you from the accident that is going to happen in a couple of days. Please take my advice and not go through the pain it caused to yourself and many others. The lost of your license and the swim meet is not worth getting into an accident because you were texting. Remember the roads are a dangerous place that you need to take caution of and not take lightly. The few steps of not turning your phone off, putting it out of reach, driving the speed limit, and driving carefully will stop the accident from happening. Please make the right choice for us.

Sincerely,

The Wiser, and Present Mitch Alters

           

                        

Process Memo

Mitch Alters

Prof. Rinke

WRT 150

October 11, 2012

Literacy Narrative Process Memo

            Sitting down in class the day we started our literacy timeline, I had no idea where to start. Through out my whole life my mom always stressed how important it was to read and she would have me read to her but I never really enjoyed reading. Which made it rather difficult to start a timeline on books. So the easy and obvious choice was out of the question from the start. I then started thinking back about what I remembered to most as a child. The first thing that came to my mind was of how crazy I was. I always wanted to be in front of the class doing plays and skits. I then realized how much that changed. So, I decided to focus more on the aspect of speeches and self-concious. Once I decided on this topic, everything started to come back and it was very easy for me to write my timeline. The hardest thing was to not write too much. I was surprised how detailed I remembered events in elementary school. After doing the narrative I discovered how much I have changed. I still like to make jokes with my friends and classmates but I would never want to be in plays or talent shows. I loved all that stuff as a kid, its funny how things change. Through the whole paper I did my best to keep with the theme of speeches and it seemed to work very well. I liked that my idea was different than anyone else in our class and brought I different idea to the table. I really enjoyed making the timeline. It really brought back a lot of fun and not so fun memories that I kind of got to relive, when I was writing about them. I think that is why I wrote in so much detail on my timeline. I got so into writing about the events and re-picturing them in my head. The timeline was a great start for the literacy narrative process.

            The writing of the actual literacy narrative was very enjoyable because my timeline was very detailed, which made it easier to write. I didn’t focus on particular time or grade but instead I picked out the most important events in my timeline to make the narrative. I knew that I couldn’t use every single event because I had one for almost very single grade up to my senior and that would make a very long narrative. So, I decided to pick out the ones that would best describe and make my narrative story the best. This was rather and easy decision to choose to stick with the order of grades and not pick one event because even though my events were detailed there was not one that could stand alone in a story. With everything already being in order by grade, I decided to write mine in chronological order. This would do the best job in making an easy story to understand for my readers. It wasn’t hard to write my story like this because it was simply writing a story about my self from when I was little to now. I think if I would have jumped around from grade to grade. It may have been much more difficult for me ot write about. I did not do much prewriting for this paper because I used my timeline as the prewriting stage. It already contained all of my ideas that I was going to use in the paper and it actually was a great prewrite. I always seem to write very sloppy rough drafts and this one was no different. My peer review session really helped me make the necessary changes to make my narrative flow and make much more sense. After the peer review I made many changes. I took out a lot of details and added in some details where it was needed. I also seemed to repeat myself through the whole paper, which my partner brought to my attention. This was another change I made before turning the final paper in. My partner was very helpful, she picked up on all the changes I needed to make and made my paper much better. I always think it helps to have some else read your paper because they catch a lot more the writer sometimes misses. She was very nice and did not give me to much criticism on my paper. But the biggest thing she brought to my attention was the lack of flow and repetition through out the paper. This all in all was very helpful and helped me get a better grade on the narrative. Throughout the narrative it was hard to not think about making the paper transition into the video slideshow. I did my best to ignore the idea of making the slideshow and take everything one-step at a time. The main reason I didn’t focus on the slideshow while writing, was because I knew that it would affect the way I write. I wanted to make a good story so I could use it easily, for the slide show. It seemed to work out great for me and making the video slideshow was an easy transition.

            The most difficult about the process was making the video slideshow because I put a lot detail into my narrative that it was rather difficult in narrowing it down. My peer review picked great sentences to use for my slideshow in my rough draft. But I ended up not using any of them because I made so many changes to my paper after the peer review. She did a great job on helping me narrow down the story and I did keep some of the sentence she highlighted for my final narrative. It was very difficult to narrow our narrative down even more for the 52 character text slides. I think my best strategy was to focus mainly on main points and not go into much detail if it was not necessary. This seemed to work very well for me and made it much easier to narrow the sentences down. The pictures I used in the slideshow were mainly complementary to the slides previously before; they seemed to reinforce the last text slide. They also put the story and words into a picture, which I always liked when reading a story. I did not have much option when it came to choosing pictures for the slideshow. Since, I am from Ohio and live four hours away. There was no possible way for me to get pictures of myself. I had to result to using pictures online, I did my best to find pictures that could go along with the story and give it some more detail. I think if I would have had the chance to get pictures from home, it could have made my slideshow much better. The song I picked did not relate to my slideshow or narrative about me giving speeches. But I picked a song that fit in well with tempo of the slideshow. I really like the song Lisztomania by Phoenix and even though it didn’t relate to my narrative, I think it still fit great to show my personality.  Overall, I really like my Animoto even though it was difficult at times making it. If I did it again I would try to go home to get pictures. The pictures of me would have brought much more life to the actual slideshow and my audience could understand it better. I really enjoyed all parts of this project and I would do it again for any other topic.

            

             

Nissan Leaf Commercial

Mitch Alters

Prof. Rinke

WRT 150

October 10, 2012

Nissan Leaf Commercial

In this commercial many ideologies and beliefs were expressed. The biggest and most noticeable ideology for this commercial is the idea of saving the environment or “going green.” There is much discussion about the affect that cars have on global warming in the world. Since, the Nissan Leaf is a new electric car they are trying to show the advantage of buying it. The basic plot of the commercial, is a polar bear leaving the artic because of all the ice melting (due to global warming) and it travels through the woods, roads, and cities, roaring at all the cars that caused it to leave its habitat. The bear eventually comes to a middle class owner that has the new car and the bear gives him a hug. The idea of the bear having to leave its habitat also brings out another ideology of animal loving. Many people love animals and when we are shown that our own lifestyles hurt them, it seems to touch some people very emotionally.  Another ideology the commercial brings is compassion. This ideology is shown by the hug between the man and bear at the very end. This commercial brought many ideologies out that appeal to many people.

I think the intended audience is the middle class because of the man that owns the Nissan Leaf. The man was dressed up, had a suitcase, and you could tell that he was about leave for work. This allows the middle class to relate to the commercial very easily because they can put themselves in the actors shoes. Another intended audience could be any person that is supportive of the idea of “going green.” This commercial focused mainly on the idea of polar bears being forced to leave their habitat because of the pollution from cars, which the Nissan Leaf doesn’t produce.

My response to the Nissan Leaf Commercial is dominant-hegemonic reading. I agreed with everything the commercial agreed on. And it really would pursue me to buy the car. I can stand by and support the commercial because I want the best for our world and we need to take care of it. I think if I did not relate to the commercial, as much I would not be dominant-hegemonic toward the reading.