The differences in composing the multimodal project versus the actual paper were astronomical. At first I thought that it would be easy to make the video, especially since I had already written an argument paper on the exact same subject. I immediately regretted that thought. I have felt out of place many times this semester, but during this particular unit I felt like a fish out of water, especially while recording the sound track. I am not the kind of person that enjoys talking, so imagine my reaction when Mrs. Forgette told us that we had to record at least three straight minutes of our voices. I absolutely hated recording the audio track. The Sunday before the first audio draft was due, I sat in my room for over an hour talking to myself like a complete idiot. The worst part wasn’t the actual recording, but the part after where you had to listen to it over and over until you wanted to throw your laptop against the wall in disgust. The images were a breeze for me compared to the audio. In less than two hours, I had composed nearly all of the visual elements and had fun brainstorming ideas of what could come next. After that, I felt as if my calling were to work for Disney. My favorite part of the visual track is from the screenshot above. I love how it incorporates the biggest statistics of my paper, while truly connecting with the audience. The little guy on the far left is portraying the college students getting assaulted on campus, but he is actually supposed to be typing.

To say that I am inexperienced with visual presentations would be an understatement. Before this semester, I never made a PowerPoint, or a Prezi, or anything to the nature of PowToon. When I started the project, I knew that I had to jump right into the deep end and find the ins and outs of PowToon. The hardest part of the design process was the audio track. I didn’t want my the audio to be stop and go; I wanted it to flow! I decided to record the audio all at once, which led an excessive amount of time to be spent on timing the slides. My favorite design choice was actually something that I hated at the beginning – the template. Of course, I wanted one of the premium templates because they were so appealing to the eye, but I started off choosing the black and white template from above. I didn’t think that I would continue to use this template throughout the paper, but merely used it as a starting point. Over the course of the design process, I started to like how it looked and how it represented the paper. There weren’t any colors, other than the red that I used on certain fonts, which allowed me to portray the “black & white” seriousness of underage drinking. This is a very serious subject and I don’t think that bright happy colors would have been a great fit.

I wrote three drafts of my script that were honestly the worst things that I have ever written in my entire life. I thought that since it was the same subject that I could just cut and paste sentences from my original paper. If my own draft made me want to fall asleep, there’s no telling what it would have done to my audience. If I had to choose between composing an actual paper with 1,500 words or a PowToon video of about 3 minutes, I would choose the paper. I like to list facts and elements that make an academic paper. I like to go by the basic rules of a paper that we all learned in elementary school because of its familiarity. Pontoon may be fun, but it’s new. I guess that I didn’t enjoy it because I felt so behind throughout the entire assignment. I will never again speak badly of writing a paper, because I have seen what some of the alternates are. When you look at which of the modes were most effective at addressing the issue, I think that PowToon wins. Emotion is a very powerful tool that many filmmakers utilize to portray their messages. When you see a video, even of a crappy little cartoon like mine, of a deaths and injuries caused by alcohol, you start to imagine the situations in real life. Being able to see a visual representation allowed a connection from the message to the audience that isn’t really viable with an academic essay. I liked the professional, academic audience. I didn’t enjoy having to make my video fun and appealing to younger people, especially with a topic like mine. With the professional audience, the more facts and sources that you incorporate, the more effective your paper is whereas the easily bored audience needs less credibility and more “Wow Factor”.