Essay 3 Reflexive

Taedo Choi
Dec. 3rd, 2008
Engl 1101 B1
M. Perez Tejada
Translating the text to video
To persist with the classical, timeless typed essay or to break away from past, restrictive typed essay is the ultimate college dilemma for new students. If the latter is the choice made, then creating a video essay on a blog is a path to achieving independence from the typed essays. Comparing to typed essay, video essay features different expression in which the visual and the auditory factors generate distinct and unique presentation of idea. Furthermore, video blogs, available for showcasing personal works, provide instant and abundant supply of audiences online. However the production of the video demands more time and cost than the typed essay.
Assume that “a picture speaks thousand words”, then a video which consist multiple motion pictures and audio speaks million words. Because it has the visual and audio components, video conveys the argument more efficiently than typed words. After the Presidential election of 2008 elected Barack Obama, the President-Elect uploaded a “fire-side” video which tries to appeal to common people. Located on the www.change.gov, the first video features President-Elect sitting in front of the camera explaining his plans to America. The visual appearance builds on the credibility of the message and generates emotion, which a words on paper have difficulty of accomplishing. Furthermore, personal voice from the President-Elect communicates the charismatic character and confidence. Thus, one advantage of video essay is the unique and extensive delivery of any message.
In addition to the delivery, the video essay has a pool of instant audiences that the paper writing lacks. Being easy to use, video blogs on the Internet increased in popularity over the last couple years. Such sites as Youtube provide simple and free services to upload videos for all Internet users to view. With the instant access established, hundreds of millions of people online become potential audiences. For Obama’s “fire-side” video, a blog was set up on www.change.gov website which used Youtube in publishing to the public. Thus, the blogs distribute the video essay worldwide with magnitude and speed that exceeds the paper essay’s distribution.
Although video essay provides advantages that fill the holes of typed essay, slight flaws still exist. The production process requires significantly more resources and time than writing or typing words. The equipments include cameras, camcorders, connection cables and editing software. Furthermore, success of outdoor filming varies with the weather conditions. The inconsistency and costly production also tends to be time consuming. Creating a video requires planning, filming and then editing which are essential to the production. In addition to video essays, blogs also have minor shortcoming. Although millions of blogs are viewed each day, most of the blogs do not receive any attention. The video essay and blogs have shown several limitations in addition to the advantages.
Personally, the video essay is favored over word essay because the visual and audio factors emphasize the argument more efficiently than the words. Also, visual and audio aspects generate enhanced credibility and emotion. Furthermore, the online blogs provide wider range of audience than paper distributions. However, the slight limitations in production and blogs create slight doubt towards choosing video essay over word essay. Nonetheless, the benefits of the video essay greatly outweigh the flaws to affect my choice of using video essays and blogs.

Essay 3

Fanfiction for Harry Potter series have been exponentially growing with even more fans joins the writing groups. I believe that the fanfiction, mostly consisting of teens, extends their writing skills through self interested topic, Harry Potter. The fanfiction writings include short story of couple hundred words to even thousands of words. Furthermore, the fanfiction have allowed for healthy social interaction for the kids. For example, Heather, mentioned in the book to start off fanfiction, was inspired by Harry Potter book to create a fanfiction organization at a young age. The fans who write their own versions of Harry Potter, in my opinion, are actual writers who use their creativity to express themselves regardless of age. In addition, the fanfiction have improved much of the children’s writing which were deprived of by the visually-focused world with televisions. No matter with the contents, Harry Potter fanfiction provides positive experience to the writers.