What type of evidence does the portfolio provide? To what effects?

The portfolio provides several forms of evidence such as: a power point presentation, his other works not published on the portfolio, and links within the portfolio for prompts. These assist us in discovering the background to the portfolio since we were not present in the class.

My new sound-script for the film 300 looks into several things, one of which is the idea of speaking for others. The film speaks for the historical tale of the Battle of Thermopylae. The movie depicts the (all-white) Spartans as men that are practically gods. The Spartans in the film contain just about every generic manly man stereotype one could think of. The Persians on the other hand, are depicted to have feminine features. I am writing my sound-script towards a general audience as well as towards movie producers and directors. For my first major paper I will be researching the idea of East vs. West that has been developed throughout our society and which is present in the film 300.

Overall, I have a lot of nervousness and frustration towards this paper because I can’t completely compile my ideas into one concrete plan.

Artifacts: I will take concepts from Alcoff’s article about speaking for others.  Essentially the Spartans and the Persians during the Battle of Thermopylae are being spoken for by the director of the film.

5.) To supply a person with something:

“Next to money and guns, the third largest North American export is the U.S. idealist, who turns up in every theater of the world: the teacher, the volunteer, the missionary, the community organizer, the economic developer, and the vacationing ‘do-gooders.'”(page 316, beginning of 6th paragraph, Illich)  This quote is explaining Illich’s argument that he is against any and all North American “do-gooders” in Latin America.

“From the beginning, film aficionados have felt the need to defend cinema as an art and to do so by setting it apart from other media, especially theater and literature. What makes film distinct and special, these theorists argue, is its capacity to convey information nonverbally—through mise-en-scène, editing, camera movement, POV, facial expression or pantomime.” This quote explains how some people like to say that cinema should not need a narrator in the background to explain everything. The film should be able to affect the audience nonverbally. Another point against voice-overs is explained in this quote, ” A fallback charge against voice-over narration is that using it is insulting to the audience. Voice-over narration is suspect because it is a means of “telling” rather than “showing.” “Telling” is judged as a mark of laziness and/or condescension.” This explains how voice-over narration can be perceived as insulting the audience because they can’t figure out the movie with out it being told to them.

I believe Kozloff is defending voice-over narration because she states positive comments towards voice-over narration, such as, “Voice-over narration is no more or less inherently valuable or cinematic then any other element of film. And when this device is well-executed, it opens up inimitable avenues for filmmakers.”This quote directly proves how Kozloff feels about voice-overs.

I am fairly familiar with voice-overs. I have seen several films with voice-over narrations. Kozloff’s writing intersects with my familiarity because I have never put any thought into the voice-overs and Kozloff has completely analyzed them in depth. It makes me think about how much really goes into a film.

One film that I enjoyed was, Stranger Than Fiction (2006). I feel that the voice-overs within the film were essential to the film because the entire movie was based off the narrations. In this sense, the argument about voice-overs being condescending towards an audience does not apply because the movie is completely based off of voice-overs.

Acoustic Cyberspace
by Erik Davis 

“Acoustic space is the space we hear rather than the space we see, and he argued that electronic media were submerging us in this acoustic environment, with its own language of affect and subjectivity.” I am having a difficult time grasping the concept of this article.  Imagining an acoustic environment with its own language of affect and subjectivity is hard for me to accomplish.  Envisioning a crowded street corner through merely audio alone could be space that we hear instead of see.

 “‘Atmosphere’ might be a good way to describe this aspect: sound produces atmosphere, almost in the way that incense—which registers with yet another sense—can do. Sound and smell carry vectors of mood and affect which change the qualitative organization of space, unfolding a different logic with a space’s range of potentials. Ambient music, or an ambient soundscape, can change the quality of a space in subtle or dramatic ways.”  I strongly agree with this statement from Erik Davis’ article.  I always find myself thinking back on some fond memory after catching a wiff of some mysterious drifting scent.  Can you imagine screaming from a scary movie when there is Celine Dion playing in the background.  I always find myself saying, “wouldn’t this be funny if _____ (random song) was playing instead of generic creepy music.”

 After reading Megan Nordstrom’s portfolio, I am looking forward to our quarter of english 121.  The projects that she wrote about seemed very interesting.   I don’t quite understand whether or not i’m supposed to be commenting on the papers she wrote or just how her portfolio looks.  Her writing is much easier to interpret than Davis’.  Overall, I think she did a fantastic job!

I took part in many different service activities through out high school, however, I can’t seem to recall any of them except when I volunteered at a local elementary school in Olympia.  I volunteered myself for the annual Centennial Elementary School Fair.  I enjoyed giving my time because it was a simple fund raiser for the school and they needed volunteers to run all the different stations for the children.  I ended up being the security guard and my duties were to walk around helping anything that needed help.  That service experience might help me in this class because I worked amongst elementary school children.  I considered it a very positive experience and I ended up doing it three years in a row.