As time approached for the start of the Genre Project, I became nervous once again. I don’t know if it was me looking ahead at the upcoming assignments or me knowing it was a graded project. Once my nervousness calmed down a bit, I was able to think to myself how I had just finished the previous Literacy Project which was similar to this one. This project seemed like it was going to be a interesting one, because it involved watching a movie. I thought, how could a project that involved watching a movie be boring, so I became excited for this project. Thinking about these two things helped me get prepared to begin the composing process for my Genre Project.
Kick-Off
As I began my composing process for the Genre Project, I thought to myself on how I was not very sure what a movie review even looked like or consisted of. My concern was cleared up after I completed the Graphic Journal 6, that we were assigned in class. The Graphic Journal 6 assignment allowed for me to view three different movie review websites. The websites viewed consisted of: Rotten Tomatoes, IMDb and Roger Ebert. Even though all three sites were movie review sites, they didn’t completely look the exact same. Although, the three sites combined taught me what a movie review could looked like and what reviews consisted of. From completing this Graphic Journal 6, I learned that a movie review should speak on a specific movie by giving movie posters, information on the movie and a summary of the movie. This assignment was the the starting place to my composing process. After completing this I was ready to move to the next step of composing my Genre Project.
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What to chose?
Once I knew what a movie review was I was ready to choose my desired movie. As I began my process of finding a college movie, I searched on google college movies. Many options popped up on my computer screen, but only two of the many movies stood out to me. The two movies that stood out to me were; Legally Blonde and We Are Marshall. Both of these movies I have seen in the past, but I enjoyed them so much I thought I would want to see one of them again. As I was concluding my decision on a movie, I heard a fellow classmate say that they were going to do Legally Blonde, so I eliminated that movie out of the running. Even though I was stuck between the two movies, I was still very happy with choosing We Are Marshall. Now that I had picked my movie, I was ready to keep progressing on my road of composing.
Review of a Review
Moving forward with my composing process of the Genre Project, I had to read someone else’s review on my chosen movie, We Are Marshall. During this next assignment I hit a roadblock along the way of completion. This roadblock struck at the beginning of this assignment, when I was supposed to use the Library Guide, on Canvas, to find a movie review. The problem was that when I went searching for We Are Marshall, a variety of options popped up to click on but once I clicked on them our library did not have the review. I searched for twenty minutes at most and continued to have the same outcome. Then finally I clicked on an option and there one was. I finally found the movie review I was going to review!
When I first saw the review I thought to myself, on how short it was compared to the previous movie reviews I viewed for Graphic Journal 6. Once I got over how short the review was I had to use my critical reading skills to comprehend what the reviewer was trying to persuade. After I finished reading the movie review I had to use my rhetorical knowledge skills to pull out information from this brief review. I was pulling information out of the review, so that I could critically reflect on how I felt this review was done. I enjoyed this review and I also learned that to persuade an audience you can use personal stories like this reviewer did. The only thing that I was unsure of when creating my review if the movie review was the genre conventions, I was not sure what they technically were. The next class section, my confusion was cleared up and now I understand what movie review genre conventions are. This aspect to the Genre Project got me more awareness of what my review should consist of and what I should included that this review didn’t. |
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Popcorn Time!
The moment I had been waiting for had finally arrived, I got to watch We Are Marshall. I was so ready to watch this movie because I truly like this movie. Once I began the movie, I thought I should probably take notes on things I think are important in the movie. As the movie played I had to pause it a couple times, just so I could get the actual quote and line from the movie. I took notes on the plot of the movie and on the actual historical information giving on the team and specific players. We Are Marshall, took my emotions on a roller-coaster throughout the entire movie. I was wanting to cry at times, yell at times and jump up and down at times. This just proves how touching this movie truly is to me and how amazing the movie is overall. Once I was able to control my emotions, once again, I was ready to keep with my composing process.
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Individual Movie Review
"Although this movie is touching on an emotional subject, I still feel McG and his film crew did an amazing job at creating We Are Marshall, all the way down to the last lighting check."
Now that I had watched We Are Marshall, it was time to processed onto another major aspect to my composing process. That major aspect would be composing my own movie review on We Are Marshall. To begin my effort of composing this review, I had to critically reflect on what I watched in the movie and how I feel about people viewing or not viewing the movie. I did this by first looking at the movie notes I took while viewing We Are Marshall. I narrowed down the notes I wanted to included in my review by highlighting them. I also jotted down some important facts on the movie, such as: director, cast, release date, motion rating and genre. Everything that I jotted down I turned it into my review. I started off giving the facts then led into how I felt about the movie and why people should watch it and then finished up my review speaking on how it related to college issues. I feel I created a well standing movie review, for being my first one. The whole time I was worried I would over summarize the movie and give away too much information, that I would spoil it. This part of my composing process really got me critically reflecting on if I did a well enough review that would well represent We Are Marshall, since the movie was outstanding. I don’t want to downgrade a movie through a review when it does not deserve it. This part of my Genre Project really got me thinking about, what it really takes to compose an outstanding review that will persuade the audience to watch or not to watch a movie. I learned from doing my own movie review, that movie reviews can turn someone toward or away from a specific movie. Now that I had created my own review, I was ready to collaborate with others.
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Genre Project Group
The collaboration process was the next step to completing my composing process. I was able to remain with a girl that was in my Literacy Project and we moved to a new group. I was ecstatic to meet new class members that I hadn’t really spoken to much. We got together for the first time and spoke on what movies we chose to do our individual review on. Everyone that was in this new group was very nice and polite. I did not feel any concern I would have conflict with this new group. In the class sections we had together, we never got to make up a real group name so we stuck as the "group four" group. Once we all met one another we started discussing our individual reviews and how one another was alike or different. Our whole group all chose opposite genres and styles of movies. We had a little challenge coming up with what we wanted to our webpage to look like.
Webpage 1.0 |
Webpage 2.0 |
Despite our challenge of unrelated reviews within the group, we compromised and created a webpage based on a variety of movies. Our webpage was like a site for college students to go onto, to find good recommendations for late night movies. Based on our webpage's purpose, it gave us the idea to title our site, Late Night Movies. As in my previous Literacy Project group, none of my group members nor I knew exactly how to create the webpage so we all worked together in class to create a template of one.This was the start to our own individual composing process of the webpage. Once we had a backbone for our site we all added our own movie reviews to their specific genre tab. Everyone included pictures and a trailer to the specific movie on their page. Everyone took part on the homepage. We were all willing to help each other out on the webpage if someone asked. When the rest of the class looked at our webpage during discussion, we got the feedback of add colored backgrounds to every page, add a cite link for Robert Ebert reviews and to add more to our introduction on the homepage of how our site deals with college education. I was satisfied with how our webpage 1.0 turned out. I was ready to complete our group composing process and submit our webpage 2.0.
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Self Reflection
The Genre Project was a little overwhelming to me at first glance, but I overcame my interior thoughts and completed it. I completed my entire composing process within only three weeks. Throughout the three weeks, I incorporated some of our learning outcomes to my work. I used critically reading outcome, when I read the three different review sites, I read the Library Guide review and when I read my teammates individual reviews. The other outcomes I incorporated were the rhetorical knowledge outcome when I reviewed someone else’s movie review along with the critical reflection outcome when I thought on how I felt the reviewer did on his review. Also, I used the critical reflection outcome when analyzing how the movie, We Are Marshall was done. I am still not sure on what knowledge of conventions outcome looks like, so I am not sure if I incorporated it in my Genre Project or not. Despite the other learning outcomes, I used the composing process outcome throughout the majority of my Genre Project. This project taught me that there are a variety of genres in movies and I learned a small part of how reviewers have to think and view movies. This project was an interesting one, I am glad I got the chance to take part in it.