Saturday, January 23, 2016

Investigating Genres

In a world of People Magazine, YouTube, and The New York Times, it is easy to see that media is a prominent piece in our society. Media comes in all forms and I  can easily say that I have a slight addiction to it. I watch Ellen almost every day and can't seem to skip through channel 236 (E! News) when watching TV.

For this post, I will explore the new media genre called a Video Essay. The Video Essays sparked my interest because I enjoy the combination of visual and auditory pieces of media. 

1. A Video Essay's purpose is to inform about a specific topic, usually it is one's own thoughts, but it often holds many facts as well. It's purpose is to also provide an insight to different topics, to analyze a problem in society, or to describe really anything. It has a variety of purposes because it is such a creative piece of media.

2. Most Video Essay's are found on the internet through sites such as YouTube or online magazines. There are often Video Essay's linked through social media outlets such as twitter or Facebook as well.   One of my favorite Video Essay's, Inside Out: Emotional Theory Comes Alive, was found on YouTube, which I believe is probably the most popular way to share a Video Essay.

3. This genre's audience is hard to pinpoint because there are so many outlets to which it can be seen, but if a specific audience had to be chosen, I would say the younger generation. The younger generation (me) also known as the millennials, who grew up on Phil of the Future and Rugrats, seem to use technology a lot more, which is the main outlet by which a Video Essay is found. Many young adults and children of today watch YouTube specifically which, as I said before, was probably the most popular outlet for a Video Essay.

"YouTube Logo 2013" 12-19-2013 via Wikimedia Commons. Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported.


4. This genre uses audio as well as visuals to portray what is needed. It is usually very stimulating as far as very colors and the way the person is speaking. The person speaking is usually very passionate and is often seen talking in the essay as if they were speaking directly to you. Another unique characteristic is the use of animations of the images used and the overall laid back almost informal nature of the essay.

5. A definition of a Video Essay would be a piece of media that creates audio and visual stimulus to inform, analyze, or describe a specific topic. 

Video Essay's are a very interesting piece of media and one that I would highly suggest. It is only a small portion of the vast amount of media in our lives and next time you are channel surfing, don't forget to stop on channel 236!

Reflection:

From both blogs I learned a lot about genres that I am more unfamiliar with, so it was overall very helpful. After reading Zach's Blog and Eren's Blog posts, I saw how they expertly used vocabulary that amped up the blog post which I will use in my future blog posts. I enjoyed reading both their posts and I genuinely enjoyed the way they wrote and formatted the blog posts. I also feel much more informed about the projects in general so I am more excited about this course.






2 comments:

  1. I enjoyed the personal introduction and touches to your post here. I find your writing to be concise but relatable. The only thing I would suggest is to withhold some of your opinion in this piece, maybe being more objective. But even then, I don't really think it's necessary; after all, this is a blog post.

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  2. I also wrote a post on Video Essays. After reading yours, I feel like mine is way too long, and probably a little boring. You managed to include your voice in this post while informing your audience on what they need to know. And all without overdoing it. You have great balance in your writing!

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