M. Marshall 2.28
For the reaction post I chose this post from Tini Time:
I actually imagine that this sort of propaganda would be how my character recognizes the brain-washing going on from the government. This idea that, eventually, this animal-cyborg-robot-army thing would just be another thing the government did to an innocent group of people (now animals). I think this realization could start some sort of an uprising and eventual downfall of the tyrannic government.
I think this has been my favorite week, I think everyone was able to be creative in really different ways. I also enjoyed getting to know people’s characters a little better, I think these assignments allowed us to use our skills in different ways that I really enjoyed.
I enjoy having to go into the mind of my character, I believe that Lady Bird would be a tone of fun by she is probably more aggressive than I am in her own personal beliefs. I think her reactions to the anti-propaganda posts signify her relationship to belief that I was able to cultivate in the assignments I created last week. When creating her reactions.
For the reporting on the scene assignment, I had a lot of fun pretending to be a reporter, I used my experience writing for the weekly ringer to be able to write for the front page as well as decipher what information I wanted to include. I think I could have included a little more if I watched all the Terminator movies more than once. But I still think the front page came out really great.
For the anti-propaganda assignment, I really struggled with what I should create. I think because there are so many different ways to convey a message that I kind of overwhelmed myself. So to tackle this, I started to think about movies that have wider elements of social conversations. A bugs life and the bee movie where movies that came to be almost immediately because they both center worker “insects” that are looked past. Last week within one of my assignments I made a propaganda video about AI taking over so I wanted to carry over the sentiment and that’s how I landed on pigeons. I often think it is upsetting that pigeons are really useless, because we forced them to work and then kind of left them out to dry. I remember watching a video of a pigeon failing to build a nest and to was really eye opening to see the damage that was able to happen that was done though technological advances that benefitted us but destroyed them. That was my thought process while creating my Canva anti-propaganda post.
My favorite daily create this week was the gif one as I love an excess to bring up my favorite movie however, I am also enjoying doing more poetry, it’s therapeutic.
I actually enjoy commenting, I used to think that my comments had to be in detail however, I’ve realized that sometimes ‘this is really funny and I think you did this really well’ is enough. I think when people do good work they should be praised for it so I’m glad that we comment and also vote. My own personal goal for the rest of the semester will be to publish my assignments earlier, sometimes I get nervous and then forget to actually publish them which is a hurdle I have to get over. I’ll get over it eventually. Additionally, my other issue is my grade because, I can’t see it.
I also got new glasses so now my eyes won’t burn when I’m working on projects
After a long day DK comes home and sees a news paper on his doorstep, he instantly becomes curious and picks it up to read and on the front page it is a police station shootout. He instantly question who would open fire on a police station and he does further research into trying to figure out why and if there are any patterns that could lead to another shooting
Week 7s assignments i found entertaining especially the Terminator shootout, I decided to create a tweet regarding the shootout as if it was a actually LAPD statement. I used canva to create both the tweet and the propaganda.
The three daily creates were all very simple and easy to complete
I think these posts specifically speak to Lady Birds dissatisfaction with the current state of the world. She is anti-government and understands that society is inevitable an infinite cycle that feeds on itself and causes suffering.
I think specifically she would like the idea that this highlights the empty promises of politicians that are often not seen during their campaigning. Politicians consistently make promises that they are not able to keep and even when it is in your face directly people still refuse to understand that politicians don’t often fulfill things they say especially when it comes towards helping working class people. Lady Bird would think that people understand this is not only a need by a must if ever social change was on the horizon.
My disabilities and off and on month long illness caught up with me to the point that the health center and ODR sent me home to recuperate and be closer to my doctors, so I have not had a very productive week unfortunately. However, I was able to at the very least get my propaganda assignment done and I feel quite good about it. I’m really hoping that being home and on spring break will help me finally recover and get better so that I can finally start getting back in the swing of things.
Growing up in a very political family and working in a very political counterculture scene, propaganda is something I am very familiar with. However, I’ve never made it before. I decided to use my own roots that overlap with my character’s to use this opportunity to spread a message that seems to have been lost over the years that has been making waves in recent times especially with the current administration. Goth is political. It always has been, and it always will be. It stemmed from the punk culture of the 70s and 80s, the music has always been steeped in allegory, and it’s more important now than ever to understand that and use those beliefs to fight for the same rights and freedoms that we’ve been fighting for the whole time; it’s life or death.
I hopped onto Canva, grabbed some commonly associated political symbols with the goth scene, and got to designing. It’s a fairly simple design as I am still very sick, but I overlapped and overlayed some various paper textures to give it that old school punk propaganda feel, I chose a font reminiscent of counterculture zines, and made sure to outline it to contrast the font color with the background color. I purposely chose to make the outline of the word “political” blue because punk/goth ideals lean very left and blue is the color most commonly associated with that.
While simple, I feel like propaganda should be simple. Colors, fonts, and symbols to catch the eye, but it should be able to be digested in a quick glance without a need to think much about it. The message should be blunt and clear. And this is one that will always be important.
This week I used Canva a lot to create media to represent how I would format a movie scene into a news article, and to create my own propaganda that connects to Eric Little. Although these were 2 separate assignments, I thought it would be a cool idea to combine them into one, having both the new article and propaganda on the front page of this website’s newspaper, The Digital Canvas Times. For the movie scene, I used the nightclub scene from The Terminator, and used a sense of ambiguity behind the event to frame the shooting as a real event that was trying to be published as soon as possible even without having all of the information. Furthermore, the propaganda I put together had a prominent theme of structure that resonates well with Eric Little and his backstory as someone that’s only done what he is told. I also wanted to add different teasers such as identifying the conspiracy Eric is caught up in being an underground anarchy against the societal elites known as The Arrow, and adding a wanted poster of him in the bottom of the newspaper cover.
I also did the 3 daily creates this week which I will show below, as has become tradition.
I really enjoyed this assignment, I think it’s interesting to be in the position to create a newspaper and be In charge of where things go. Before deciding on the story, I had to choose between the ways in which I would be covering the story. It was not difficult as I love Canva however, I did not know the full ins and outs of the story so I did s little bit of extra work so I would be able to create a coherent story. I then opened a google doc and started to type versions of the story. After that I put the works into Canva and started to rearrange them while adding photos. There were a couple of times where photos I would download would change the entire look of the newspaper but I was able to shift things around and make the paper look the way I wanted.
I was excited for this assignment as propaganda can be fun to create. I think it is able to highlight the effects of society and various social movements are able to progress. When thinking about the specific topic I wanted to tackle, I wanted to do something that was obvious. I think that posters do not have to have extremely layered meaning to be effective. I began to think about my character and what she would be thinking as this is similar to a video topic I did for my last assignment. This is how I ended up with my idea of doing an anti-propaganda poster about the effects of technological advances used against humanity.
I then, started to think about ways I wanted to execute this plan. I first started by choosing the pigeon, I went back and forth between the animals I wanted to use. I first thought about Barry from the bee movie, because there is a quote he uses “dedicating our lives to the white man” which I thought was funny however, it wasn’t really what I wanted. I then started to think about a bugs life and how the ants wanted to create an uprising. This then lead me to thinking about pigeons. This is because humans domesticated pigeons for our own good and then moved on leaving them to suffer. This is how I feel about the rising use of AI and the possible effects of using robots as opposed to humans. This is because large corporations will choose to use a robot as opposed to using people because it is the easier option. Technology evolved and that’s why pigeons got left behind.