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UNC-Lenovo 2018-2019 Project

Poetry Analysis Remix Video

Use a video editor to create an interpretation and analysis of a poem. This assignment will differ from a typical poetry analysis activity in that the final results of your work will be delivered not as an academic essay but as a remixed video version of the poem you are studying. This project will involve you in typical activities associated with studying a poem, but invite you to deploy multimedia composing skills to produce the final product.

Genre Purpose Audience Role Rhetorical Situation
Poetry Analysis Video You are asked to translate a poem in a discernible form for everyone to understand and enjoy. General Public Public Humanities Advocate A poet’s estate has asked you to try to make their poet’s work more accessible and interesting to a larger public. Your task is to take one poem and remediate it into a video for others to better understand the poem’s content.

Your first task will be to identify a poem to be used for the project. You may want to gravitate toward shorter poems to facilitate the creation of a video of a few minutes length. You can also potentially choose to work with an excerpt of a longer poem. As you work, you will need to draw upon reading skills and experience working with poetry. That is, you should work with your classmates, instructor, and course materials to develop your understanding of the ways that aspects of poetry can drive interpretations–structure, rhyme, rhythm, diction, motifs, imagery, voice, themes, etc. Bring all of your poetry reading expertise to bear as you work through the following tasks:

Feeder 1: Identify, Summarize, and Perform a Poem

Using either the poems you have been assigned in class or your own investigations, identify a poem that you will work on for this assignment. Conduct some research to see what others have said about the poem. Read the poem yourself several times. Next, complete these two tasks:

  1. Compose a two paragraph summary of the poem

In your summary, use the first paragraph to talk about the techniques that are used in the poem. Does it do interesting things with with structure? What can be said about the speaker of the poem? What aspect of the language stand out? What can be said about rhyme, rhythm or other sonic aspects of the piece? What stands out regarding the use of imagery? Develop a paragraph discussing the features that stand out and tracing “how the poem works.”

In the second paragraph, discuss “what the poem means.” You do not need to find the final answer or the only possible reading of what the poem means. Instead, let your own experience with the poem help you develop statements about the messages in the poem. Think about any themes or motifs that stand out. Consider how technical aspects of the poem discussed above translate into messages. Consider what others have said about the piece. Think through these and related concerns, and then write up your thoughts on the messages or key meanings to be found in the poem.

Post your two paragraphs to be shared with the class.

  1. Perform a reading of the poem.

Having read the poem several times, now develop a vocal reading of the piece. You can follow traditional reading techniques–e.g., using line breaks to create a flow or thinking about the rhythm created by the language. Practice several times on your own, and then come to class prepared to perform your poem outloud.

Feeder 2: Identify Motifs and Materials for Your Remix

Before beginning, make sure that you have identified a poem for the major project and completed Feeder 1. For identifying materials, follow these steps:

Pick two or three key motifs from the poem. For each motif, think about imagery that might be used to express your take on the poem. Be careful not to pick imagery that has too literal a relationship to the poem. For instance, the Emily Dickinson poem that begins, “My life had stood a loaded gun,” might be better reinterpreted with imagery that does not include firearms. If you think about themes like anticipation, unfulfilled potential, social constraints, etc. you can likely identify some sub-texts. From these, you can pick imagery that may create more unexpected realizations and interesting dynamics in your video poem.

Do similar brainstorming about audio that might be included in the final piece. You can complete the feeder assignment for collecting materials by keeping a continuum between literal and figurative response in mind and looking for materials that allow you to say something about the poem while also recreating it in an unexpected and compelling way. As you work, you can gather all kinds of visual and motion-based materials from the Internet. To complete the Feeder Assignment, create a document file, and the begin developing a list of at least three visual/video items and at least one sonic item to be used in the video poem. For each item, include the following information: author (if known), title, URL, and date accessed. Also, for each item, write one or more sentences discussing how the item relates to your understanding of the poem. Post your document to complete the feeder assignment. (Note that you can continue to find additional materials and let the items in the video poem evolve as you work.)

Final Project: A Video Poem

Using your video editor, create a remix of the poem that expresses your understanding of the piece. As you create your poem, use the screen as a canvas to create a multimedia composition. The motion of the words, the way they are delivered with pacing, their look and feel–all of these combine to bring the text of the poem to life. In addition, you will want to integrate music and videos or still images. In short, this assignment allows you to work with three core multimedia channels for communication–text (words delivered in segments, perhaps with motion and other imagistic elements), sound, and visuals. Seek to deploy aspects of your video editor that allow you to create a dynamic mix of words, sounds, and images for your poem, using animations, opacity, movement, sound, etc. to develop a piece of electronic art. Pay particular attention to the concerns of sound and of the viewer’s attention.

To bring some of these materials into the video, you may need to use screen capturing or other methods of grabbing online materials. You should follow guidelines for making fair use of materials and make decisions that use items with the aim of developing a transformative remake of the poem. As you work, create a document where you keep track of the sources you are integrating into the video. (You can adapt your document from Feeder 2.) You can either integrate the sources into a closing scroll that is added to the end of the video or add them as a comment of uploaded document when the video is posted.

To complete the project, compose your video poem, and then post it online either to a class web site or video sharing service. Include your sources either in the video itself or with the posting.