Peer Evaluation - Documentary

Peer/Self Evaluation

Name: Emily Newbold
Name of Production Team: Habib
Role in Production Team: Storyboard Artist
Roles of the other production team members:


Answer the following questions in order to assess yourself and the effectiveness of your group and members and determine the problem-solving strategies that worked within your group dynamic.

1. How do you feel about the title you were given and how well you did your job in this project? Give specific examples of your experience.
In this project I was given the job of the storyboard artist. I think I did a really good job of putting the story board together but what was different this time was that I didn’t start it until after the video was basically done being filmed. Although doing the story board before was very helpful the past few projects, I felt doing it after the documentary was easier because we were constantly making changes according to peoples responses and we had no way to predict what people were going to say – so I felt doing the storyboard after in this case was actually better.


2. How did you contribute to this project? Give at least 2 specific examples.

In the beginning, as a team we brainstormed all together and came up with ideas. I helped out with the filming, asking questions, and was used in some transitions we made throughout the video. I also helped with the thesis and came up with the conclusion, and as a team we all filmed ourselves doing our conclusion. I was also the storyboard artist, and drew pictures for every single scene we had throughout the documentary- with not only drawing the scenes but also in the explanation of the video and audio techniques we used.

3. How do you feel about the contributions from other members of your group and the division of labour (work) for the project? Be specific to each team member.

I feel everyone in the group contributed fairly well and equally in this project. All our partners were interested in the topic, and also very interested in filmed and getting the best answers possible. All the partners in the group also worked really hard in putting together everything. Nathalie however was mostly in charge of putting our ideas to work in the actual video and I think she did a really good job doing so. Stephanie was also there for all filmed and helping come up with ideas, however her job was a lot of the paper work such as our thesis and reasons for the project and she did a really good job explaining the reasons for it. Lindsay had a ton of good ideas, and always made sure her opinions were heard and got across to the group. She made me realize some problems that I may have never noticed, and she helped to keep the group on track always. Katrina was there throughout all the filming and she did a really good job on telling the team what we needed and also did a good job of keeping the group logs of monitoring our progress.

4. When it comes to dealing with differences of opinion within your group:
 I felt the problems started to show up when we had all the interviews and all the material, but we hadn’t decided how to put it all together. Everyone had different opinions on the introduction and how we should film it, along with the conclusion. However after everyone in the group discussed their ideas, we put our minds together and agreed on something we felt would be fit for our documentary.

5. In dealing with group members who were not fulfilling their responsibilities:
I felt all the group members fulfilled their responsibilities, and at points there were some group members that had to remind others however, as soon as they were reminded everyone was right back on task.

Ratings:

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to remain on task as:

Good

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to be open, respectful, and communicative as:

 Excellent

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to use the strengths of all of our members as:

Excellent

How successful is your project? Give specific examples for your reasons.

Excellent


I felt we were really successful remaining on task because our team members enjoyed the topic so much. We were done filming before most of the groups and that helped us have more time to edit and think about how to put all these interviews together to make it successful. I felt this put us ahead of the other groups and helped us as a team to also work out our differences and difference of opinions.

Issues in the Media - Self Evaluation

Name: Emily Newbold
Partner(if applicable): Katrina Litsos
Issue: Villains in the Media
What I was trying to get across to the class about my issue? We decided to show the class that through the ages of society and the changes through how we live our lifes - it's portrayed through villains in the media. For example, in the the past when racism was still okay - it was shown in different villains. Old Disney movies would have dark, cackling villains that possibly represented any racism against people of different colour. We wnted to represent that the villains in movies change in relevance to the time period of what's going on in the world. In today's society, we fully support multiculturism and people around the world are immigrating to different places and these days everyone is free to go as they wish usually. Movies started to show this, having villains of different races such as Indian and Asian races.
Production Elements Organization -research, -presentation, -creative process We first started off our research on the internet to make ourselves aware of the different villains in different types of movies. We then decided to group each of the villains in specific types and label their general characterisitcs and look for each type of villain which makes connections between the different villains. We then researched world issues that were going on starting from one of the first and well known movies - The Wizard of Oz. From there we began to connect these villains with issues around the world that were going on such as racism or the Holocaust. We portrayed this through our timeline, pictures on the board, and our slideshow.
Participation. Comments about co-operation, diligence, support. To what degree partners contributed to the overall work and success of the project?(if applicable) I beleive that Katrina and I did really well in being able to balance and co-operate with eachother. Both of us met up everytime to work on the project and we discussed ideas together and took notes in the beginning of the project - and right from the get go we had ideas. After finding out we were sort of researching the wrong topics - we worked together very well in order to transition and find what we were supposed to be focusing on. We worked together and researched movies and we also did a really good job of balancing the workloads. We made sure to have all our notes and each of us had our parts on the slide show to work on - but since we were together we also shared eachothers input so we got the best out of our work. In making our Disney Movie we also worked together in order to get different clips and incorporate them in the slide show to make our presentation as successful as possible. I found it really easy to discuss ideas, and also easy to talk to Katrina if I felt different ideas didn't work.
What aspects were most successful? Least? What I would do differently? I think the aspects that were most successful was our teamwork, we never were alone in doing the project and each and everything we did - we had two minds constantly criticzing them to try and make it better. We did make mistakes of misunderstanding our topic after researching a lot of issues - and I beleive we did a wonderful job in order to transition to focus on the topic we were supposed to be talking about. I beleive next time, we shouldn't just jump into the research and work before knowing the topic perfectly - because this ended up wasting time for us.
Theory: How did we use a variety of medias to get our point across? Why did we choose what we did? What worked? What didn't? Our main presentation consisted on a powerpoint - in this powerpoint we had our main points and also a lot of pictures to present this. I felt the slideshow was easy to put together and organize our thoughts as well - and it let us be creative with setting up each slide differently to convey different issues. Along with going with the slide show, we also made mini movies to play for each topic we discussed. We were able to compile different clips from popular movies and put them together and I felt this was really good because it let people realize some similarities villains had in movies that they probably never noticed before. It also allowed people to be amused with movies they may have seen recently - or haven't heard of since they were young, which helped to keep attention of everyone. I think incorporating the powerpoint with the movies kept it fast paced, and the movies sort of provided a "break" in between the talking we were doing. Along with this we also had a bunch of pictures in the board - for when we broke from the computer and started talking and describing different types of villains which also caught peoples eye. Lastly, we used a timeline where we had a giant bristol board to relate events in world to the progession of villains in the media. I beleive this also worked really well because it was able to show years and you could clearly make the connections through the timeline. I beleive we had really good ideas and ways to convey our topic however, next time I beleive we should talk more about the time line. We didn't spend enough time talking about the timeline so the effect it had on people was probably not as effective as it could or should have been.
How did we explore the use of technology/media concepts in relation to our issue? Since our issue was villains in the media, it was fairly easy to explore and build upon the uses of technology. We talked about how villains in the past - in movies such as Disney- were mainly the same. They all have the same characteristics in movies and since technology was not very advanced yet - it was easier to make all the villains relatively the same and obvious. We talked about through the years of media, these villains started to seem very realistic in some types of movies - however the "masked" villains turned out to be very scary with the use of technology.
Analysis: How much of our presentation was based on research? On opinion? (whose?) INCLUDE A LIST OF RESOURCES, CITATIONS Part of our presentation was based on research but - majority was on comparisons and contrasts we saw ourselves. When relating villains to the media and world issues - we had a lot of research put in. The reason for this is because we wanted to find out what was going on in the world at the time, in relevance to any movies that may have been released. We found a lot of articles trying to make a connection between touchy topics such as racism and villains in a lot of populaur Disney Movies. Otherwise, we found the relationships ourselves such as connections we made like the villains of today seem to be more multicultural because in today's society, multiculturism is in fact encouraged and promoted. Katrina and I also came up with the different classifications of villains such as masked, unmasked etc in order to make the most out of the information we collected and the relations we made.
Depth of content: To what degree did we introduce new ways of looking at this issue, new information? Was this class 'educated' or just 'entertained'? Personally, when first reading about our topic I found it to sound absurb. Just because I didn't beleive movie makers tried to make any relations with the world and that stories were something that people just came up with in their minds. However, after doing a lot of research and making these connections - I learned so much. I beleive our presentation made people educated - because we pointed out a lot of things about villains and the world that people would never connect. I beleive we left the class with shocking information but- I also beleive it made them aware of the little things you should pay attention to in movies. I think it taught everyone to dig a little deeper when looking at villains and realize there are those secret connections with the world around them.
How well did our examples reinforce and illustrate our points? We arranged our topic into different subpoints on the types of villains. In each subpoint we would have a bunch of different pictures of the villains - but we also had movie clips from these villains to be able to illustrate the points we were making about them. I beleive the movies were able to make people realize a lot more and make the connections then the still moving pictures. We made sure that there was an obvious connection to all our points and our villains in each subpoint. I also felt the time line did a really good job of bringing the comparisons we were making together and make it obvious to the class what was happening.
What new skills did I develop during this project?I felt this project at first sounded a little ridiculous - being able to relate villains in movies to society. However, this project helped me analyze things to the smallest detail and actually realize that you won't always notice these things and paying attention will help you become a better well rounded person in the world.
What new things did I learn about myself in the process of working on this project? (related to the content and/or process) I think I learned that I tend to look on the outside of things. For example, the Disney character villain connections- when I watch the movies I am so engulfed in the plot and the different things going on in the movie that I don't notice little things. Even when researching, we would find different sites where they would talk about small things that went wrong in movies such as objects missing in scenes. This made me realize that I need to stop looking at the outside of things and pay attention to what's going on around me.
What might I do differently if I were starting over? What skills can I transfer to my next assignment in this class or others?(or life!) Starting over this project, I would probably like to talk to people around me and get their views on the topic. This would make me realize where this topic stands and if it actually affects people or not. It would also gather information from different people about things they've noticed, and even find out their favourite villain and why. I would also fix up our presentation a little and add more information to our time line when talking to the class and I would also ensure that we have some kind of class activity to get everyone in the class to participate and also make sure they will listen. This project helped me learn how to analyze different concepts that I may not be that interested in, and it made me be able to make connections in two completely different things (villains and the real world). This will definetely help me out in other classes to be able to do this but, it will also help me as a person to become more aware of what's going on around me.

Hidden Gem - Peer/Self Evaluation

Name:Emily Newbold
Name of Production Team: Story Board Artists
Role in Production Team: Cupcake Girls
Roles of the other production team members:


Answer the following questions in order to assess yourself and the effectiveness of your group and members and determine the problem-solving strategies that worked within your group dynamic.

1. How do you feel about the title you were given and how well you did your job in this project? Give specific examples of your experience.
I feel I did my job very well except I feel this project was a tad unorganized. We came up with all the ideas but it was hard to fit them all together in the story board before we actually started filming. After doing filming we realized how we wanted to change some scenes and what we wanted to add- such as making it a TV show. We went into the project sort of confused with all the ideas we had and that's why we kept changing the idea- which resulted in a story board that could have been better.


2. How did you contribute to this project? Give at least 2 specific examples.
In this project, I was the storyboard artist, helped film, helped set up shots and was also an actor. We mimiced a TV show, and everyone in the group had to fit under a specific role.In mine I was Brit Matthews and I lived in the beaches. I had to come up with my favourite cupcake store and why. I was also in charge of making the storyboard, and next time I would definetely try to talk to the group and say we should make a final story board with filming instead of doing the reverse.



3. How do you feel about the contributions from other members of your group and the division of labour (work) for the project? Be specific to each team member.
This project was vital to have full group participation. All the members of the group had a role to do acting and that's why it was so important for all of us to reserve a day where we could spend going around Toronto filming these cupcake places which was really good. Everyone was also very motivated because not only were we all friends going out but, we also got to try all these different cupcakes. Nathalie was the main one filming but, everyone in the group came up with really good ideas for when we were actually outside. Like for example, Stephanie came up with our bloopers idea and how we should film outside and Katrina would watch the video after being filmed to look for mistakes. We would all record then listen in the car to make sure the sound was alright too.


4. When it comes to dealing with differences of opinion within your group:
Everyone loved the idea of cupcakes, and we all agreed it was a good idea to make it a TV to potray it. It was also cool that everyone got to participate and say their 'roles' in the video. Everyone got to act like a character and that was a different thing for us all.


5. In dealing with group members who were not fulfilling their responsibilities:
It wasn't hard to make sure everyone fulfilled their responisibilites because not only was this project important but, you also didn't want to jeapordize your friends and their project mark. We all wanted to work together and make sure we came up with the best ideas. I definetely would make sure that we all came to agree for who got which part and who would say what in the video.


Ratings:

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to remain on task as:

Good

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to be open, respectful, and communicative as:

Good

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to use the strengths of all of our members as:

Good

How successful is your project? Give specific examples for your reasons.

Good

The only reason I would say our video wasn't 100% successful was just because of the minor mistakes we may have made as actors in the video. I found it was a tad choppy at times - like the atmosphere where Katrina talks would change. I do beleive we had a really really good idea and that our way of portaying it was excellent too. In the future just the sounds in the background such as wind made the video not as good as it could have been.

Viral Video - Peer/Self Evaluation

Name: Emily Newbold
Name of Production Team: _
Role in Production Team: Storyboard Artist
Roles of the other production team members: Nathalie Black, Stephanie Axelrad, and Katrina Litsos


Answer the following questions in order to assess yourself and the effectiveness of your group and members and determine the problem-solving strategies that worked within your group dynamic.

1. How do you feel about the title you were given and how well you did your job in this project? Give specific examples of your experience.
In this project, my title was the storyboard artist. I beleive I did my job very well because we came up with the idea and immediatly started coming up with ideas. When each and every detail was finalized we came up with the storyboard drawn. I beleive it was drawn up very well however, I beleive we did them too early without thinking about the actual filming part of it. So, in the end we ended up having to erase certain parts of the storyboard because of the changes we made during filming. I would definetely make sure we discuss the filming and how it will be done before we finalie our storyboard ideas.

2. How did you contribute to this project? Give at least 2 specific examples.
First, I was able to keep everyone organized by having our plan on the storyboard. I was able to tell people what kind of shots we were to use, and what was next. Also what music we would have playing and when the titles and such would appear in the video. I think that kept us very organized and it was a very good contribution. As said before, I think we should've worked harder as a group to ensure we that we knew the filming techniques before it was drawn because ideas do change.



3. How do you feel about the contributions from other members of your group and the division of labour (work) for the project? Be specific to each team member.
I feel everyone in our group made a lot of contributions and we really mended well as a team. Everyone had their different talents, and we all fed them off of eachother. In the beginning, we all brainstormed together and everyone had their own little ideas and after hearing ones - we finally came up with a project idea that put everything we wanted together. Which is why I feel the project subject was very unique - and we also had a unique way of portaying it. Nathalie was the main editor of everything and we all learned a bit off of her. We all contributed and listened to different songs in order to piece the video with a catchy song (the whistling!). All of us had different oppurtunities to be in the video and also got to film. For one, Stephanie came up with the idea of using a skateboard to film her walking down the hall way. Everyone put in their different ideas for filming and I beleive this helped us catching the audiences. Katrina helped direct all the shots and made sure we had the right setting and scenerio. Stephanie helped us realize what our proposal and our objective for the video was and also helped with the filming and being in the shots.

4. When it comes to dealing with differences of opinion within your group:
I beleive we worked really well as a group for this project. We had been together before and this allowed us to express our ideas freely knowing that everyone would listen and put their input too. There was a difference of opinions but we would discuss all of them and label the pros and cons of each as a team so we came to a concensus over all the videos.


5. In dealing with group members who were not fulfilling their responsibilities:
Everyone was assigned their roles in the beginning of the making of the video and this ensured everyone was aware of doing their work. We would also have mini meetings on BBM or Facebook in order to keep everyone on task. If someone was struggling, they would come to the team and we would talk together about the options to do them. Nobody was left alone if they were unsure and this made our group strong.


Ratings:

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to remain on task as:

Excellent

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to be open, respectful, and communicative as:

Excellent

Overall, I would rate our group's ability to use the strengths of all of our members as:

Good

How successful is your project? Give specific examples for your reasons.

Excellent


I think we did a really good job of gettig our video out and actually make it viral over different social medians. We also worked really well as a group because it was something we were actually all interested in and have een affected by the topic which made us work harder to make it good. Although a few changes and bumps along the way, our team worked really hard and worked really well together and that is why our video was so successful.

Social Media Debate-Social Action

In our group's social media debate, we were asked to debate the POSITIVE of Social Action. At first we had it extremely difficult to come up with points and be able to understand the topic fully. However, after talking to the teachers and other students we learned that Social Action is being able to take action through a means a technology in order to make a change in society or the world. Whether people are joining forces on Facebook, Twitter, even YouTube!
PROS: First of all, we found that technology has actually provided us with better tools in order to make social action happen. People of all kinds and walks are able to join together from all over the world to discuss heated topics, and they're able to join forces on topics they may want to try and make better. Social Media can be used through technology in so many different ways whether it being protest such as Egypts government, raising awareness to charities, helping raise money for charities or even just having people join together on topics they agree or disagee on. In the throwing of Egypts leader, people were able to join together on Facebook, Twitter, etc and talk about their own perspectives. People were able to form groups, and weer able to talk together able being able to take action so they could better their lives, they were able to make plans and realize what they had to do to get what they wanted. Without social media technology, these people would've started fighting without a real reason or cause or without actually thinking about it. Social Media may also raise awareness, such as this month of "Movember", through the media people are always talking about Movember, people are posting pictures of their mustaches and people are joining together to judge and rate the best mustaches. Movember seems to be all over the news and the theme of the month- and while it's entertaining and fun, people are also becoming aware of the problems with Prostate Cancer, and the importance of raising money to stop it. Social Media may also even help raise money, because today people can see signs and read commercials where it says a special number to text and they can donate to places all over the world. Having this option to donate, makes it way easier for people to be able to donate money at the convience of their fingertips. Overall we found that technology actually helped people join together without actually thoughts and perspectives in their heads.
CONS: Although we did argue to postivie. Obviously our opposing group had their points which I may not nessecarily agree in but, their points should also be heard. The negative of our topic fought back that Social Media may able cause a lot of problems that lead to violence and that instead of helping people come aware it simply brings people together just to start a fight even though there may not be a direct or clear reason.

Personally, for me, when using some of these social media outlets I find it easier to talk about topics that may cause a heated argument or even when I'm just reading some people discussing a certain topic. I beleive it enables people to think about their arguments, and be able to research their arguments without blurting out things that they may to in person. Discussions via social media outlets actually provide a place for people to talk calmly and be able to gain awareness. I find that if I have a mind set about a topic, I can easily talk about it with people and maybe even learn from someone else.

I also do not beleive peers worry about sharing information online about their opinions. I beleive my peers acutally use technology to their full advantage in able to discuss ideas and topics and are able to vent to one another about topics of discussion. Even if you look at the simple trending topic #ymproblems, all students are joining together and talking about problems that they have within York Mills. Although it may be hilarious, ultimately people are joining and talking and I truly beleive that these problems are now out in the open and there may be action taken definetely in the future.

Social Media Campaign - Old Spice

Old Spice was once just a normal men's deoderant you could find in a local Shoppers Drug Mart. There was never anything very special about Old Spice- people would buy it if they liked the smell and the advertisements were never really memorable.
WHAT WORKED: Recently, they introduced a new approach to reel people in from their current soaps and deoderants to Old Spice, when they introduced a new face of the product and a new way of advertising their product with commercials such as "Smell like a man, man" with the NFL wide receiver named Isaiah Mustafa standing shirtless and giving the product unrealistic but hilarious strength and power to men. People found the way the camera went from scene to scene with Old Spice unique and hilarious at the same time. The part of Old Spice being a Social Media Campaign is because while the commercials were being aired - they also opened up on Twitter, Facebook etc to have people respond to their videos and be able to ask questions. Millions of people all over the world would respond and post hilarious videos right back and those who had questions - Old Spice and Mustafa himself was able to answer all questions through video responses. Even Stars such as Demi Moore and Ellen Degeneres were able to answer and this got people so intriduged that their questions really got answered and brought in a whole array of people.

An example that I found is over social media where Old Spice answers a question to a user
To Iggip0p, who asks, “What is the manliness thing you've ever done?”
“Probably the time I sprinted the summit of Mount Fuji with both my ankles snared in bear traps. No. It was probably when I wheelied my motorcycle for 10,000 consecutive kilometres on my way to Mount Fuji. Nevermind. I'm pretty sure it was the night before that, when I ripped off the metal siding on my house and used it to forge that motorcycle with my bare hands. While I was asleep. That was probably it.”
Old Spice was able to bring users and bring sales up by creating that sense of humour with the sense of having questions personally answered. It gave people the sense that they personally were served by Old Spice and this sense of being targetted and answered by something as big as Old Spice or Mustafa makes someone feel empowerment and special in a way.
WHAT DIDN'T WORK : However, the downfall was that Old Spice had millions of people asking questions. Obviously not all questions could be answered by Mustafa himself, and obviously there must be a waiting period for some people to have their questions answered. Old Spice had to think about giving people that personal feeling but also being able to keep up with millions of people so entertained and intrigued by the campaign.

Miss Represenation

After watching this video, it really made me open my eyes to how women are potrayed in today's society. There are may clips of different advertisements of women being treated as objects and aren't important- many of the clips would show parts of womens body's and not their face, and also clips of men being greater then women as in one clip all the men are standing over a womens body.I find it amazing to see all these ad's and not realize how terrible and degrading they are to women until they're put right in front of you. It's terrible to see that strong women have fought long and hard to gain respect in society - and to protect women's rights. Women are constantly degraded in society today, and yet so many people stand back and let it continue to unravel to how society once one. Young people of today are being so heavily influenced by ads and different advertisements that they begin to think that having your body taken over control by men, or body parts are the only important things in life. Young women beleive that they're only truly beautiful with minimal clothing on, or if they're surrounded by men. The different clips of women getting into unruly fights with one another also points to influences the youth are getting today. There are so many prime examples in this video of how women are only seen important or "powerful" when they look good - whether it's kids as young as 3 in shows such as Toddlers in Tiaras or it's the perfect bodied and looking Barbie dolls kids play with - women are constantly judged on what is on the outside and not on things such as morals, education and things on the inside. This video does a wonderful job on educating people of today of the effects media may have on society and it's leading people into dangerous lives. Showing clips of strong women pointing out their views and thoughts will only give women the power they need to realize that beauty is on the inside and what's outside shouldn't be important.