Screenshots of Youtube Mixer

I have nine videos and could't get them to all fit in one screenshot, so I took two screenshots so my whole mixer could be seen.  

Commentary on The Shallows

This was one of my favorite projects that we have done so far this semester. I liked how we were able to take what we saw in our head while reading and make it into an actual video. There were certain paragraphs that classmates created through video that were exactly what I saw happening in my head while reading, but there were others that I definitely didn't think of, but that still hit the paragraph on the head. I thought it was really interesting to see how we were able to take this article and create a short film to represent it. I think everyone did an excellent job. There wasn't a 30 second clip that I saw and didn't like, they were all really good and well represented the paragraph they were portraying.
My favorite transition had to be the ones in Jenie's video because I really like how she uses videos on top of one another and has the videos playing behind her clock videos.  I like how you can see everything that is going on in the videos even though they are layers, and like the use of opacity and the flow of her transitions throughout the video.
I believe that Erin's video was the best portrayal of her paragraph in the reading. When I read this paragraph and thought about doing it for my video this is what I had in mind and she nailed it. I think that everyone wanted this paragraph and they wanted to see the portrayal of the little kid drawing that Carr opened with and she opened her video with the perfect video to portray this. Out of all of the videos I believe that this one was the most visually loyal to the article. Everyone else did a great job at portraying their paragraphs, but I believe that Erin did the best job with representing every detail in paragraph one.
Reading and watching the article was definitely different. While reading it I was keeping in mind what I would do with videos to portray each paragraph and when watching it I enjoyed seeing what everyone else had in mind. Personally, I enjoyed watching it more than reading it because I really enjoyed seeing how everyone came up with unique portrayals of each paragraph and how they all came together as one video that actually did a really good job representing the article as a whole. Reading the chapter, one may get more specifics out of it and details. Watching the article one may miss out on those specifics and details because of the way we chose to interpret each paragraph and focus on the main idea of the pargraph we were assigned or only a certain part that jumped out at us. 

What New Media is Not Questions

1) Manovich has claims about what new media is not and argues that even thought it is perceived as being interactive it is not. He states that in contrast to old media where the order of presentation is fixed, the user can now interact with a media object. In the process of interaction the user can choose which elements to display or which paths to follow, thus generating a unique work. In this way the user becomes the co-author of the work. I don’t understand why Manovich doesn’t believe that this is true of new media because this is what has made new media so unique is that it is said to be interactive. With this though I question how quickly technology progressed and how art has gone from being considered only drawings on paper or canvas to being digital works. If what is considered to be new media continues to progress at this quick of a rate, what will be considered “new” media is in say 10 years?

2) Manovich has all these theories on what new media is not but isn’t so clear on what exactly new media is. He states the if new media is placed within a longer historical perspective then it can be seen that most of these principles are not unique to new media and can be already found in older media technologies. Is he saying that new media is only copying what old media used to do and that there is nothing unique about new media? 

Final Cut Paragraph 9

This is a full screen emulation of paragraph 9

This is a widescreen emulation of paragraph 9