Jess Land and I decided to team up after each of us had a fiasco with our nonprint presentation. We want to address how writing has changed over time.
“The precision of the machine now replaced the organic beauty of the handwritten page”, this is a quote from J. David Bolter in his article “Seeing and Writing” in which he discusses the transition from the handwritten language to the mechanical language. Jess and I are using his idea as a jumping off point to show how writing, both the phsyical writing and story writing have changed over time.
Throughout history, our writing has changed: from the way we write (handwriting, letter,s symbols, etc..), to how we write (chisel/stone, wax, tree paper, typewriters, etc…).
The letter began losing some of its nobility when typewriters were invented. Typing simply did not take as long as actually handwriting a letter (unless you were terribly bad at finding the buttons). Before the phone, letters were our only form of communication. Then, once email was born, letters really did become an old-fashioned way of writing. The romanticized letter was a thing of the past because everyone wanted speed: an instant response.
Before Twitter and Facebook, they only way to talk about the days events was to write them down in a diary or call up a friend and tell them the full story of what happened. Today when someone tells a story it is usually in the form of a tweet with a universal hashtag to help anchor the outcome of the anecdote. There is no detail or sustenance supporting the story. This makes the situation seem less important than if someone was telling the story or writing the full details out in a diary.
Sarah C 
Hi Sarah and Jess!
From watching and reading the concept of your video, I like how you both are experimenting with the idea of how writing has changed over the years. Your screen shots and music seem to flow well, and I like how you used Vimeo instead of YouTube. Maybe you could add video screen shots to add in to make the video more eye-catching; maybe even add more video shots of typing more information into the video to add to give the viewer more information on the topic you are displaying; with the end product, I think that your video will come into one good project.
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The idea is solid, but quite grand in scope, so be careful about getting what you need in that 60 second timeframe to make the idea work. What you have so far is pretty direct, though – it’s more like showing us a timeline than anything. Not that approach is bad, but be sure to make it engaging! What kind of stance do you take on the “changes”? Do we lose anything? Do we gain anything? That sort of thing.
I like it! I think you’ve got a great start and I can’t wait to see how it looks when you the other 30 seconds down. ^_^ I think if you take what you have, which sort of shows how writing has evolved, and then either intersperse the letter example throughout, or make it another section of the video (a la here how writing has changed, here are the implications of those changes on a common form of communication, the letter) you’ll have a really neat an interesting video that conveys a clear, concise message. Keep on keeping on. =)
Sarah and Jess, I like your beginning–both the sounds you’ve selected and the images. The Elvis song helps too! Letter writing has certainly changed through the ages. Are you including e-mails, too?
I’m liking how this looks so far. You have pretty good images, and it’s an interesting concept. More context between slides would be good, but not enough to detract from the pictures.
Good work so far; the concept of how writing has changed shines through. Just be sure to remix the track somehow so you don’t get copyright busted.
I like the overall idea, definitely. I think it lends itself to this format, and that it’s exactly the right “size” for this project. Your subject matter very nicely works in a visual format, and (as with the Elvis song) plenty of great audio is available too.
In your description, you talk some about the “nobility of the letter” and how typewriters weakened it. I (partially accidentally, partially on purpose in a Derida kinda way) conflated “letter writing” with “the formation of characters.” I remember back many years ago (I’m showing my age here) I had a “daisywheel printer” that had interchangeable wheels in a few different “fonts.” I know the IBM Selectric typewriters also had interchangeable “balls” to change fonts. I was reminded of ANOTHER great excerpt (I think also from Bolter) about how desktop publishing provided a “WEALTH” of different fonts and such to choose from, without the constraints of good taste– which makes the development of ANOTHER skill (typographic design) as important as writing style and vocabulary was to Victorian letter-writing during that “hyperliterate” age (For what it’s worth).
One glaring absence from your progression is that staple of letter-writing now, e-mail. Since e-mail’s early days (and the beginnings of online “communities” with things like Compuserve and ListServs) to current stuff with programmable MIME types and HTML styling for messages, attachments, and whatnot, e-mail has merged the advantages of telephone (immediacy) with letter-writing (thoughtfulness, permanence)… certainly no discussion of the evolution of letter-writing can ignore e-mail.
I like how you two are using letter writing (physically writing letters with a pen or pencil that is) to compare and contrast with digital writing. New media has completely changed writing because it allows us to write digitally, and share it instantly with other people.
I think at this point your topic is broad, but it’s a good idea. I like the idea of the evolution of letter writing- how writing letters has evolved into texting or facebook posting. Really interesting to think of how new media has totally changed the way we think about communications. I think you could work on the variety of mediums you use in this video- maybe some screen captures or real-time video to switch things up. Play around with that stuff (I’m learning too!) and you could come up with some really cool stuff!
screen castomatic
add quote from “Seeing and writing”
I love the transitions chosen to represent how writing has developed over time. I also, appreciate the back story about what superseded each event before the next rose to popularity and so on. In the video, the music was spot on for each image and it didn’t feel like a bland slide show, I can tell work was put into the snips and clips of each frame. Great start for your project!
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Having seen your final cut, even in your rough draft stage you had a pretty clear conception of where your video was going to go, and you stuck with that idea. Your original draft has pretty much all of the major elements of your final cut.
It seems that you guys feel like social media’s development is diminishing the significance of our stories, and I’d have to agree with you in a sense. To tell someone your life story used to be a gift; you were giving a part of yourself to another person in a very intimate way that most people weren’t privy to. It was an honor to tell someone the story of your life. Besides the famous autobiographies, things like Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations and The Diary of Anne Frank, most people’s lives were kept away from the world’s eye to a large degree; the life story of your next-door neighbor wasn’t posted somewhere for you to read at your leisure.
But now it is, thanks to the growth of social media. Now we, in fact, can read all about our neighbors and what they’re doing with their lives at any point in the day/week. It’s somewhat scary how quickly I can see that my neighbors went out of town this weekend to go camping (I literally looked it up on my phone while typing that last sentence). And that does diminish the importance of it, just to be inundated with it and for it to be readily available for consumption. It makes it more of an obligation than a joy; “Oh, _____ did something this weekend, I’ll have to read about it on Facebook.”
This was a good project.