Kimberly Hummel
English 201
Reflective Essay
For the Portfolio Project I chose to revise my memoir assignment and my research paper. I chose to revise the memoir assignment because I enjoyed writing the memoir assignment more than my other assignments. I felt that the memoir assignment was a paper that allowed me to express my creativity in writing. Each paragraph was very descriptive and painted a picture in the reader’s mind. I revised this paper by turning it into a movie script. I obtained this idea from a suggestion that was given to us on the assignment sheet. When I first heard the idea to turn it into a movie script, I knew right away that this was something I wanted to do. A movie script sounded like the most creative and original revision.
The first choice I made in the revision process of turning my memoir into a movie script was to research the format of a screenplay. I looked through many examples of screenplays, paying attention to the style of the writing, the tone and the details. I took note of how the scenes were introduced, the transitions, and how the writers described the settings. Once I felt comfortable with the format of how to write a screenplay, I reread my memoir. As I read through my memoir I decided how I would break up the paragraphs into different scenes of the movie.
I decided that I wanted to make the movie as if it was told in the third person and my experience from the memoir would be a daydream that my character was having for the duration of the screenplay. I wanted to make the movie a daydream because by doing this I was able to add some reflection of my day into the ending scene. After introducing the first scene, I transitioned into the daydream of my day at camp. I broke up each scene by the characters in my movie moving to different locations. I didn’t want to loose the descriptiveness of my memoir so I incorporated the vivid details into the setting of each scene. In between dialogs I also added descriptive stage directions to make each scene as vivid as possible. Overall I feel that I improved my memoir assignment by turning it into something creative and new.
The second assignment I revised for the Portfolio Project is my research paper. I turned my research paper into a multimedia blog post. This assignment was difficult for me because I had to cut down a 2,500-word essay into only 750 words. I decided to take what I felt was the strongest part of my research paper for the multimedia blog post. This was the section of my research paper that discussed the affect of student loan debt on the housing market and the economy. I included the introduction paragraph of my research paper in order to give the reader of the blog back round information on the topic.
I searched the Internet for images that would enhance my argument and add great visualization. The first image I chose is an excellent visualization for the multimedia blog because it addresses the problem that college graduations are facing every day with their student loan debt. The second image is the graph and I feel that it gives a powerful statistic for my argument in a visual way. Finally I chose the third image because it adds to the point of my argument that more men are moving back home with their parents because they can’t afford to take out a mortgage.
At the end of the multimedia blog I added a video from CNN.com that talks about the problems that the housing market is facing. I chose this video because it directly addresses that the housing market drop of sales is due to student loan debt. Throughout the blog post, I chose certain words to hyperlink to articles. The words that I chose to hyperlink were the key words of each paragraph.
Overall, I felt the decisions that I made in the revisions were successful in enhancing my text. By turning my memoir paper into a move script, I was able to make the paper more creative. I wanted the movie script to look as authentic as possible and I achieved this by following the format of a real screenplay. The revision of my research paper also enhanced my text because I turned it into a creative multimedia blog post. The blog post has images and videos that give excellent visualizations to the main points of my argument.