Mountain Media Ministries - Remnant Church

Remnant Church hosted a two day event with Mountain Media Ministries to discuss how to become independent in an "unstable world." Between the inevitable fall of the dollar, oil, the situation with other major world economies, and our extreme amounts of debt, it is a very important time to be in a situation that allows you to have basic necessities, like food, water, energy, and warmth. In preparation for massive inflation, they discussed how to create a living situation that would make these basic necessities available in times of need.

They discussed gardening as well as how many acres one would need to grow trees for warmth in the winter. They also discussed how to prepare for food in the winter. They had a jarring demonstration, and went over some warmth and survival tips for winter months. Basically, we are such a soft generation that we would most likely die if we didn't have power. Even if we have well water, we still need electricity to pump it out, unless we have a manual pump installed. This event was all about advice for getting to a place that would get us off the grid, and help us be independent, and less reliant on big companies and the government. It is an important thing to be discussing, because - whether people want to believe it or not - our country is going to have some dramatic changes in the near future, and people need to be prepared.



[Top] Ad and Description. [Bottom] Notes and program.

WDIGTS Target Audience Research

I've been working on researching my target audience and getting some vital information. I wasn't thinking about some demographics that may have been missed, had I not talked, personally, with these people. I need to pay attention to non-mainstream programs, and somehow integrate them into my system. My goal isn't to cover EVERYTHING, but I would like to touch on everything that I can manage, to give people the widest perspective during their education.

My first inclination was to give the industry standard options, and then the freeware options. I think that it is the best way to go, in most cases, unless there is a notable similar program that provides either a major price cut or features that don't exist in the industry standard software. An example of this is realizing that a good portion of my audience use things like PaintShop Pro and Aperture.

My thoughts on which progrgrams to use are more like this: if I can't use an industry standard that gives me the best results, I will find a free version of the software until I can afford the better software or until I find the need to upgrade. I'd rather not spend money and then re-spend on something half better. I'd rather get what I can out of a free program until I can manage the best. [Many times, people will never need functions past the functions offered by free alternatives.] But, recognizing that everybody doesn't share this perspective is important, and I will make my best effort to cover other options that I find people using, as well.

Rosser Reeves' Political Commercials & The Persuaders

It's funny that war, taxes, skyrocketing prices, and the theme of "change" was used in Eisenhower's ad campaign, just as it is today. The creators of the campaign ads rely less on full pathos, and more on flawed logic. The political commercials seem to use a lot of fallacies of logic in their ads. They use forms of bandwagoning and irrelevant facts to sway people's decision making.

Song Airlines relied purely on pathos, giving no ethical or logical arguments in their main advertisements. Song airlines focused on specifically not making arguments. They focused on visuals, music, and symbolism. These elements were made to create feelings, rather than arguments.

One thing to make note of is the fact that these are completely different videos with completely different purposes. Yes, both sets of videos are created to persuade people. However, one set of videos is geared towards creating lasting customers and primarily persuading people to buy something. The other set was created to persuade citizens of a country to vote for a person. The creators, then, have different things to pull from. Voters' freedom, liberty, and patriotism is focused on as a responsibility. The commercials tend to create a culture out of imagery that focuses on feelings, as well as telling the audience that the audience has a problem (and the creators of the ad have the solution to that problem). Now, of course, there is plenty of overlap, but the mindsets are different for the end result, so the strategies do differ.

As the video The Persuaders talked about, success in advertizing and persuading goes beyond logic. This is why advertizing companies study cults and apply theories of that sociology to exploit peoples' need to belong. In both advertizing to sell and advertizing to vote, the goal seems to be to create loyalty beyond reason. Even if this is not the goal, it is definitely the end result. People have loyalty without thought, and it's scary on any side of the spectrum. We are a society conditioned to avoid the use of our most precious gift: the freedom to think.

WDIGTS Waiting on Formal Crits & Developing Motion Graphics

I've been talking to the people reviewing my materials, and, so far, they are telling me that I should look through books' table of contents and that it looks pretty comprehensive. I HAVE looked through books, which has, hopefully, helped with covering bases. I think that graphic design will be where most criticism comes. I'm looking forward to getting input from Kristin and Melissa.

I'm pretty excited about the motion graphics for this project. I think that I am leaning towards a drawing effect. I want to stay away from studio looking visuals, because I don't have access to the 100s of 1,000s of dollars worth of equipment to record looking nice, and recording specific equipment will date my materials much more than staying with generic visuals like camera and lens, rather than specific models.



There is an example when the video separates into quarters of the drawing effect that I may go for. [1:14] I used this in a class project for a class taught by Kevin Williams. I've grown a lot since my first semester of college, and I think that I could do a much better job, especially now that I'm not working on a cheap laptop that would make me wait fifteen minutes per preview.

I'm also very excited for the sub videos for the categories. I will be creating these, bearing in mind that I will be using these videos on a loop as one of my primary displays at our showing. I want them to flow well, but I want them to be individual videos, as they will be viewed independently through the actual website.

WDIGTS Words to Describe

10 words [in no specific order] that describe the feelings/reactions I want it to inspire in the viewer..

1. Fresh
2. Lively
3. Bold
4. Eloquent
5. Legitimate
6. Intelligent
7. Stylish
8. Organized
9. Educational
10. Humorous

If I had 5 more..
11. Developed
12. Dynamic
13. Energetic
14. Reliable
15. Methodical


I will use these words to guide me in forming the look and feel of my project.

Then, I can use these graphics to convey something specific to the reader.

[In response to Monica's comment on a previous post.]

Class Discussion - Changing Content Style

"Travis was reading articles on cracked.com, feeling happy and laughing. After all, the site describes itself as 'America's Only Humor Site since 1958.' He read an article called 5 Bad Ideas for Dealing With Bullies You Learned in Movies, and it was a bummer. Read the article and some of the other Cracked content. Do you think the blog site was right in presenting material that was outside of the type of content normally featured? Do you think there would be a better way to manage it? In your opinion, what is the responsibility of a site editorial team?"

Okay, let's start by establishing that there is no good or bad, right or wrong, move in this situation. This means that there is no better or worse thing to do in this situation. We can only bring ideas like good or bad into a situation when we define the parameters and limit the context.

We are all just a bunch of organisms living, and communicating with each other. In the grand scheme of life, this is not that big of a deal, to me. Somebody giving a depressing story and opinion on a comedy based blog just doesn't matter.

If we limit the context to the site getting viewers, I can only talk from my perspective and what I would want. If I go to a website for a person's writing, I would probably like this insight into the person's life and beliefs. If I go to a website for the intended purpose of the site, maybe to learn about video techniques, I would absolutely not want to read something like this.

If we broaden the context and perspective of this, a little, to include the intent of the creator of the website and their satisfaction with the site, it could be a successful move. The creator wanted to talk about a situation that happened to him, and have people listen. From his perspective, it was a success.

It comes down to whose perspective we are looking from, the creator, the audience, or the website/company. In my opinion, the responsibility of a site editorial team would be to define what the goal of the site is, and help each other follow that definition of those guidelines. A better way to manage it would really depend on the creators' intent for what the website should be and what it should function as. This includes personal satisfaction, if they want revenue, how revenue is attained and how it is divided, if they have a target audience that they make content for or if they make content to express themselves and an audience finds them, etc.

WDIGTS Review

Why Did I Go To School .com is a project that I have wanted to work on since I was sixteen. Having no access to education in fields of my interest, I found other ways to learn: books, training DVDs, and online resources. One site in particular, VideoCopilot, was of such high quality and had so much free education that it singlehandedly decided part of my career path, and took me from knowing nothing to knowing what I know now in the world of motion graphics, today. This inspired me to take what I know and give back to younger versions of me, and even people my age, who want to learn something, but don't know where to start.

Why Did I Go To School .com is meant to organize learning sources for people into cohesive logical groups, in an order that makes sense for people to learn the best. It will be a lot of written content, as the mold to hold all of the resources that I want to bring together and organize into different subjects. The idea is to come up with a very organized structure (list of topics and subjects) before I start organizing and writing content. This is where you come in..

I would like to ask for your input, because -- for one reason or another -- you have gained my respect, and I consider you to be awesome. I need help with organization and subjects.

I have three main areas to learn about: video, photography, and graphic design.
Within these areas of learning are three Microsoft Word documents with headings like this..

Photography (Main Subject - Title of Page)

What is it? (Page - Link to page with info)

THE CAMERA (Main Topic - Not a page)

Cameras (Page - Link to page with info that is tabbed below)
Film Cameras (Info for page above)

(I have a few links that can be disregarded. Just found some links while writing and wanted to have them for later.)


Why Did I Go To School .com is kind of a cheeky title, and I'd like to address the attitude that the site will have. School is definitely a valuable source of learning. I obviously believe in its worth, because I am in school. I believe that the purpose of school is not just to educate, but to teach people how to learn and educate themselves. I am surrounded with so many students that expect school to teach them everything that they will need in life, and it is sad to watch. This site is for people who do not have access to school as well as people who are in school, who want to find more information on things in the main subjects that the site covers. I have spent many years fumbling through my own education, and I feel like all of the time that I spent searching around for information could have been massively shortened, if I had the questions of what information and where to find that information laid out for me.

I don't think that I am a master of knowledge or better than everyone. But, I do feel that I have a keen ability to communicate. If I truly understand something, I can generally find a way to present that concept to others that do not. If the first method doesn't work, I try a different approach, until we find a metaphor or visual representation that works for the person learning. This is the approach that I take in my classroom, and this is the approach that I want to take for this site. I want to have a few different ways to learn the same material, so that, if one source doesn't work for some people, there will be alternatives.

If you do decide that you will help, there are three different sections. It might help to glance over the different sections, as well, just to get an idea of what I'm going for. This should be something that you can use if you are teaching a class; I want this to be used as a resource for students by teachers in classrooms. So, think about this in terms of, "If I had a class of students, what would make this a good resource for them to use?"

If you decide not to help, it is no big deal. :) Life is busy, and helping someone work on a capstone project isn't always the most fun thing to do with your spare time!