Marlene Herrera
May 5, 2013
Metacognitive Analysis
The Hybrid Essay was an outstanding opportunity to really dive into films. Words alone would cut short in analyzing how images and sounds placed together to form one huge motion picture. It would be ironic if I tried to talk about films without providing images and sounds. That is why I decided not to just write a traditional essay it would be to boring for such an exciting topic. I decided to base my hybrid essay on both Dillon Marsh Photography blog (http://dillonmarsh.com/assimilation.html ) and Perez Hilton blog (http://perezhilton.com/). The reason was because they both demonstrate the importance of telling a story with images and videos. Dillon Marsh blog placed images and then wrote about them and their importance to the topic of the post. Even though many can argue that the blog perezhilton.com is not worth much time, it sure is fun and that is what I wanted my hybrid essay to be; fun and accessible. The way I formatted my essay had to do with basic film aesthetics and an exploration of the topics importance. I move from the big picture to slowly dissecting it big element at a time.
My first topic was how a story is told. Whether it will be through animation, a dance number, or dialogue, it has to portray smoothly and vividly. By using videos like Hum Saath Saath Hain, (1999) an Indian Film, Pixar animated short film For the Birds (2001), and a clip from the movie The Departed (2006), I was able to portray the idea of films being a universal spectrum. A story can be told in various way and still carry the message across. Though musical or animation, the story is well developed and portrayed.
As I continued my hybrid essay I moved on to sound. I wanted to emphasize the importance of how music a lone and music place with images can make a huge difference on how the scene is portrayed. The movie, Pirates of The Caribbean used a score written by Hanz Zimmer to portray adventure and voyage. By itself, the musical piece is fast paced and provides numerous grandiose moments but when placed with images and scenes from the movie they just connect. The adventure scenes are perfectly paired with the high intense musical notes and when the music becomes slow the scenes also slow down. Music allows feelings.
After we hear we begin to see what we hear. I then progressed into analyzing clothing. In order to completely embrace a film, being able to immerge into the setting and time is important because it truly places the atmosphere. For example, the images I provided for this section are from the movie, The Kings Speech (2010), provide sufficient clothing specifications that any person can point and notice a time period. Like the fur around the coat in the second image. Now a day’s PETA has protested against animal abuse and with this background information, it becomes rather easy to say the fur used is to illustrate a different time period.
After we see we try to comprehend the creativity process behind it all. I provided a short YouTube video titled, Behind the Scenes of Wallace and Gromit because the video focuses on all the little details places in a cartoon in order to be developed. I could not just simply talk about how a character is developed I had to provide visuals of how it is created and all the effort placed into it. Like the many different facial expression each character has and the different miniature handmade sets. The video, for me is the highlight of my hybrid essay. It truly embraces all the aspects of what I wanted my essay to show.
Finally, I decided to talk about writing last because after everything is dissected to find the meaning of a film, what the characters say is what stays with us. That is why we have numerous memes quoting movies. I also, touched upon genres because I found it extremely interesting how to many critics, most movies produced in Hollywood are considered westerns. At first I disagreed because Batman is not running around with a cowboy hat in a horse, but I later realize he was running around in a motorcycle in a bat costume.
For me, writing the hybrid essay was a good liberation from the traditional way of writing a paper. It was a bit intimidating in the beginning with just hearing “hybrid” because it seemed a bit complicated and technological but in the end it was rather easy and fun. Of course, the examples provided like, Dillon March Photography blog made it easier but in the end it ended being completely different from that blog. I hope that other teachers hear about a hybrid essay and start applying it to their course because it is so much fun.
