Born into Coal

Born into Coal

I enjoyed watching this documentary. Coal mining is something that I do not think about a lot on a daily basis. This documentary put light on the coal miners in a unique way through the daughters of the miners’ pageants. They used the daughters and the wives of the miners to give insight into their family. There was b-roll footage of the family members doing their normal daily activities to accent the lives they live. There was footage of their homes as well as cooking and them preparing for their days. This footage was used to make transitions between the scenes and ideas of the documentary. I feel like that brought around the idea of family and their lives and what all of the family members have to deal with on a daily basis which is what I concluded about the focus of the documentary. The documentary started with scenes of the pageant and then transitioned into the families’ lives and then their thoughts about the coal industry and then went back to the pageant. There was no narration in the documentary, just the interviews. I thought that this worked out well in this case. They had a shot with words that explained the tragedy of the coal explosion and that worked because it was just enough to move into the families’ thoughts on the event. This documentary flowed through the different ideas and augments well.

Websites

Two websites that I frequent are the websites of Kroger and Publix. These stores do not exist in the same areas for the most part but they do mostly sell the same products. When you first open both of the websites they open to a picture of an already prepared meal. I find this kind of ironic because neither places sell the fully prepared meals. Just the ingredients for the meals. Both have slide shows following the opening picture of the meal. Kroger has the meal, an ad for ordering a party pan online, and a slide showing someone shopping with their smart phone asking if you have their app. The Publix page has a similar slideshow. They have the meal, a digital coupon ad, a picture showcasing their delightful workers, and then another ad for coupons. Both have a little pop up telling you to find your nearest location. This is important to the stores because you cannot really buy groceries online through these stores.  They both have a horizontal menu at the top with various options to go to what you are looking for. The websites are more set up to answer questions than to shop. They also have their digital coupons easily accessible and they have the menus to the bakery and deli easily accessible if the visitor wants to order anything special. The audience is the same for both sites.  They want to be able to go to a store to meet all of their quality grocery needs with keeping their budget and having friendly service. Publix focuses more on the friendly service and Kroger focuses more on the non- stop shopping. They show the ethos with their pictures of food. Publix also has a “What People are saying about us” section where there is a quote from a costumer. Both of the websites make good choices in regards to what they are trying to accomplish. They are simple but still have a feeling of the excellent food choices you will have once you chose to shop there.  These stores do not have many competitors but they want to make sure you know that they are still a good choice.

Visual rhetoric

Both examples of the visual rhetoric go about the issue in two ways. The first example of “No Seconds” depicts the last supper situation with pictures of only the meals already prepared and a written description with the name of the prisoner, their age, the state, what they were accused of, how they were killed, a list of the food they were severed as their last meal and any other little facts of information. The food is pictured in an almost suburban way and most of the meals are incased in fairly nice silverware. The pictures are taken from over the meal. The pictures have an almost eerie and creepy feel about them even though some of them look like they would not be completely out of place in a home goods magazine because you know that was the last meal that was eaten by someone. The second example of “The Last Meal Project” depicts basically the same subject with some differences. It shows a picture of the prisoner and then the ingredients of the meal. There is a written description with the name, the meal, the sentence, the execution time and the state. There are also various facts about the process of the death sentence shuffled within the pictures of the meals and prisoners.

The second example more examples of choices of meals that were not actually meals. It is hard to tell whether or not that is a more accurate sampling of what the inmates would normally have wanted. Both of the examples use a typewriter font which makes the examples seem more like memos.

I feel like the second example has you see the prisoner and the ingredients as objects. It gives you the facts and then you kind of imagine what that would have been like for them. The first example, on the other hand, gives you the perspective of the inmate as they were about to eat their last meal, even though it is probably depicted a little bit more glamorous than it would have been in actuality. The first example speaks to me more even though it is more visually sugar coated.

Shark Tank

My Shark tank proposal overall went well. There are many things I could improve on but I feel like I hit all the points that I wanted to during the speech. I felt knowledgeable on my topic and I feel like that showed though for the most part. The thing I can work the most on is most definitely being concise with my words. I know I can be very long winded and that showed a lot during the speech. I was nervous so I kept on talking and even sometimes repeating myself. I feel like my body language and projection was alright for the most part. I feel like just practicing the speech more would have helped with making sure that my speech was shorter and clearer. It went mostly as expected. Also maybe recording myself would have helped with making sure that I only said the points that were necessary to the point of the speech. I also focused on selling the group of Blue Note rather than the project and myself. I feel like I answered the questions well because I solely focused on answering the question and then stop talking. I think that verbally practicing the essential points for the speech with cut down on the time.  For my next speech I will work on have my points clear and straightforward and making sure that allow equal time for different segments of the speech.