Writing 105M Final Reflection
1) I like to think that, for someone who has not spent much time in university humanities’ classes, I have a fair amount of skill when it comes to writing. Writing has always felt very natural to me, often I have an easier time getting my point across in text than I do vocally. Coming into college I strongly considered focusing on this skill, but ended up pulling a 180 and majoring in more quantitative fields of study. I guess I felt that I could develop writing skills on my own easier than I could make time to study Statistics, and later Economics. Because I made this choice, I had never been in a UCSB writing class until now.
The experience was awesome. Breaking from the routine of constantly drilling equations and formulas into my head has been both refreshing and informative. Before this class I had never written in a media environment, outside of text messages, emails, Facebook posts and the occasional reddit comment. For me, the most valuable aspect of the class has simply been going and writing on a blog frequently. Not only has it gotten me back into writing shape, but I have been able to mess around with my writing voice a lot more than I am able to in a standard English paper. With media writing there is much more room to work outside of the standard conventions, which I think lends to a more intriguing read.
As I have mentioned in multiple posts, I dream of working in the MLB someday. Those whom I have had the privilege of interviewing with inside the industry have recommended doing research on my own and posting on popular sabermetric blog spaces to catch the attention of teams. Thus, the experience of consistently posting could potentially behoove me down the road. I also got to write about sabermetrics on Wikipedia, obviously any practice in that arena is good for me. I can see that, for me, the issue with writing is going to be making the time to do it rather than the process itself. If I am in classes that assign writing or have to write for my job then this is not an issue, but taking the initiative on my own has never really been a thing before. Getting back into the writing rhythm has been enjoyable though, and I hope that I can continue the momentum that this class has helped build. Whether it is a research blog or some other project that I has not dawned on me yet, I am definitely going to look into ways to keep my writing streak going.
2) First, and foremost it needs to be noted that Jimmy killed it on this video. He came up with the text, shot the video, and, most importantly of all, was a dominant editor. He did not want to be in the film so sadly his face is not associated with it, but he was THE force behind the scenes.
Because Jimmy had such a novel idea, my main “writing” influence came in deciding how to best execute his brainchild. He came in with the idea of having the texts mess up peoples’ days, so Brandon and I helped spitball different scenes that could be included. Having someone with Jimmy’s technical skill was a game changer. Brandon and I could throw out basically any idea without the fear that executing would be too difficult. This meant that the process was a hell of a lot more like writing than it would have been had Brandon and I edited on our own. The skills required to creatively edit a video are a barrier of entry for effectively getting one’s ideas out there, but luckily we were able to dodge this bullet. It ended up being a lot like writing a paper. First we created a list of shots, our prewrite. Shooting the clips was kind of the rough draft, the basic form of the scenes were created. Lastly we tuned everything up through editing and really crafted our final product, however instead of worrying about sentence structure the new issues were where to place the text popups, where to cut the clips, as well as what effects to add. Really the most difficult thing was convincing our friends and housemates to do dumb stuff in front of a camera (though weirdly the cop scene, where the guy is actually wearing a women’s sexy swat outfit, and the sex scene took the least persuasion.) Still, they all gave in eventually, I like to think I am talented in the art of peer pressure.
Most of our half-hearted attempts to go viral came after the video was completed. Initially we considered posting our video with a title along the lines of ‘Avengers 2: Age of Ultron LEAK,” where we would start with the classic 5-second Marvel intro, followed by our video, followed by an hour plus of black screen so that people would not catch on immediately when they saw the video’s length. However, we decided our artistic vision was too important, and decided not to sell out. In terms of marketing, I put the video up on my Facebook and tagged all of the actors, as well as anyone tangentially related to the videos’ creation. This garnered about 50 Facebook likes and 300ish YouTube views, not too shabby. The following day we posted the video to reddit at 8 AM EDT, as apparently this is when the front page resets, a trick we employed to maximize views. On reddit we received a total of 2 comments and 3 cumulative upvotes (upvotes count for +1 and downvotes count for -1...also you start at 1 automatically...also one of the upvotes was me.) diegojones4 came at us with logic, “You could just not look at your phone until you are finished doing what you are doing,” while DarkGamer felt the need to chime in with “Emagerd turrists.” Still, our view count more than doubled after posting to r/videos, reaching upwards of 725 the last time I checked. #worthit. We considered posting the short to the UCSB specific subreddit, but we decided that unless we had already reached 1000 views (halfway there) it was not worth it. I did not particularly want randoms on campus noticing me as that one guy from that one video. Speaking of randoms on campus, two girls that had been friends with my Freshman year roommate approached me about the video while I was walking around. I had not talked to them since Freshmen year. I guess this is what being a celebrity feels like.
For me, the coolest thing about creating a video rather than writing a paper or doing a research project was that I had no hesitation showing my friends, family, and girlfriend what I had been sinking my time into. Surely I have created quality papers and projects in the past, but I am not going to go post my 50-page financial breakdown of Brown-Forman on my Facebook page (this is a real project I had to do by the way.) Getting to see that others genuinely enjoyed something I had a hand in creating was a lot more gratifying than simply seeing an A posted up on GOLD with no feedback.
3) The simple answer: No I do not want to go viral. Being famous, especially if it is for something unrelated to my career, has literally zero interest to me. Do not get me wrong, I have no real issue with others seeing me doing comical, or comically stupid, things. However, I do not know that I would want to be known for this by the masses. This is all probably a moot point though, as the careers I am likely to pursue do not lend themselves particularly well to viral media.
Although I personally do not want to go viral, I found the discussion of how websites like Facebook and YouTube promote virality to be intriguing. Quantifying the popularity of content through likes, thumbs-ups, and view counts is entrenched in today’s society, and is really a fascinating development in modern information and media consumption. I know from experience that it feels good to get positive feedback on content you put out to the masses, even if it is as simple as a Facebook post to your friend circle. That being said, I find it a little shallow when hashtags and gimmicks are used solely for the purpose of garnering likes. Personally, I would prefer people enjoy my creations for the content there rather than my effective use of social media buzzwords.
The closest thing to virality in sabermetrics is the term “moneyball,” so viral that both a book and movie have sprouted from the concept. As far as I am concerned, this is the only form of virality that I would ever actively pursue. Research so powerful that it fundamentally changes the way a team, business, or any other sort of group goes about their business. Notoriety within a specific circle of thinking would be nice, as knowing that I had a hand in changing that group’s landscape would be more than enough to validate an entire career. I do not know that this could be considered going viral persee, but it is the closest I can relate to the viral desire. A big difference here is that I believe if an idea is strong enough it will catch on, as in this case it would be a matter of efficiency rather than entertainment. Entertainment is, to at least some extent, subjective whilst efficiency is objective. Interestingly, nowadays these two fields are crossing paths. Companies want to efficiently create entertainment, objectifying the subjective. This is something I would be interested in working with, crafting a more accurate equation for popularity.
...but yeah. Awesome class. I am glad I was able to get on board in time for the last quarter that Professor Wuebben will be here at UCSB. Surely it would have been an entirely different experience with any other professor.
