Never in my college life, have I taken a class where the course name itself has brought about such discussion, confusion, conflict, and debate. For eleven weeks of this semester, we have debated both in class and out of class on what the real meaning of multimedia writing is. There are some people who have their strong beliefs on what should be considered multimedia writing and have examples already in their mind, and we also have others who are undecided in their personal definition and examples of that definition. Which ever group you find yourself in, it will be hard to persuade some one to switch sides and adopt new ideas for multimedia writing. But of course this is what we have been trying to do all semester with each other in this English class.
I think that having so many differing opinions has helped our class expand our minds and try to understand an abstract concept that has been hard for some of us to grasp. When I went back and read through all the reading responses from the students in class, it made me see how our class is so diverse and made me take notice that we have really different view points on this debate topic. Also when I was re-reading them, it made me realize that it is good to open your mind and consider looking into other ides, not just the ones you already believe in. You never know when someone will bring up a good point that will make your change your mind on things.
What I am getting from the readings that I chose, is that some people are really struggling with separating the definition of “writing” from the image of text on paper that we traditionally think of when someone talks about writing. Aschuett’s blog Documentaries as Multimedia Writing states that “it is difficult to call something that’s not writing part of multimedia writing.” This statement summarizes what I first thought about the definition of multimedia writing before we looked into the definition more. So when looking at a documentary that is composed of mostly picture and voice, rarely text, is somewhat hard to understand how it can fall under this category. Aschuett also mentioned that in order to make a documentary, or any other type of communication through a different medium for that matter, there is a lot of behind the scenes work that goes into making these communications. Some, if not most, of this work does deal with actual text through memos, storyboards, etc. However, using text in this manner cannot be detected directly when viewing the final product, so most people do not process this during the viewing of the piece.
In talking about photography a few weeks back, Jrusk argued in the blog Photography is Multimedia Writing that just like an author uses pen and paper to convey ideas, a photographer uses their subject and the camera to capture an overall idea they want to convey to their audience. I could really relate to this imagery and it helped sway me into considering that text was not always necessarily needed in order to be considered a multimedia writing piece.
My favorite blog post was by logan and was called Is a docu….Of course it is. While reading this post I could understand the emotion behind the writing. This person obviously wants to persuade everyone that many types of media communications may not typically fit the idea of “writing” that we have programmed into our memories, but can still be covered by the broad umbrella of what is considered multimedia writing. The different kind of medium that can be used is not nearly as important as the meaning that gathered from the experience of viewing the piece. According to logan, there should be no gray area on this topic. All things can and should be considered part of multimedia writing as long as each piece is an expression of a thought despite the face that they might not all be the traditional form of writing, referring to using word and text.
From my perspective, the true meaning behind multimedia writing is all about communication effectiveness. Pictures, music, film, and books are all forms of media that try to convey a message with meaning to their selected audience. If the audience can view, understand, and connect with what the author was trying to convey, then the communication process was successful. We can then categorize these different types of media as part of multimedia writing.