I
have always found that English is one of my most challenging subjects, because
I have difficulty with public speaking due to my reading disability. When
signing up for this class, I was told that the course focused on teaching
students how to strength public speaking skills, giving me immediate cause for
worry. Throughout the course, I was given many opportunities to perfect my own skill
set, and it took me quite some time to feel fully prepared for a presentation. However
I was surprised by how comfortable I felt speaking in front of an audience
after I was no longer nervous. In addition to thorough preparation, I also had
to learn the challenging art of keeping the audience engaged throughout the
speech. The skills helped me find
success in overcoming my weakness, and I learned how to better strengthen an
argument throughout an essay. The majority of the class focused on preparing
for the research project that was due at the end of the semester. The course
taught me how to find the most reliable information and how to find different
sources to strengthen the research. Since the research was supposed to be
translated into a documentary about topic, I also learned how to leverage new
video software and the basics of putting together a strong documentary.
Sunday, November 29, 2015
Wednesday, November 18, 2015
Gaining a New Insight
Heather Burns
WRD110-055
Jennifer Hudgens
November 15,
2015
Gaining a New Insight
: Storyboard
I am going to begin with a dark
screen that slowly fades into a video which scans the skyline of Cincinnati at
night. There is a river that separates Cincinnati and Kentucky, and across the river called Newport.
The famous Newport Aquarium in Newport, Kentucky faces the river and it is a perfect spot
to take a panoramic video because of the light from the skyscrapers. They illuminate the city and reflect beautifully off of the Ohio River.
The
imagery from this video reveals how wonderful the Greater
Cincinnati area truly is and the audience will hopefully be more motivated to want to help solve
this drastic problem effecting the community. There will be some time spent
introducing the documentary by previewing the title and important credits. Then,
it will lead a variety of texts scrolling across the bottom of the video flashing very
important and vital statistics that are meant to grab the audience’s attention.
These shocking facts will hopefully make the audience more engaged and cause them want to learn more about the situation. A few of the facts that I plan to mention are “There has been a
183 percent increase in heroin overdoses over the past 9 years” (Wood) and “In
the Greater Cincinnati area, there were 451 heroin cases reported in 2010. That
number increased by approximately 800% in 2013, when there were 3,570 cases
reported involving heroin” (Wood).
Since the statistics are meant to be dismal and shocking, the song choice
for this must portray the same mood. The song called Losing your Memory by
Ryan Star will slowly begin as the video fades into frame. I chose to use this
song because it includes the lyrics, “The damage is done. The police are coming too slow now. I would have
died. I would have loved you all my life” (Star). This song talks about
a death due to drug use and portrays a gloomy and sad tone about the woman he
loves slowly forgetting he ever existed. I think it perfectly fits into the introduction
and it will present a strong tone to inform the audience that this problem must
be handled in a very critical way.
Following this, the scene
transitions into a map of the Greater Cincinnati area. This will provide the audience
with a visual aid, so the visual learners in the audience can pinpoint the
location of the city. I also will be using tools to mark the image as I
describe the location of Loveland to make it easy to see.
I
plan to say:
“If you were
to look at Cincinnati on a map, you would see that there is a highway that
circles around the downtown area from the northern suburbs all the way to the
Ohio river which separates Ohio from Kentucky. These suburbs that are both
inside and outside of the circle are considered to be part of the Greater
Cincinnati area. There is a northeastern suburb that lies just off of highway
I-275, that is called Loveland.”
The next scene will show a video or picture that will
reference the subject I am talking about as I discuss past epidemics of heroin
that have emerged in large cities like Cincinnati. I intend to present evidence
from my secondary source by Jill Jonnes called, “Hep-cats, Narcs, and Pipe Dreams: A History of
America's Romance with Illegal Drugs.” The voice over will start from the most historic
heroin epidemics and will discuss the patterns seen over long periods of time.
It will also include how these big cities have overcome large drug problems. This
will present detailed information to the audience and cause them to be more informed
about the problem to make sure everyone in the audience can have the same understanding
of the background.
Since I am talking during the majority of the two previous scenes, I plan to either include subtle background music that is
very rhythmic. The song called No Diggity by Blackstreet (Remixed by Chet Faker)
is about a man who sings about a woman that he finds very attractive and
wants to date. The song references the man being a drug dealer, when the lyrics
say “Strictly biz, don't play around, cover much ground, got game by the pound,
getting paid is a forte, each and every day.” The song needs to be somewhat discrete in the
sense that it can not
distract the audience from the information I am discussing. So even though
those lyrics do refer to the subject I am discussing, I am planning on using
the remixed version because it has an excellent long instrumental verse in the
beginning of the song. This song will give a documentary some calm and steady background
noise.
The audience that I assume would be watching
my video would be relatively unaware of the drug, Heroin. Heroin is the poster
child of drugs that is referenced to scare teens and adults away from these
drugs. However, I have discovered that most do not know much about this drug
that has caused so much disturbance. The previous discussion about the past
outbreaks of heroin will come to a close and I will present background information
on Heroin.
I plan to incorporate:
“Researchers claimed heroin started to
take the place of crack cocaine because it is cheaper on the street and there
is a large supply of it. In Ohio, young adults between the ages of 25-36 are the
most at risk for trying and getting dependent on heroin. Heroin is made from
the extracts of the Asian opium poppy plant and is very addictive because it is
processed from morphine. Since over 23% of first time users become addicted,
the ability to get dependent is much higher than that of other narcotics. The individual's
drive for more and more constantly grows as they use which leads to fatal
overdoses because the fluctuating purity levels make it easy to take too much.”
The
background music that will be playing will be the instrumental version of Breathe
Me by Sia. This song has a very soft, subtle melody that is quite calming. But at the
same time, the mood seems to be quite eerie. The song will be very fitting for
the scene because the content is covering a deep topic and the music will add
to the mood I am trying to portray.
After that, I
plan to play a video that I took of cars passing by the Welcome to Loveland
sign to show the beauty and work done to this structure that characterizes the
city.
The video is used to symbolize welcoming the audience into the
town of Loveland.
I plan to say:
“Loveland is a growing, populous place full of smiling
faces where you can ride on the bike trail through the city or grab some ice
cream with friends down at the local Whippy Dip. The city is home to more than twelve
thousand people and has historical background that can be traced back to the
late 1700’s. The city of Loveland was actually founded by Colonel
Thomas Paxton, who served as Lieutenant Colonel of the Second Battalion of the
Bedford County Militia. A problem that is not seen upon first glance is the
fact Loveland is fighting a war on heroin. Heroin has slowly become a worsening
problem amongst young adults who are usually in their early to mid 20's. Within the last 5 years,
the whole Greater Cincinnati area has seen a sudden increase in the number of
heroin overdose deaths and that number continues to rise.”
The song I have picked out is called Home by Phillip Phillips. The
song is about a man who talks about making this new place a home with his lover
and has a fast rhythmic beat. The music in the background will portray a very friendly
and loving mood that would represent the community well.
I plan to use two of my secondary
sources that were both released by Fox News. The Fox 19 News reports supplied
information with a written and a visual explanation of the news story. I plan
to take sections from the videos to play on the screen. This will make the information
more impactful because the source is well known and trustworthy. One of the
sources will provide the audience with a real life occurrence of this problem affecting
a bystander to the situation. The other video from Fox 19 will discuss the
severity of the problem in the Hamilton county located within Loveland. The
evidence provided in these videos is critical to the argument because the
audience will be surprised to see the gross amount of evidence building, and show that this problem must be handled.
Then I will transition to a
video of the Little Miami river in Loveland, Ohio. The river that runs through the
city of Loveland is a very important feature and this will be where I will elaborate
more on the topics presented in the videos. The music will change to a deep and
strong tone that enforces the fact that this is a serious problem.
Immediately after, I will
transition to a scene from the US Attorney speech discussing how Ohio is said
to be the center for this current epidemic. This is a very important scene for
documentary because it is key evidence proving that this situation is impacting
a vast amount of people. Then, the video will transition back into video of the
Loveland bike trail or another video of the Miami river. I will voice over the
video and give a background behind the topic of drug trade. The evidence
supplied in this section will be found from a source written by Melissa Bull
called “Governing the Heroin Trade from Treaties to Treatment.” This is where there will be more explanation
of how this drug came to be prohibited in the United States. Then, the
discussion will use pieces of her argument to analyze why it is so difficult to
control the trade on drugs. The book also provides a detailed description of
the many ways that a drug problem can be handled by using the background knowledge
of how it was controlled in the past. The music will remain very calm and discrete,
but I want there to still be a sad tone to the music that captures the
depressing mood of these hard facts.
The video will fade into an
interview with a student that graduated from Loveland last year. Chris Fred is a
young man who had moved to the area when he was a freshman in high school. He
is a very outgoing and was affiliated with many groups of people in our grade.
Since he has a lot of connections to many different kids at the school, I
believed that he could provide an angle to the story that I cannot be achieved
through any of the secondary sources. Chris Fred was able to supply me with a
great deal of knowledge about the problem in Loveland because he had
experienced this drug impacting the community. Through this interview, he not
only gave a detailed description of a personal experience he had with heroin in
Loveland, but also, he described how one of his close friends became addicted
to heroin. He will be sitting in front of a neutral wall to try to limit the
background distractions and the screen will capture the upper half of his body.
Interview
Transcript-
Q:
Do you know of anyone or anyone’s friend who has used heroin or has gotten
addicted to heroin in Loveland?
A:
Uh.. Actually I have this one friend, I am not going to say his name, who ended
up doing heroin by his Junior year and was a really good friend of mine all
through high school. But I mean he kind of started to go off the chart, we used
to play basketball together and football. Then he started using heroin and just
would not even hang out with his friends anymore. He would not come to play a
game of basketball and just stopped doing a lot of the things he used to do. He
became really distant to both his family and myself. Unfortunately, he ended up
having to go to rehab for about 6 months to a year on and off. So it was a hard
time in his life, but the good thing is that he is clean now, which is cool and
awesome.
Q:
Prior to this have you ever had any experiences or knowledge of heroin in
Loveland?
A:
Yeah. Actually, there was one time when me and my buddy, Tylor Griffin were at
the skate park skating around and a couple of our buddies came over and started
skating with us. Right next to skate park is actually the basketball courts and
about 20 yards away there is a bathroom. There were a few young kids playing
basketball later that day and they told us that they thought someone was doing
drugs in the bathroom. So we told them, “Alright dude, we will go check it out.”
We went over there and as soon as we walk into the bathroom, there was a kid
sitting on the counter acting weird and messed up. There was two people hiding
inside the stall. So we went over to the stall and just opened it, there was
one kid lying on the ground looking all messed up and the other kid was in the
middle of putting the syringe in his arm. Obviously, we all kind of freaked out
and tried to figure out exactly what was going on there. We went off on them
and told them it was not okay for them to be doing that in here and especially right
around where kids were playing basketball in a public facility. When they
finally left, one of my buddies immediately called the cops and I guess there
were walking all around Loveland all messed up and they ended up getting
arrested. So I mean it was pretty weird to experience to have happened in such
a local skate park.
Then in my final scene, the video
will transition to a view of the Loveland bike trail to give the audience a
chance to get a look at the key features of the city. The tone will begin to
lighten up and the beat will be more fast pace. This is where the video will
slowly transition into the concluding argument that leaves the audience wanting
to do something about this epidemic in Loveland. The evidence that was provided
through out the documentary will be briefly mentioned and my final sentence is where
I will call the audience to action to do something about this epidemic. The scene
will end by fading back into a dark screen and the credits will roll with all
of the sources who helped solidify my case.
Briody,
Patrick. "Community Health Assessment for Greater Cincinnati." Health
Services Administration. Xavier University, 2004. Web. 19 Nov.
2015.
Bull, Melissa. Governing the Heroin Trade from Treaties to Treatment. Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008. Print. 22 October 2015.
Burns, Heather. Little Miami. Loveland, United States: 2015. Picture. 14 November 2015.
Burns, Heather. Welcome. Loveland, United States: 2015. Picture. 14 November 2015.
Faker,
Chet. "No Diggity (Boiler Room Live)." YouTube. Mushroom Music
Publishing, 9 Dec. 2014. Web. 18 Nov.
2015.
"INVESTIGATION:
Cincinnati’s heroin heartbreak." FOX19 Now. WXIX, 27 June 2012. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.
"Heroin Overdose a
Growing Trend in Hamilton." FOX19 Now. WXIX, 3 July 2013. Web. 27 Oct. 2015.
Phillips, Phillip. "Home (Instrumental)." YouTube. Pearson's Publishing Company, 23 May 2012. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.
Pistone, Mike.
"Night Reflections of Cincinnati." Flickr. Yahoo!, 20 Feb.
2011. Web. 18 Nov. 2015.
Sia. "Breathe Me (Instrumental)." YouTube.
Crush Music, 19 Apr. 2004. Web. 18
Nov. 2015. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nDxWnXNWweE.
Star, Ryan. "Ryan Star- Losing Your Memory." YouTube.
Island Records, 3 Aug. 2010. Web. 18 Nov.
2015.
Wood,
Emily. "US Attorney: Ohio at Center of National Heroin Epidemic."
WLWT5. Ohio/Oklahoma Hearst Television Inc., 14 May 2015. Web. 15
Oct. 2015.
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