Evaluation over 2001 A Space Odyssey

Annah Humphries
Evaluation over:
2001 A Space Odyssey

Watching 2001 A Space Odyssey was little difficult for me being that it was full of science fiction and had very little dialogue. The movie really makes the viewer sit there and think when they view the film. The first time viewing this movie the intention of the movie was very unclear to me. I had trouble picking up the plot and distinguishing the motives between characters. I found the characters in the movie were very complex and had definite motives once I learned them. It took several views and a deeper examination of the film to discover these true motives and to relate to the characters. After being able to do this, I could evaluate the movie. Overall I found the lack of dialogue to be the biggest problem, which led to problems understanding the plot and the motives for the characters.
At the beginning of the movie, I think this was the hardest part to understand and grasp my attention. The apes came across a giant rectangular monolith. As soon as the apes saw this they began to wonder what it was but the giant rock was big in size and very hypnotizing. It began to make the apes become crazy like with their actions, which was very clear in the scene. But this large rock also brought revelation to them, and they soon learned how to provide food for themselves. The rock enlightened the apes and brought a sense of survival mode to them. While coming in contact with a pig, Moon-Watcher, the smartest and keenest of the apes picked up a rock and threw it at the pig. This rock killed the pig and allowed the apes to feast on it. This visual was a creative way of showing the evolution of the apes and their development due to the monolith. Since there was very little dialogue, this visual helped bring the concept full circle.
One of the biggest characters I had trouble understanding was Hal. He was a very intelligent computer operated robot, but his motives in the plot were uncertain to me. Hal at first seemed like a smart, witty robot that was there to navigate the voyage to Jupiter. As the movie went on I found his motive changing and his character to be somewhat untruthful. Hal was programmed to help Dr. David Bowman and Frank Pool get to Jupiter successfully to find out about the monolith. His plans quickly changed maliciously when he realized his existence was at stake. This caused for a change in the mood of the movie and other characters such as David Bowman changed their actions to accompany Hal’s.
Dr. David Bowman was one of the characters that stroke me as the most relatable. Throughout the movie I was looking for a character to relate to on an emotional level. Bowman quickly became the character that I felt was emotionally tied to the voyage. When Bowman found out that Pool had been sucked in by Hal and killed during this attempt, this really turned the tables for him in the movie. At this point, Bowman had revelation and better understanding of the voyage. Bowman accompanied his new eye-openers with actions. Quickly Hal became the victim and Bowman would disconnect him, so Hal would cease to exist. There was dialogue in the movie that showed revelation when Hal discovered what was happening to him, he says “I’m afraid, I’m afraid. Dave, Dave. My mind is going. I can feel it.” As Hal spoke his last words there was little bit of comic relief, Hal began to explain when and where he was created, who his instructor was, whom told him how to sing. Then Hal went on to sing a song to Bowman while he was beginning to lose all recollection of himself. In this moment the movie’s focus changed.
Bowman’s revelation of the purpose for the voyage was a new direction for the movie. Bowman discovered the purpose after Hal was excommunicated. There was a recording from Floyd that Bowman found and discovered his mission, which was to go to Jupiter and beyond the infinite. Bowman learns that he will be turned mortal toward the end of the movie. Bowman becomes more aware and his motives become clearer toward the end of the movie because of this discovery.

Creating a Portfolio

Personally, I have never had to create a portfolio for an english class, so this is all new to me. In the text, it explained there are five steps to creating a porfolio. They consists of finding the: purpose, audience, genre, stance and media. I imagine the main purpose of creating a portfolio in an english class would be to keep records of written essays and different projects in the class. The other step was recognizing your audience, which is important in any written paper or anything meant to be looked at, heard or read. It is crucial to know who your audience is so you can provide information that is appealing to the audience or reader. The other aspect of creating a portfolio was deciding a genre. When you pick a form of writing for the portfolio, it should be consistent throughout. Stance ties in with the audience because once you recognize the receiver, the author should have an idea of how they want to be portrayed by them. Today forms of communication varies greatly, so I can see why media and design is one of the elements to consider when making a portfolio. You can either choose paper or of course elecronics.

Evaluations

In the text the author stresses the importance of looking for a phone that has the main basic qualities. In the text the author evauluates the cell phone and its features. The author goes in to detail explaining the importance of these features in a phone and why they are needed. One of the features presented was the push to talk feature, compared to the walkie talkie. Although this feature may have been important when the article was published, now it is not the main feature people look for when they go hunting for a phone. Now I would say texting features many people look for and the apps in a cell phone. In the evaluation, I think there was a certain expectation the author had for cell phones, and that will most likely change over time.

Evaluating Fairly

I realize that when you are evaluating something you look at the most important aspect that interest you. For instance if you were going to evaluate a movie. The part in the movie that struck you the most would probablly be evaluated. When evaluating something you need to have a justified reason for backing your belief up. This is very important, so people will have a reason to agreee with you or disagree. One way you can do this is by quotes that were given either in the movie or book.

Project Winding Down

This past week our group met at the library. Our goal was to revise our writing, add more pictures if needed and decide what we needed for our survey. One of my group members and I, explained to everyone in the group what we thought was the main problem. Some of these ideas we got from the writing center. One of my group members and I went to the writing center this past week. It was very helpful. Our instructor gave us points on how we should make sure each page is in the same format. She gave suggestions on how we should make sure each page is the same in length and our message is to the point. Overall the writing center was really helpful for our group project, because it gave us helpful ideas to bring back to our group.

Plans for the Project

One of the ways I plan to show why people use facebook is by taking a survey. The survey will consists of seven different reasons people might use facebook. Each person is supposed to select all the reasons that apply. The survey will be given to random people who already have a facebook page. It will be posted on the status and a link will be sent to people randomly. There will not be a specific group, the selection of people will be varied. In this study, we want to get feedback from people of different gender, ages, and race. This way we will have a more broad feedback.

Plans for the Project

In our group we all decided to put together a website explaining facebook and what it is. We were all assigned to a topic and a page to do. We have access to other pages on the website if we wanted to help someone else. Lately our group has met in the library to work on the project. Individually we have been looking for information on our own. In class, when we have time to work on it, we talk about what we have found and brainstorm.

Creating our webpage

This week my group met in the library to work on our project. We decided as a group, we wanted to create a website that enlightens people about facebook. Our audience is the average person, who lacks knowledge about facebook. A person who has heard of facebook, but does not know how to go about creating one, our website would be helpful to them. Also a person who has a facebook, but is unaware of the terms and agreements that are on the facebook page, our website tell them about those. Our page is designed to persuade people that facebook can be very helpful for networking and can be a safe website.

Choosing you audience

In the reading they explained how it was important to look at your audience before writing a text to figure out what approach your paper should take. This is very important because it allows your argument to be more effective. It depends on the audience and who the author is trying to persuade as far as the use of pictures, the type of font, graphs, etc. If the author has no idea who they are trying to persuade and they start a power point or a paper they can run into problems. For example if a person started writing a paper on the importance of eating vegetables had no idea they were trying to persuade elementary students and their paper or power point had no pictures and used superior vocabulary, it would be of no benefit to the children.
The text also talked about the importance of picking the right approach when you post something online. This is true for any web page. If you want to try to convince someone who is looking at your page, it makes since to make sure you know what message you are sending and exactly who you are trying to convince. I personally have never done a web page because it seems like to broad of a audience to try to figure out who is reading the text, but in some cases it can be convincing and persuasive with the right approach.

Reading Text

Reading text can be tricky at times. Sometimes when I read an article or an something, I find myself forgetting the key concept of the text. Something that I've found that helps me is highlighting what I think are key points while I am reading. This way, I can go back and look over those key points. Another think that the text mentioned is to think about what the author meant by the article or reading. I try to look for the main point of the article. This helps give me an overall concept of what I read.

Advertising

I would say advertising has evolved tremendously throughout the decades. In the text it said that most advertisements would focus on women pleasing men. In advertising today I would say it works both ways. You see a little bit of both, especially in commercials. For example a commercial about deoderant geared toward men, may involve a women being mesmerized by the scent. Vice Versa, a commercial talking about a certain perfume geared toward a woman, may involve a man being mesmerized by that scent. So definitely the expected audience is different in advertising today.

Revising and Proofreading

When I write a paper the most important step to me is editing the paper. In revisng the paper you are able to make decisions about what you want to add to your paper. This is kind of brainstorming after you have written the paper. After I write a paper, usually I read it then decide which paragraphs need more details added to them. After that I start thinking about what would be relavent and good to add to that paragraph. When I am editing my paper, it seems like all the details come out then.

Revising

Revising a paper is one of the most crucial stages of organizing a paper. It takes time and a critical eye to revise a paper correctly. If your paper is not revised correctly, the end product will not be what you expected. I believe before revising their is another important step in composing a paper, getting reviews from your peers. This can be extremely helpful, the text insist that people are not always keen with their own eye when it comes to reviewing their own paper. Having someone revise your paper who knows what to look for and has a critical eye greatly helps the writing process. It seems like in the past years, everytime I have a paper to write there is useful feedback by my peers. It helps open your eyes to new ideas and leaves room for improvement.

Writing Smart

In the text, there were points made about writing at the best time and place for you. One of the best situations I write best in is while listening to music. It seems as though all of my brightest ideas come to me then. On the other hand, I can write just about anywhere, on a couch, at the desk, it doesn't really matter where I'm sitting. I think it's all about finding your comfort place and then sticking to it. In the reading there was also mention about writing memoirs, which is writing about something that is significant to you. Writing a memoir is one of my favorite writing styles. You get to talk about experience and what is important to you. It also makes it enjoyable to read about others experiences and what they learned from them.

Words are Empowering

In the text there were three different individuals who were influenced by reading and writing. For example Tanya Barrientos a Latino, was greatly influenced by the reading, writing, and speaking the English language though it eventually lead her to set aside her native language. Frederick Douglass was also greatly influenced by reading books or anything he could find to read. In the text it says he found a purpose in all of his reading. Malcolm X was also influenced by reading in prison. Malcolm X found interest in anything he thought would make a brighter future for his people. In Amy Tan's narrative she talks about how her mother's use of English inspired her to become better writer and speaker.
All of their stories are different but they have one essential theme. All of the authors were influenced to write by others. No matter what the circumstance was they found a way to better themselves by reading or writing.

Writing Appropriately

In the reading the author stresses the importance of knowing your audience when you write a text. It is essential that you know what your audience already is aware of and what they want to be informed on. It is also important that you are presenting your text in a way that is acceptable to the reader. If a writer does not know who their audience is, the author stresses, they should become aware of what kind of information they should be presenting. In the reading it also characterizes a good narrative. A good narrative is detailed, has good dialogue and has a connection to the rest of the text at the ending. As a student, and someone who has read many books, articles, postings, and other various text, I agree a writer should be familiar with their audience. I also know from first hand experience that the form you write and how a person writes should be appropriate to the reader.
In the text the author says, "Do unto audiences as they would do unto you." This quote is very true. If I were writing to a future employee in the form of a resume it should be appropriate. For example jargon is not acceptable and most likely would lead to a negative response. In an english class the use of slang or short hand would not be acceptable in an english paper, for example. It is always important that a writer's text is acceptable to the one receiving it.

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