Blog Post 7

I chose this video because I think that it presents its argument in an interesting way. It has various ways of trying to persuade people to vote. The thing that made me check out the video was that I saw Jonah Hill was on the video. I clicked on it because I think that he is a really funny guy and I was up for a laugh. When I viewed the actual video though, I was in for a surprise, because even though the video itself has some funny parts, the main purpose is to persuade people to vote. This is a good demonstration of how various tactics are used to draw audience to the essay, or in this case video, persuading them. The celebrities that are used are all celebrities that we know; Ellen DeGeneres, Toby Maguire, Jennifer Aniston, and many others. This makes the viewer want to see what their favorite celebrities are doing on You Tube, and upon watching it they are confronted with a bigger issue than seeing what Leonardo DiCaprio is up to.
The second thing that draws attention to their argument is that instead of begging people to vote, they actually tell you not to. We are so used to hearing people tell us to vote that it definitely shocks us when we are told not to. After telling us not to vote they make a point to say that you shouldn’t vote unless you care about certain issues. The fact that they don’t force voting on you makes it seem like more of a choice, they use a more persuasive tactic than a forcible one. I think that they have a very effective way of incorporating their humor while still keeping the video a persuasive one. To me this is a good example of how to use celebrities, humor, and subtle persuasion to get the desired result.

Blog Post 6

In the music video for the song “Broken” the first thing I see is a desert. Barren, desolate, alone. It sets the mood for the song. I see a lone scarecrow. As I focus on the scarecrow, I see the black smoke in the background. There is a figure coming closer to me. The figure is dressed all in black. A phantom from one of my nightmares.
The focus suddenly changes and I am focused on the singer, his arresting voice pulling me to the music. I focus on him sitting in the old white beater of a car singing his heart out holding his guitar in his hand, coaxing sound from the instrument. As the scene changes I focus on the woman walking by herself, wearing black wings. She seems so alone and sad, like the desert that she is walking through. The song seems so depressing, yet when they reach the chorus and are singing together, all of the darkness goes unnoticed, I am flung into the world of music where everything is about the auditory not the visual, their voices crescendo to the end of the chorus and suddenly I am back in the visual world.
I focus once again on the singer, this time Amy Lee. I am no longer paying as much attention to the words so much as the appearance of the video. I notice the black of her wings. The black of the smoke. The contrast between the black and white seems so obvious when their voices are not mixing. They sing the chorus three times more, each time that they stop and start again I am swayed between the visual and auditory worlds, both working together but always one overpowering the other. The final words are sung and the only thing that I hear is the last bit of music playing. I pay attention to the black smoke. The bright orange of the fire. The burning scarecrow. The five black figures disappearing behind the hill.

Explanation
I start out by telling about the desert that you first see, since it is barren and desolate I made my sentences short and choppy. The words are not very colorful or elaborate, just like the scene is. As the chorus begins the sentences begin to flow much more smoothly and the words are more intricate. I shift between these two styles of writing throughout just like the music video does. I also tried to incorporate the word black into my writing, because it is one of the most common colors in the video. In the end I go back to the choppy style of writing just like the video begins and ends with the scarecrow.