(any actual prompt would look and feel much different than what’s here)

Experimenting with materials:  Texts, Images and the [political] cartoon genre

            Part 1:  Moving from visual arguments to textual ones

            As a homework assignment, the students should bring in to class some political cartoon that appeals to them, some cartoon they would like to explore a bit more.  I would do the same. 

Describing:  With these cartoons, our ultimate goal would be to “translate” them into “cartoons” solely composed of texts.  Before the class would be ready to do any sort of translation, they would have to work out just what the essential elements of the cartoon are and how those elements contribute to the message or the humor of the cartoon.  In other words, they would have to describe as fully as possible what the cartoon is “saying” or arguing and how. 

Translating:  With that accomplished, the class would attempt to retain all the essential elements of the cartoon they’ve brought in while converting them into textual form, using only letters, words, punctuation, etc. (On second thought, some cartoons might be too difficult to do this activity on.  So it might be better to pick the cartoons for them, ones that can more or less be easily “translated”.  More thought needed here.)

An example would have to be provided to make the students more comfortable with the assignment.  So, using the cartoon I’ve brought in, I’d walk them through the description and translation processes.  

Part II:  Moving from textual arguments to visual ones

Like the headings indicate, this part is the converse of Part I.  Here, I would bring in some sort of textual political parody or satire that makes use of readily identifiable images, metaphors, analogy, etc.  In other words, a textual argument with a heavily visual feel to it. 

Describing:  As a class, we’d sort out what the essential elements of the textual parody/satire are and how they work for the overall affect, the text’s humor or its argument.  In other words, we would try as fully as possible to describe what and how the author is presenting his message.

Translating:  The students would get in groups and talk about how to translate the message of this parody/satire to a visual format.  In Photoshop (probably) they would attempt to [re]produce the satire in some sort of cartoon.  The catch would be that for each group I would distribute the materials out of which they could construct their visual arguments.  The materials would be the same for all the groups.  The result, I presume, would be that each group would present these materials, lay them out, in different ways.  Whether textual materials will be incorporated here is something for further consideration. 

Part III:  Reflection on the Assignment

Large group discussion of the important decisions the groups made and why.

Experimenting with documentary and mockumentary

Prerequisites:

            Familiarity with video and audio editing (iMovie and Audacity)

            Familiarity with the documentary genre

The Concept:

            Everyone gets the same video and audio footage from some documentary or mockumentary.  In groups they’ll work on re-arranging these materials to alter the messages in some ways. 

Problem:

            As a class we should devise some specific ways to significantly alter what the movie is arguing.  Basically this would be coming up with lists about what could be done with exactly the same materials.  Maybe let the groups decide which ways they want to try and alter the video and audio. 

            Question of whether different effects are allowable.  Question of whether extra materials (i.e. audio or video) can be added.  Should be a fixed amount of time that the videos last though.