Reflection off a Broken Sword

This midterm project in English was different to say the least. Last year for English and History both of the projects practically the same. The English project was a podcast in which we had to tell the story of the a time in our life in which their was a great change. For the History project we had to create a short documentary on a topic. These two projects were basically recording audio from a script. The two projects had a little flair of the subject that they were assigned to, which is the only separation between the two projects. This year however the English project was unique if nothing else.

The first thing that I want to note about the project was choosing a character. This seemingly simple task was an integral part of the project as once done one would have to embody their character. I feel as though not enough emphasis was put on this part of the project. If we had time to create several ideas for the project before we selected a character the class might have had a better idea of what they were deciding. Each character has their own point of view that would ultimately dictate the project as a whole. This means that people should really think about who they want to choose as their character. They need a character who they can support enough that by the end of the project they can become the vision of that character’s thoughts. This being said I believe I had a good choice of character not because I believed all of his views but rather the strength of his message. Broken Sword is a character who basically is telling the world to give up on caring. Stop caring about their opinions. Stop caring about their rights. Stop caring about anything besides for kneeling down to the strongest tyrant. I do not support his views at all, but I think I was able to create a frame of mind in which I could look past all of the differences in our philosophies and focus on what we agreed. The idea of now war was one I think anyone could stand behind. And so, I chose this as the foundation of my support movement. Also since Broken Sword has his character tied so deeply to politics to begin with I believed that it would be fitting for me to chose him for the project. Character choice is something that should be looked at in greater depth next year, and for myself I believe that I figured out a way to provide the best campaign for a character that I chose not because of similarities but on strength of argument.

Throughout the process of the project there was a great amount of work and effort put into project. The creation of all of the website, pamphlet, and advertising were exhaustive. The video was a ton of work, as I had to first find a good program off of which I could create the video that would not break the bank. Somehow I found a program that was free for non-commercial use that was pretty good. The recording and editing were pretty easy once I found a selections of photos to use in the video. The website took a while to produce as there was a (not so) fair bit writing involved in the different sections and pages. The pamphlet was odd to work on as Mr. Yee had us wait on the creation of it until we had worked on our dystopian unit a little bit. In the end I waited until the night before to create the pamphlet the symposium not because I wanted to see if we would learn any good types of propaganda for the flyers. Sadly I do not have the belief that we learned any good way to control the masses. Overall the technology portion of the project was fun and different, but a lot of work. Do not change a thing about it.

The time and effort that was put into all of the seven steps huge, but I think it turned out well. In the end the symposium was a success in my opinion because of the work people had done. The last thing I want to touch on is the grading aspect of the project. I and some friends who were in both honors and regular English were talking and felt as though if we had even the slightest amount of feedback about project it would have helped us greatly. It would have shown us if we were on the right track to a successful project or were doing something wrong which we needed to change. We would have been able to change our projects to be more convincing and put together for the symposium. Also if we were given more clearly defined steps of the project it would have helped too. The steps had some directions, but some of them were not as detailed as I would have liked. Mr. Yee sometimes spoke to us about the portions of the steps in greater detail, but if those details were written down it would have helped along the way. In the end the project was fun and different, although next year there will not be as much political focus from the society for the presidential election, which might affect the project.