Project List

PART II. Pans Labyrinth Project

Choose from one (or more) of the following projects to demonstrate your ability to interpret the film, Pans Labyrinth.

It’s Opening Night: An Art Gallery Display

Have you ever been to an Art Gallery? Paintings are the most commonly displayed art objects; however, sculpture, decorative arts, furniture, textiles, costume, drawings, pastels, watercolors, collages, prints, artists' books, photographs, and installation art are also regularly shown. Sometimes, too, art galleries house performance art, audio files of music concerts, or live or recorded poetry readings.

Your Art Gallery Display would be dedicated to the author and Pans Labyrinth and the themes that emerge. The series of objects you select would have cultural and thematic significance to the author and text due to the descriptions you attach to them, so each Art Gallery Display item should have a 2-3 sentence caption that describes the thematic significance of the object. Your Art Gallery design will make it unique and captivating! Use Interpretation to bring it to life!

The Village Voice: Blog Posts

Don’t want to feel restricted? Why not create a blog and a series of blog posts, each of which draws on the author, text, and themes? Think of the blog posts as a narrative compilation of print, audio, visual, video, and digital elements that builds from a beginning, to the middle, and to the end. Do extend beyond a mere print narrative; it just doesn’t work any longer in our world of media texts where look invites readers inside to absorb ideas.

These Blog Posts do take vision and a rather global worldview about your author, your text, and its overarching themes. Be enthusiastic, creative, clever, and--- above all--- zoom in on the themes through Interpretation. You should have at least five Blog Posts for this project, but, as always, concise language and quality of analysis takes precedence over length.

The Real Self Exposed: A Body Biography

This is a digital human outline that you fill with images and words that represent your understanding of themes through Interpretation. The Body Biography is a visual and written portrait illustrating several aspects of the character's life journey. To do this project well, you’ll probably have a Google home page and several sub-pages that zoom in on the different parts of the body and their metaphorical significances that emerge thematically through the middle part of the text.

Step back and think about each part of the body and decide what symbols the different parts stand for in relation to this character’s life. Heart (love), spine (motivation), hands (touch), feet (the life journey), and other body parts (beliefs and values), have special meanings to your character. Interpret those meanings. Also, include rich descriptive passages of your own writing and voice to support your ideas through thematic presentations of interpretation.

Real World Composing: A Graffiti Wall

Think of your website as a long wall--- a panorama --- a canvas on which you provide your own imprint and impressions of themes that emerge in your text. Prominently write the name of your author and text in large and interesting (read: graffiti-like) font. Create a splash of words and images that emerge thematically from your text through Interpretation. Suggested areas of composition include research (correctly cited), important words and phrases, quotations about the text from experts, and rich descriptive passages of your own writing and voice to support your ideas.

When you're done, it should look like a Graffiti Wall but have a persuasive message that connects the items to the issue at hand. A nice style can be seen at http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/09/14/tribute-to-graffiti-50-beautiful-graffiti-artworks/ --- which, although not originally composed for academic purposes, offer keen samples. Graffiti can be fun when filtered through Interpretation.

Read All about It! International Newspaper

Create your own International Newspaper by creating a layout that seems like it is a real newspaper. Your composition must have at least two pages: a front page and the article that continue from the front page onto a second page. Moreover, in this age of digital news, you must hotlink your original International Newspaper to other texts you have compiled.

Your newspaper’s style is derived from its banner, headlines, photographs, captions, interviews, advertisements, attributions, contexts, stories, and other typical elements. You might surf newspapers around the world, too, to learn what elements other people in other countries do to create their newspapers. A good place to start is at the website, Commondreams.org, which has a left frame with hotlinks to major international daily newspapers. Remember: your topic is this author, Pans Labyrinth, and its overarching themes, so draw upon Interpretation to bring your International Newspaper to life with unique points of view.

“With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility” (Spiderman): An Internet Comic Book

Create an Internet Comic Book of words and images of sequential art about your author, your text, and the . Integrate a narrative about different dimensions and controversies of this author and Pans Labyrinth into a flexible and powerful printed format. This project selection is not for the art-challenged, like Dr. Carolyn! You must be able to upload your final Comic Book onto your class blog, so be conscious of any technology needs ahead of time if you choose this project. If you’d like to see a variety of web-based comic books (warning: some are not for the faint-of-heart), click here.

Movie Trailer

The goal is to create a movie trailer of a fictitious movie based on this author and Pans Labyrinth. First, write a blueprint of your script. Next, plan out how you will assemble visuals and narration into a cohesive narration. You can film it or create a Microsoft Photostory or Microsoft Movie Maker composition.

Music Montage

This is a compilation of several pieces of music ---songs from CD tracks --- that speak to the various themes that emerge from Your author and Your text. This should be accompanied with visuals and/ or lyrics to create a multimodal response. Post the lyrics with songwriter credits on your class blog... but beware of copyright infringement! An alternative version would be to survey all the different songs that writers have composed as a result of reading this author and Pans Labyrinth. To do this in a more complex way, you could also layer narration and graphics into a streamed series of slides about your author that use music to create meaning about your text. Our own high school Sound in the Hall recording studio may be of assistance to you. Thanks in advance, Mr. Peacock!

Public Service Advertisement (PSA)

What is a public service advertisement? A PSA is intended to benefit the public interest, by raising awareness of an issue to the general public. Maybe, with your persuasive abilities, people will change their attitudes or opinions about the issue you choose to target.

How can you create a public service advertisement (PSA) that would highlight an issue that emerges from Your text? It should highlight visual aspects of the issue for your audience by including a slogan, captions, and prominent and easy-to-comprehend visual icons. It should be 8.5” x 11” and be able to be reproduced as a full-page magazine ad. Beware! It's difficult to create a PSA that looks like a professional advertising agency composed it. You'll need to learn about the various elements that contribute to a persuasive PSA.

Storify: The Globe’s the Limit

Create a Storify that gathers together what other people around the world are saying about your author, text, and/or themes. Cite and synthesize each story or article’s main idea in 2-3 sentences in a text box above your story or article. Remember to focus on the thematic significance!

Super Film Review

What is a “Super Film Review? Well, a “book review” is a personal interpretation of a full-length text that is published as a guide for future possible readers. A “Super Film Review” would be a series of film reviews, but you would take on different points of view in each film review that you compose.

To begin, you should also review other book reviews on the internet to get a sense of what a published book review is really like. You need to look at and critique their reviews so you demonstrate real comprehension of the genre. In addition to posting on your website, you must also post your review on Amazon with your pseudonym. As with all assignments, please be careful to create your own review with your own original voice.

‘Zine

This on-line magazine reflects your personal feelings, opinions, and uncertainties about this author and Pans Labyrinth. You can hotlink to other texts such as editorial, newspaper columns, feature articles, blogs, and advertisements. A ‘Zine is a hypertext composition, so you need to make design decisions about layout, white space, fonts, color balance, visual proportioning, and headlines. But a ‘Zine is full of you: your voice will resonate here in a way that you may find unusual in an academic setting.