Brief 2

Research & Deliverables

Possible texts to study:

Super Mario - reinforces idea that women need saving
Original animated Peter Pan (Disney) - full of harmful stereotypes about Native Americans
The Lone Ranger - a white man was cast in the role of a Native character (not sure if this counts)
any classic Western/cowboy movie - upholds the Hollywood myth of "American masculinity" by portraying the protagonists as patriotic, macho men who don't have emotions

We decided to challenge the ideas about Western masculinity that are present in many of the old cowboy movies and media.

IDEAS

This is our planning document, in which we recorded our ideas and references. I noted down the points about possible stereotypes to challenge, as well as retrieving several of the references.

Copy of CIM210.2 Semiotic Analysis Chart Template

1. This is our semiotic analysis. We chose to look at the 1968 movie 'Once Upon A Time In The West' as a specific text.

Copy of CIM210.2 Representation Remix Pitch Template

2. The slides for our remix pitch. I filled out the Analysis Overview, using our semiotic analysis table, and Sign 1 pages.

Copy of CIM210.2 Representation Remix Submission Template

3. This is our representation remix submission document. We all worked on it approximately equally. I wrote the second part of the Original Media Text section, as well as the first part of the Artists' Statement - the relationship between men and women in old Westerns. That was also the idea that I covered for the presentation.

Copy of CIM210.2 Group Meeting Record Template

4. I also made editable copies of the templates we'd need, and kept meeting minutes. It was a bit difficult to do this, as much of our discussions occurred online at varying times.

Reflections

Mid-Project Reflection

Proficiency: How did you develop your technical skills and knowledge? Give examples of the skills and knowledge, techniques, and self-directed research that inform your project (min. 50 words).

For this project, I learned what a semiotic analysis is. According to Leech & Onwuegbuzie, as cited in Riera (n.d.), explain semiotics to be "a science that explores the relationships between signs...and their intended specific meanings." Riera summarises this to be the study of when something that represents something else is presented in such a way so as to elicit a particular response. In order to get us started on our project, I did much of the research into what constituted masculinity in old Western movies.

Process: How did you improve your workflows and processes, including changes and setbacks? Give specific examples of your research and how it influenced your creative process (min. 50 words).

Because I don't have video-editing skills or software and I'm not a musician in any way, I'm trying to take on the written and research elements to make sure I'm contributing enough. So far, we haven't had much in the way of setbacks, but it was a bit difficult in the first week as we were missing a group member. The next week, a fourth member was also added to the group but once we'd caught her up on the plan it was fine.

Person: What communication and collaboration skills did this project require, and how did you develop these skills? How did you manage collaboration, receiving and giving feedback to others? (min. 50 words)

We set up a group Discord, into which I put links to all of the documents we'll need for this assignment. In class we were also given a meeting minutes template, and I volunteered to manage that. Eventually we decided on a specific text to study, having started with an idea to challenge, but as of writing only one member had actually seen it. The rest of us will try to watch it before the pitch in Week 6. We divvied up the presentation pitch template, and everyone wrote about one of the four ideology points we came up with.

Riera, J. J. (n.d.) Semiotic Theory. PressBooks. https://opentext.wsu.edu/theoreticalmodelsforteachingandresearch/chapter/semiotic-theory/

Self & Peer Assessment

Copy of CIM210.2 Self and Peer Assessment Template

This is the Google Drive folder for this project. It has a subfolder for my reflections, as well as one that is shared with the group and contains the other documents needed for submission.

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