Visual Rewrite – TristanB50

Posted on April 2, 2023 by tristanb50

End Family Fire: Gun Safety

0:00-0:02

We open with an American children’s cartoon on a very grainy, old-seeming TV. Despite this being a recent ad, it seems like the old TV is used to tell us these people aren’t particularly wealthy. The cartoon features a man riding an old-timey train. A child is watching TV, most likely a boy.

0:02-0:05

We pan up from the back of the room to see the boy is asleep in front of the TV, wearing pajamas. He is surrounded by toys and coloring books, and is laying alone. It’s visibly morning from the light and his pajamas, but he’s already fallen asleep, indicating maybe he fell asleep in front of the TV the night before. It’s likely his parents do not regularly check up on him, possibly they are too busy. The house behind him is slightly cluttered, most of it done by the kid. We see his father enter who begins tickling him, waking him up. From the lack of attention he receives, you assume this boys father lives alone, maybe divorced. He is older, white, wearing a gray and blue outfit, and seems to be in his 50s. His son laughs, and he walks into the other room. We get the impression that he loves his son, but maybe he isn’t around to watch him enough.

0:05-0:10

We see the son get up, and get a closer look at his face. He looks about 4-5 years old, and his shirt matches his dads shade of blue. After his father walks into the other room, we seem him lying on his back, almost frozen. He seems like after being quickly awoken, he is thinking or remembering something. He has a serious look on his face, and he turns to look where his father is headed. 

0:10-0:14

The father enters the kitchen, and we focus on the kitchen. Like his son, his father also seems to have a habit of leaving things out. We see an apple core, some stacked bowls, and a knife sitting on the counter. The knife shows us how the fathers carelessness could potentially be dangerous, leaving out cutlery in his child’s grasp. He rolls up his sleeves, as if he’s about to begin cleaning up. His entrance and his messy house imply that he was out the night before, maybe drinking or seeing someone. Just as he enters, he turns around with a quizzical look on his face. He continues walking and rolling up his sleeves, but his attention seems to be in the other room with his son.

0:15-0:17

The kid, now standing up, seems to be telling or asking his father something. We get the impression that he was telling his father something as he was walking off, but his father continued on thinking little of it. The boy now has a serious look on his face, clashing with his fathers careless attitude. This presents the kid to be the responsible one, and the father to be more like a deadbeat. Whatever he is saying seems to carry a lot of weight, and is likely the message behind the PSA.

0:17-0:21

The background quickly cuts to black, and text fades in. It describes the dangers of having children around guns, citing 8 kids a day are harmed or killed by family fire. His father is framed to represent gun-owning parents as a little thoughtless. It is similar to him leaving the knife on the counter.

0:21-0:25

Family fire is defined as a shooting that involves a gun being improperly stored. This definition almost frames the failure to hide guns as if the parents are giving kids guns to play with. We finally understand the meaning of the bit before, thinking back to the kid who was on his own in a house to himself. They use the scenario from before to give ourselves a situation to attach to, seeing how it could go wrong. 

0:25-0:37

The video concludes with a link to the website EndFamilyFire.org, featuring the promise to “make your homer safer.” We see their logo next to the website, as well as the ad councils logo in the bottom left. This last bit remains for much longer than the first two, perhaps to leave room for parting words or allowing people the time to write down the website.

Posted in Portfolio TristanB, TristanB, Visual Rewrite | Leave a comment

Causal – TristanB50

Posted on April 1, 2023 by tristanb50

After the first highways were built, the idea of being able to walk to place to place became forgotten. Infrastructure matched the new roads, building superstores with large parking lots bigger than football fields. American families reflect the need for cars in their ownership, as we see families owning more cars now than ever. Looking at data from the past 60 years, Jean-Paul Rodrigue, author of The Geography of Transport Systems, found single-car household switched from being the majority to the minority, as 59% of households owning two or more cars. It’s not a surprise that by giving cars this much power, it eventually sacrifices the ability to walk places. However, losing the baseline mode of transportation and putting it in the hands of a product can be risky. The everly increasing unwalkbality of communities combined with the increased cost of car ownership may bring on a mass transportation crisis.

As anyone in New Jersey can tell you, developers often choose to build communities alongside large highway projects as a way to connect them by car. Rather than building communities with built in places of work, they are solely meant to house people, relying on highways for the extra amenities. To achieve this, these communities often utilize large wide streets and large multi-car driveways for their residents. Areas like these are very difficult to traverse without a car due to the massive gaps between buildings, much of which designed to better accommodate cars than their residents. Not only are singular communities built to be dispersed internally, but developments are often separated from other communities, as a result of being planned separately by different developers. The negative effects of using this unplanned development strategy become amplified on a larger scale, as the residential communities in the same region are left isolated from each other, and from their goods and services. As a result, the residents living in these communities become extremely dependant on cars, and can only walk to other houses within their neighborhood (given that their neighborhood has walking space at all.)

 Living in areas like these, it is a lot more common for families to have multiple cars, as they are really given no other options for necessities like groceries. On a larger scale, this significantly increases the car activity in the areas highways and neighborhoods. The two choices the government generally provides are keeping it as is, or constructing more lanes to free up traffic. Unbeknownst to the government employees, this approach has proven to be ineffective at decreasing congestion in the long term, and has actually proven to increase commuting times. effectively restarts the cycle, cursing future developments to be constructed even further apart. Road services become the backbone of peoples livelihoods, requiring cars as an entry requirement. But when access to cars are jeopardized, the absence of alternatives really stands out.

At a time like right now, the paywall behind vehicle ownership is getting a stronger hold on our access to transportation. Whether buying new or used, cars are generally running unproportionally higher than they were going back a few years. NPR‘s Camila Domonoske, a writer who focuses on transport and energy, found that used cars are averaging $28,000 on the market, an unprecedented price similar to the cost of a new car a few years ago. New cars follow the same pattern, sitting around $48,000 on average, nearly double the price of a used car. This is due partly to supply chain issues, but can also be attributed to the increased quality and longevity modern cars have garnered in the past 20 years. People often don’t buy new cars as often anymore, and as a result there are less cars on the market. Many people don’t buy new cars until they absolutely need to. Combined with the increased costs of repairs due to better labor wages, car ownership could become a much larger factor in the average cost of living than before. The same NPR article addresses the relationship between repairs and new cars, arguing, “Faced with high repair costs a few years ago, drivers might have looked for a replacement vehicle instead. But now cheap rides are extremely hard to find in the used car market.” The car market has changed so rapidly that the strategy the industry staked itself on no longers works, which over time could spell disaster for it’s customers. Depending on how much the cost of car ownership hikes, it possible that many drivers would be off the road entirely, unable to afford to get back on.

While this issue seems like it could have the positive side effect of getting drivers off the road, ultimately it would uphold highways as a mode of transportation only for those who can afford, limiting the “freedom” that cars aim to guarantee. This foreseeable outcome could lead to a potential transportation crisis in the aforementioned unwalkable communities. To many Americans, car ownership is the sole Jenga brick supporting the tower. As 2018 Pew Research study on American demographic shifts found, rural and suburban communities house 46 million and 175 million Americans respectively, combining to make up ⅔ of the population. Many of these areas lack public transportation and walkability, making them at the mercy of any issues in the car supply chain. People who cannot afford to purchase or fix their vehicles might find themselves losing their jobs, ultimately leaving them stranded without hope of fixing the issue. 

While a transportation crisis would certainly be disastrous, the United States is in prime position to implement dramatic change to it’s infrastructure.With the climate crisis constantly looming over the countries head, many lawmakers are opting to stop selling gasoline cars in X amount of years. The subsidies, infrastructure, and political energy necessary to pull off a plan like this could be reallocated to invest in public transport, which could both reduce emissions on a large scale and challenge the inequality in personal transport. In addition to this, it would still follow the same tenants as highway widening, freeing up roads while providing people with an alternative to driving.

References:

Domonoske, C. (2022, November 4). It’s not just buying a car – owning one is getting pricier, too. NPR. Retrieved March 26, 2023, from https://www.npr.org/2022/11/04/1133678811/used-cars-new-prices-price-costs-maintenance-inflation-expensive 

Mitchell, T. (2020, May 30). 1. demographic and economic trends in urban, suburban and rural communities. Pew Research Center’s Social & Demographic Trends Project. Retrieved March 31, 2023, from https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2018/05/22/demographic-and-economic-trends-in-urban-suburban-and-rural-communities/ 

Rodrigue, J.P. (2020) Percentage of households by number of vehicles, 1960-2020: The Geography of Transport Systems. The Geography of Transport Systems | The spatial organization of transportation and mobility. (2022, November 9). Retrieved April 1, 2023, from https://transportgeography.org/contents/chapter8/urban-transport-challenges/household-vehicles-united-states/ 

Sparre-Enger, H. (2020, May 13). Expanding road capacity in urban areas resulted in urban sprawl, more traffic and more motorists. Nordic Road and Transport Research. Retrieved March 29, 2023, from https://nordicroads.com/expanding-road-capacity-urban-areas-resulted-urban-sprawl-traffic-motorists/

Posted in Causal Argument, Portfolio TristanB, TristanB | 2 Comments

Visual- Rowanluver29

Posted on April 1, 2023 by rowanluver29

Need a Link to your Video, Please

0:00-0:05

This ad starts off showing the back of a little girl or youngest daughter with two braided pig tails walking into what seems to be the master bedroom of the house. This clip was very short before the camera switched to a close up to a little girls face who looked annoyed and impatient staring at something that was a little bit to the right of the cameras location. Giving the impression she was trying to get the attention of something in the bedroom. The next shot was a mother gasping and looking to her right at an alarm clock on the night stand, causing her to shoot out of bed, and give her husband a shove to awake him soon after she realized what time it had been. The husband in the clip opened his eyes quickly to the sudden aggression and seemed to almost roll of the bed before the scene cut off and switched to a separate bedroom. This first clip tells us as an audience that the ad is going to show the family rushing around to get out the door efficiently and on time.

0:05-0:08

            The next three seconds show the father in what seems to be his tween son’s bedroom. The bedroom is painted blue with different posters and metals that scattered yet fill the walls of the bedroom. There is an astrology project of some sort that is hanging from his ceiling, crutches leaning against the wall, clothes on his bedroom floor, and different sports balls being held in a wooden box next to his bright blue nightstand that only is used to hold a lamp, extra books and a trophy. His bed is in the left corner of his room from our perspective in the doorway, with his window to be to the right of the bed. The father in the commercial stands by the window calmy, and opens the blinds indicating for his son to know its time to get out of bed. As he goes to walk away, the son’s immediate response was to quickly close the blinds with his eyes squinted shut that his father had just opened. His father just turned back around and looked back and the closed blinds he just opened before it cut to the next clip.

0:09-0:11

Next as an audience we are staring down at a bowl of cereal while a splash of milk gets poured into the bowl before the camera cuts to an angle that shows the doorframe to the kitchen and the activity that is going on inside of it. The father is standing in his robe while he pulls the milk carton away from the cereal and inspecting the inside of it realizing it is empty and there was not even enough to fill up once bowl of cereal. He slumps his shoulders and tilts his head back in annoyance while staring in front of him with a look of disbelief on his face. While the father comes to this realization, his youngest daughter is dancing carelessly around the kitchen in her pajamas.

0:12-0:15

            The mother in the ad is on her knees in the middle of a hallway rummaging through a large pile of shoes quickly with a stressful look plastered across her face. Her oldest daughter is standing in a doorframe to her right holding one of her cleats while looking down at her mother who is vigorously searching for the other one. When the mother pulls her hand out of the pile holding up the matching cleat happily, her daughter grabs it from her hand and turns around and walks away leaving her mother on the floor buried in a large pile of shoes. The mother throws her hands up and gives her daughter a specific look that indicates she was expecting a thank you but did not get one.

0:16-0:21

The camera switches to another situation that is going on in the house, which is the father taking a load of pink laundry out of the dryer with concern while plopping it onto the door of the open dryer and inspecting it. It then cuts to a little boy/youngest son, who is looking at his father take the pink clothes out of the dryer in the narrow laundry room. It cuts back to the father who is peeling off a bright red sock that was stuck to a men’s dress shirt. This indicates that the laundry was supposed to be white, but the red sock turned everyone’s clothes for the day pink. His mouth was slightly open in disbelief while looking at the sock and shirt to make sure if what he was seeing was really happening.  

0:21-0:25

            The last clip shows the family in their car starting at the back row and having the camera back up to show the three rows and all family members in the car. It started in the third row with the oldest son and oldest daughter buckling their seatbelts in all pink outfits, next it shows the youngest daughter and son who are smiling nodding their heads at their father who is looking back at them, also all in fully pink outfits. Once the camera gets to the front of the car, it shows the mother buckling her seatbelt before her and her husband make reassuring eye contact and nod their heads indicating that they were all ready to go, again in all pink outfits.

Posted in RowanLuver, Visual Rewrite | 4 Comments

Visual Rewrite – Rowanluver29

Posted on April 1, 2023 by rowanluver29

0:00-0:05

This ad starts off showing the back of a little girl or youngest daughter with two braided pig tails walking into what seems to be the master bedroom of the house. This clip was very short before the camera switched to a close up to a little girls face who looked annoyed and impatient staring at something that was a little bit to the right of the cameras location. Giving the impression she was trying to get the attention of something in the bedroom. The next shot was a mother gasping and looking to her right at an alarm clock on the night stand, causing her to shoot out of bed, and give her husband a shove to awake him soon after she realized what time it had been. The husband in the clip opened his eyes quickly to the sudden aggression and seemed to almost roll of the bed before the scene cut off and switched to a separate bedroom. This first clip tells us as an audience that the ad is going to show the family rushing around to get out the door efficiently and on time.

0:05-0:08

            The next three seconds show the father in what seems to be his tween son’s bedroom. The bedroom is painted blue with different posters and metals that scattered yet fill the walls of the bedroom. There is an astrology project of some sort that is hanging from his ceiling, crutches leaning against the wall, clothes on his bedroom floor, and different sports balls being held in a wooden box next to his bright blue nightstand that only is used to hold a lamp, extra books and a trophy. His bed is in the left corner of his room from our perspective in the doorway, with his window to be to the right of the bed. The father in the commercial stands by the window calmy, and opens the blinds indicating for his son to know its time to get out of bed. As he goes to walk away, the son’s immediate response was to quickly close the blinds with his eyes squinted shut that his father had just opened. His father just turned back around and looked back and the closed blinds he just opened before it cut to the next clip.

0:09-0:11

Next as an audience we are staring down at a bowl of cereal while a splash of milk gets poured into the bowl before the camera cuts to an angle that shows the doorframe to the kitchen and the activity that is going on inside of it. The father is standing in his robe while he pulls the milk carton away from the cereal and inspecting the inside of it realizing it is empty and there was not even enough to fill up once bowl of cereal. He slumps his shoulders and tilts his head back in annoyance while staring in front of him with a look of disbelief on his face. While the father comes to this realization, his youngest daughter is dancing carelessly around the kitchen in her pajamas.

0:12-0:15

            The mother in the ad is on her knees in the middle of a hallway rummaging through a large pile of shoes quickly with a stressful look plastered across her face. Her oldest daughter is standing in a doorframe to her right holding one of her cleats while looking down at her mother who is vigorously searching for the other one. When the mother pulls her hand out of the pile holding up the matching cleat happily, her daughter grabs it from her hand and turns around and walks away leaving her mother on the floor buried in a large pile of shoes. The mother throws her hands up and gives her daughter a specific look that indicates she was expecting a thank you but did not get one.

0:16-0:21

The camera switches to another situation that is going on in the house, which is the father taking a load of pink laundry out of the dryer with concern while plopping it onto the door of the open dryer and inspecting it. It then cuts to a little boy/youngest son, who is looking at his father take the pink clothes out of the dryer in the narrow laundry room. It cuts back to the father who is peeling off a bright red sock that was stuck to a men’s dress shirt. This indicates that the laundry was supposed to be white, but the red sock turned everyone’s clothes for the day pink. His mouth was slightly open in disbelief while looking at the sock and shirt to make sure if what he was seeing was really happening.  

0:21-0:25

            The last clip shows the family in their car starting at the back row and having the camera back up to show the three rows and all family members in the car. It started in the third row with the oldest son and oldest daughter buckling their seatbelts in all pink outfits, next it shows the youngest daughter and son who are smiling nodding their heads at their father who is looking back at them, also all in fully pink outfits. Once the camera gets to the front of the car, it shows the mother buckling her seatbelt before her and her husband make reassuring eye contact and nod their heads indicating that they were all ready to go, again in all pink outfits.

Posted in Portfolio RowanLuver, RowanLuver, Visual Rhetoric | Leave a comment

Visual Rewrite – Sunflower

Posted on April 1, 2023 by sunflower0311

0:01: The commercial opens up in a dark room which we can assume is a bar given the wall of alcohol bottles behind a wooden bar. The room is dark with soft lighting coming from the small lamps and fake candles on the bar. The room is crowded but the camera is focused on and slowly moving towards a young African American man who seems to be in his late twenties and is casually dressed in a flannel and white shirt. He is turning away from the bar with a small glass with brown liquid in his hand. In front of the African American man are two other blurred men having a conversation with each other, they each have a glass in their hand as well however it is too dark to determine what color the liquid in the glasses is. Despite the amount of people at the bar it seems that the African American man is there alone but seems to be looking to meet some people. Right away the fact that he is drinking and seems to be alone makes you think this may be a commercial about driving under the influence. Given the darkness and the amount of people around it is most likely nighttime. The bar is a pretty typical one, it is not fancy however it also does not seem like a dump there for it is probably the type of bar that most working-class people go to have a good time on the weekends or after work.

0:02-0:03: The African American man is smirking, giving the impression that he is happy to be there and is having a good time. He then abruptly looks down at the drink in his hand.

0:04: The scene changes to a backyard where multiple people are gathered for a barbeque. This barbeque seems like it might be a gathering of friends rather than family because there are no kids around. The camera is focused on a young Caucasian man also dressed casually in a light-colored flannel, navy blue shirt and tan pants. He looks like he could be the youngest one there and may have recently turned twenty-one. He is holding a red solo cup as he speaks to a man who has his back to us as he barbecues. He does not seem to be at the barbecue with a partner or his family as there is nobody directly around him besides the man barbecuing who is assumed to be the host. To the young man’s right three people are talking and preparing an outdoor table to eat at. The table is a dark metal glass table with a red umbrella. On the table sits various red solo cups, bowls, and plates of food. The scene as well as the character are easy to relate to and the situation easily feels familiar.

0:05-0:06: The young man smiles at the man who was barbecuing as they end their conversation. He goes to take another drink from his red solo cup before abruptly stopping halfway to his mouth. He looks down into the cup and his mood instantly changes from joyous to contemplative. The young man seems to contemplate whether or not he should be drinking the rest of what he is drink. His change in mood stands out among the other people in the background who are all laughing and having a good time.

0:07-0:08: The scene switches again to another Caucasian young man at a tailgate. It is hard to distinguish exactly where he is since the background is blurred however, he is sitting on the tailgate of a white truck and is dressed casually in an orange and white long sleeve shirt and jeans. The man is friendly with the people around him making it easy to assume they are all friends tailgating before a sports game. They also are all supporting the same team because they are all wearing some form of blue and orange. It is impossible to determine exactly what kind of sporting event they are tailgating for. The main character of this scene is holding a light blue disposable cup. He is speaking to a woman who has her back towards us, and she is leaning on a folding table. The table is filled with beer bottles, chips in a bowl, sliced watermelon on a plate and empty cups. Given the amount of beer and liquor bottles it is assumed that the disposable cups are also holding some sort of alcohol. There is another woman to the left of the screen who is smiling and at the women the main guy is talking to, and she is also holding a plastic cup. To the right of the screen behind another table holding beer bottles and paper towels are a man and a woman animatedly talking to each other. This looks like a typical American tailgate and instantly makes me think of college kids tailgating before a football game.

0:09-0:10: The scene switches back to the first African American man at the bar. The camera is now much closer to him, and we have a better view of the bar itself. You can now see there are empty glasses on the bar. You can also see his drink much clearer; it is about halfway full with a black stirring stick in it. He looks concerned as he digs around in the front pocket of his jeans looking for something. He is still holding the drink from before, but it does not look like he has taken a sip of it.

0:11-0:13: The scene flips back to the barbecue and the camera is now very close and right in front of the young man. Everyone else is blurred out which instantly draws your attention to him and what he is doing. behind him you can see a blurred man playing frisbee and you can clearly see a beer bottle on the stone wall further showing that people are drinking at this barbeque. The young man is looking down and he reaches into his jean pocket. He pulls out what looks to be his car keys and holds them in the open palm of his hand. He looks down at them and looks concerned. He is likely deciding if he would be able to drive after he has been drinking and is wondering how he will get home. The camera continues to zoom in slowly.

0:14: The scene then changes back to the tailgate party. The camera is now at a different angle and closer so that you can only see the young man sitting on the tailgate. Someone off camera throws a set of car keys at the man and he catches them with one hand while he holds his drink with the other. You can now prominently see an open cooler of beer behind him in the bed of the truck. He looks at the keys with a concerned look on his face. As he flips the keys in his hands it seems like he is strongly considering whether or not he should be driving.

0:15-0:17: The scene is back in the bar where the young African American man is still looking at his keys. We can no longer see if he is holding a drink. He closes his hand around the keys and lets his arm drop to his side as he looks up. He is looking slightly to the right of the camera and looks as if he has made a decision. Given the slightly perplexed look on his face it seems he has made the decision not to drive and now has to find a way home.

0:18-0:19: The scene switches again to the barbecue where we are now solely focused on the young man. We are significantly closer to him now and can only see the top half of him. The background is blurred. He is looking towards the left of the camera and smiles. It is clear that he is proud of himself and the decision that he just made to not drive home after drinking at the barbecue.

0:20: The scene switches back to the bar but the camera angle is now from behind the right shoulder of the young man looking down. He has his right hand held out and open with his car keys in the palm of his hand. You can see the lock and unlock button on the key fob. This angle clearly gives the audience the ability to see that these keys are indeed car keys and starts to confirm what this video is about. In the same second the camera angle changes to the side of the young man, and you can clearly see him pocket his keys. It is assumed that he makes the decision not to drive home from the bar that night.

0:21: The scene switches to a navy-blue backpack on a bench. The background indicates that we are back at the barbecue. You can see the young man’s hand as he too decides not to drive home after drinking and is seen putting the keys in the side of his bag. Also, in this second the scene changes to a close up of the man at the tailgate. He makes the decision not to drive after drinking and is seen tossing the keys back to the person off screen. He has a resolute expression on his face.

0:22: The young man from the tailgate party is seen getting in the back seat of a black SUV. The SUV has its window rolled down so we can still see the man. The car is most likely a friend that he had called to pick him up or some sort of ride share such as uber.

0:23-0:26: As the man buckles himself in the words “Plan Ahead. Catch A Sober Ride.” come up across the screen. The words are in a bolded print and are white. They are also in all caps. It insinuates that when you are going somewhere you plan to drink you should make sure you have somebody who will be sober and able to drive you home safely. It makes you think that all three men did not originally plan to get a ride however they all made the right decision in the end and found a ride home.

0:27-0:30: The man is still buckling himself in, but the words change to “Buzzed Driving Is Drunk Driving”. The words are in all caps and are a bold white across the screen. The words confirm that the three men had to think when they were making the decision not to drive because they were not drunk, they were simply buzzed. The man sits back after buckling himself in and has a satisfied smiles on his face. He speaks to someone off screen in the front of the car. In the end I think the character and places as well as the situations the characters found themselves in were chosen specifically because they are easy to relate to. I think the three young men where specifically chosen because buzzed driving is a bigger problem in young college aged men. This situation seems like it could be common and makes it easy to understand and take the message of not driving buzzed to heart. Using characters that are easily relatable also helps show that this situation could happen to anyone.

Posted in Portfolio Sunflower, Sunflower, Visual Rewrite | 4 Comments

Visual – Sunflower

Posted on April 1, 2023 by sunflower0311

0:01: The commercial opens up in a dark room with soft lighting. The camera is focused on and slowly moving towards a young African American man casually dressed in a flannel and white shirt. He is turning away from a bar with a drink in his hand. Behind him a bartender is blurred and there are multiple liquor bottles behind the bartender. In front of the African American man are two other blurred men having a conversation with each other, they each have a drink in their hand as well. I think this character and place were chosen to relate to what people tend to do on a Friday or Saturday night. Many people have the same experience as this man and spend time at a bar to have fun.

0:02-0:03: The African American man is smirking giving the impression that he is happy to be there and is having a good time. He then abruptly looks down at the drink in his hand.

0:04: The scene changes to a backyard where multiple people are gathered for a barbeque. The camera is focused on a young Caucasian man also dressed casually in a light-colored flannel, navy blue shirt and tan pants. He is holding a red solo cup as he speaks to a man who has his back to us as he barbecues. To the young man’s right three people talking and preparing an outdoor table to eat at. The table is a dark metal glass table with a red umbrella. On the table sits various red solo cups, bowls, and plates of food. It seems like a nice gathering of friends or family. The scene as well as the character are easy to relate to as almost everyone has probably been to a barbecue or picnic with family or friends before.

0:05-0:06: The young man smiles at the man who was barbecuing as they end their conversation. He goes to take another drink from his red solo cup before abruptly stopping halfway to his mouth. He looks down into the cup and seems to contemplate whether or not he should be drinking the rest of that drink. His change in mood stands out among the other people in the background who are all laughing and having a good time.

0:07-0:08: The scene switches again to another Caucasian young man at a tailgate. He is sitting on the tailgate of a white truck and is dressed casually in a orange and white long sleeve shirt and jeans. It is easy to assume that they are tailgating before a sporting event and the colors of the team must be orange and blue since everyone in the scene is wear some sort of combination of those colors. The man is holding a light blue cup. He is speaking to a woman who has her back towards us, and she is leaning on a folding table. The table is filled with beer bottles, chips in a bowl, sliced watermelon on a plate and empty cups. There is another woman to the left of the screen who is smiling and at the women the main guy is talking to, and she is also holding a plastic cup. To the right of the screen behind another table holding beer bottles and paper towels are a man and a woman animatedly talking to each other. Like the other two characters and places I think this one was chosen because tailgating is another staple of America. It takes place at almost every sporting event and most average Americans will find themselves in this situation at some point in their lives.

0:09-0:10: The scene switches back to the first African American man at the bar. He looks concerned as he digs around in the front pocket of his jeans looking for something. He is still holding the drink from before, but it does not look like he has taken a sip of it.

0:11-0:13: The scene flips back to the barbecue and is clearly focused on the young man again. Everyone else is blurred out and the camera is closer to the man which instantly draws your attention to him and what he is doing. He is looking down and he reaches into his jean pocket. He pulls out what looks to be his car keys and holds them in the open palm of his hand. He looks down at them and looks concerned. The camera continues to zoom in slowly.

0:14: The scene then changes back to the tailgate party. The camera is closer to the young man sitting on the tailgate and it slowly zooms in on him. Someone off camera throws a set of car keys at the man and he catches them with one hand while he holds his drink with the other. You can now prominantly see an open cooler of beer behind him in the bed of the truck. He looks at the keys with a concerned look on his face. As he flips the keys in his hands it seems like he is strongly considering wether or not he should be driving.

0:15-0:17: The scene is back in the bar where the young African American man is still looking at his keys. He is no longer holding a drink. He closes his hand around the keys and looks up. He is looking slightly to the right of the camera and looks as if he has made a decision.

0:18-0:19: The scene switches again to the barbecue where we are now solely focused on the young man. We are significantly closer to him now and can only see the top half of him. The background is blurred. He is looking towards the left of the camera and smiles.

0:20: The scene switches back to the bar but the camera angle is now from behind the right shoulder of the young man looking down. He has his right hand held out and open with his car keys in the palm of his hand. You can see the lock and unlock button on the key fob. In the same second the camera angle changes to the side of the young man, and you can clearly see him pocket his keys. It is assumed that he makes the decision not to drive home from the bar that night.

0:21: The scene switches to a navy-blue backpack on a bench. Based on the trees in the background it is assumed we are back at the barbecue. You can see the young man’s hand as he too decides not to drive home after drinking and is seen putting the keys in the side of his bag. Also, in this second the scene changes to a close up of the man at the tailgate. He makes the decision not to drive after drinking and is seen tossing the keys back to the person off screen.

0:22: The young man from the tailgate party is seen getting in the back seat of a black SUV. The SUV has its window rolled down so we can still see the man.

0:23-0:26: As the man buckles himself in the words “Plan Ahead. Catch A Sober Ride.” come up across the screen. The words are in a bolded print and are white. They are also in all caps.

0:27-0:30: The man is still buckling himself in, but the words change to “Buzzed Driving Is Drunk Driving”. The words are in all caps and are a bold white across the screen. The man sits back after buckling himself in and has a satisfied smiles on his face. He speaks to someone off screen in the front of the car. In the end I think the character and places as well as the situations the characters found themselves in were chosen specifically because they are easy to relate to. Almost every single person will most likely end up in one of these situations once in their lives which makes it easier to understand and take the message of not drinking buzzed to heart. It reinforces the fact that it can happen to anyone.

Posted in Sunflower, Visual Rhetoric | Leave a comment

Causal Rewrite- Giants

Posted on March 30, 2023 by giants19

Seatbelts Kill

The effectiveness of seatbelts is not nearly as cut and dry as one might first be led to believe. There are lots of different factors to be taken into account when judging whether they actually save people or not. First of all, seatbelts really aren’t saving all that many people per year anyway. At least, not nearly as many as the figure would lead the public to believe. Many of the people who were “saved by seatbelts” would have been perfectly fine had they not worn one. Another thing to keep in mind is that seatbelts have only been shown to be effective when they are worn correctly. Not only this, but when they are worn incorrectly, it actually makes it more likely for a person to get injured in an accident. Additionally, wearing a seatbelt provides drivers with a false sense of security, which in turn causes them to lower their senses and inhibitions, making them more likely to end up in a collision. Considering all of these elements, I think it is safe to say that seatbelts cause drivers of vehicles to become more vulnerable to an accident.

Contrary to what many might believe, statistics are not necessarily on the side of the seatbelt. According to the NHTSA, of the 37,133 people killed in motor vehicle crashes in 2017, 47% of them were not wearing their seatbelts (Medium). This means that more than half of them WERE wearing the seatbelts that were supposed to save their lives. This leads us to one question. If seatbelts are not making people safer, how come the amount of motor vehicle deaths has declined recently? We can reasonably infer that the reason this number has gone down is due to better technological advancements, more safety regulations and other outside factors.

Ultimately, people want seatbelts to work. They want to feel safer in their cars. However, staying with this naive mindset is giving people a false sense of security while driving. A lot of people think that they are invincible while driving. This is because they are so used to wearing seatbelts and not having to worry about having their life and other peoples lives in their hands.

Another thing that makes seatbelts dangerous is their locking mechanic. Anybody who has ever worn a seatbelt knows this. After trying to pull the seatbelt too fast, it freezes up, or locks in place. This is to prevent people from going flying when they get into an accident, but what it actually ends up doing is just giving people whiplash and causing injury and entanglement when they are in minor accidents, which are significantly more common than a severe car crash. One article read that “Since 2000, over 200 rear seat occupants have become entangled in the seatbelt when they inadvertently switched it from emergency locking mode (ELR) to automatic locking mode (ALR).

Since a method is needed to lock the seatbelt when installing child restraint systems (CRS), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) commissioned tool, inc. to develop prototype devices that could reduce the risk of seatbelt entanglement resulting from the lockability requirement.”(sae.org) This statistic just makes it seem like all of this isn’t even worth it. If these seatbelts are only going to cause a mass number of people to get injuries that they otherwise wouldn’t, they are not worth having in cars, and are actually making the roads a lot more dangerous.

While many people think that they are great drivers, the truth is that most are not. This false sense of superiority on the road is already a problem as it is, causing people to take unnecessary risks and try to do things that they can not pull off. Now imagine how much worse that is made because somebody is wearing their seatbelt and doesn’t even care enough to look at the road because they incorrectly believe that wearing a seatbelt makes them invulnerable and a better driver than Dale Earnhardt Jr. All of that extra risk is not worth what seatbelts provide for society, and anybody who thinks it is has to straighten out their priorities.

Also, not only do people feel safer and therefore are less safe when driving with a seatbelt on, but they also cause people to drive faster, which results in more deadly accidents. I do not believe that seatbelts giving bad drivers unwarranted confidence and the idea that they can afford to go faster than they actually can is making the road a safer place in any capacity. Another opinion that is important in this topic is that of those who are victims of wreckless drivers who became less able to operate their car properly because they wore their seatbelt.

A new phenomenon is something that is known as “seatbelt syndrome”. Essentially, after getting into an accident while wearing a seatbelt, certain victims report having lingering injuries such as intra-abdominal injuries and vertebral fractures. This has been known to cause chronic pain in its victims for the rest of their lives. Many sufferers of seatbelt syndrome never recover, and their quality of life diminishes heavily.

Seatbelts cause drivers to lower their inhibitions and become more susceptible to damage sustained during a wreck or collision. Many people refuse to accept this truth because they can not wrap their minds around the fact that something that is supposed to be protecting us is actually harming us, and it is being promoted by the government. If people opened their eyes up to this sort of thing more often, they would see that it is not all the uncommon. The government promotes things that are against the best interest of the people all the time, take, for instance, the fact that tobacco and nicotine is a billion dollar industry that kills people, but makes money, so its not a big deal to the government.

To conclude, the definitive reason that people should not wear a seatbelt while driving is that it does the one thing that twe do not want to happen while we drive. It makes the road more dangerous. If people realized that a lot more often than they realize, this world is not as soft and protective as they have been led to believe. It is the lack of people that are willing to challenge common belief that allows the narrative of helpful seatbelts to prevail.

References (not Sources) centered

Klinich, K., Ebert, S., Malik, L., Manary, M. et al., “Seatbelt Entanglement: Field Analysis, Countermeasure Development, and Subject Evaluation of Devices Intended to Reduce Risk,” SAE Technical Paper 2019-01-0619, 2019, https://doi.org/10.4271/2019-01-0619.

Shiobara, D. “Do Seatbelts Really Save Lives?” Medium.com May 15 2020 https://medium.com/@dossy/do-seat-belts-really-save-lives-74f4c0b79444

Posted in Causal Rewrite, Giants, Portfolio Giants | 1 Comment

Causal – Giants19

Posted on March 30, 2023 by giants19

The effectiveness of seatbelts is not nearly as cut and dry as one might first be led to believe. There are lots of different factors to be taken into account when judging whether they actually save people or not. First of all, seatbelts really aren’t saving all that many people per year anyway. At least, not nearly as many as the figure would lead you to believe. Many of the people who were “saved by seatbelts” would have been perfectly fine had they not worn one. Another thing to keep in mind is that seatbelts have only been shown to be effective when they are worn correctly. Not only this, but when they are worn incorrectly, you are actually making it more likely for you to get injured in an accident. Additionally, wearing a seatbelt provides drivers with a false sense of security, which in turn causes them to lower their senses and inhibitions, making them more likely to end up in a collision. Considering all of these elements, I think it is safe to say that seatbelts cause drivers of vehicles to become more vulnerable to an accident.

Contrary to what many might believe, statistics are not necessarily on the side of the seatbelt. According to the NHTSA, of the 37,133 people killed in motor vehicle crashes in 2017, 47% of them were not wearing their seatbelts (Medium). This means that more than half of them WERE wearing the seatbelts that were supposed to save their lives. This leads us to one question. If seatbelts are not making people safer, how come the amount of motor vehicle deaths has declined recently? We can reasonably infer that the reason this number has gone down is due to better technological advancements, more safety regulations and other outside factors. Ultimately, people want seatbelts to work. They want to feel safer in their cars. However, staying with this naive mindset is giving people a false sense of security while driving. A lot of people think that they are invincible while driving. This is because they are so used to wearing seatbelts and not having to worry about having their life and other peoples lives in their hands.

Another thing that makes seatbelts dangerous is their locking mechanic. Anybody who has ever worn a seatbelt knows this. If you try pulling the seatbelt too fast, it freezes up, or locks in place. This is to prevent people from going flying when they get into an accident, but what it actually ends up doing is just giving people whiplash and causing injury and entanglement when they are in minor accidents, which are significantly more common than a severe car crash. One article read that “Since 2000, over 200 rear seat occupants have become entangled in the seatbelt when they inadvertently switched it from emergency locking mode (ELR) to automatic locking mode (ALR). Since a method is needed to lock the seatbelt when installing child restraint systems (CRS), the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) commissioned tool, inc. to develop prototype devices that could reduce the risk of seatbelt entanglement resulting from the lockability requirement.”(sae.org) This statistic just makes it seem like all of this isn’t even worth it. If these seatbelts are only going to cause a mass number of people to get injuries that they otherwise wouldn’t, they are not worth having in cars, and are actually making the roads a lot more dangerous.

While many people think that they are great drivers, the truth is that most are not. This false sense of superiority on the road is already a problem as it is, causing people to take unnecessary risks and try to do things that they can not pull off. Now imagine how much worse that is made because somebody is wearing their seatbelt and doesn’t even care enough to look at the road because they incorrectly believe that wearing a seatbelt makes them invulnerable and a better driver than Dale Earnhardt Jr. All of that extra risk is not worth what seatbelts provide for society, and if you think it is then you need to straighten out your priorities. Also, not only do people feel safer and therefore are less safe when driving with a seatbelt on, but they also cause people to drive faster, which results in more deadly accidents. I do not believe that seatbelts giving bad drivers unwarranted confidence and the idea that they can afford to go faster than they actually can is making the road a safer place in any capacity. A new phenomenon is something that is known as “seatbelt syndrome”. Essentially, after getting into an accident while wearing a seatbelt, certain victims report having lingering injuries such as intra-abdominal injuries and vertebral fractures. This has been known to cause chronic pain in its victims for the rest of their lives. Many sufferers of seatbelt syndrome never recover, and their quality of life diminishes heavily.

To conclude, the definitive reason that you should not wear a seatbelt while driving is that it does the one thing that you do not want to happen while you drive. It makes the road more dangerous. Seatbelts cause drivers to lower their inhibitions and become more susceptible to damage sustained during a wreck or collision. Many people refuse to accept this truth because they can not wrap their minds around the fact that something that is supposed to be protecting us is actually harming us, and it is being promoted by the government. If people opened their eyes up to this sort of thing more often, they would see that it is not all the uncommon. The government promotes things that are against the best interest of the people all the time, take, for instance, the fact that tobacco and nicotine is a billion dollar industry that kills people, but makes money, so its not a big deal to the government. If people realized that a lot more often than they realize, this world is not as soft and protective as they have been led to believe. It is the lack of people that are willing to challenge common belief that allows the narrative of helpful seatbelts to prevail.

Sources:

Klinich, K., Ebert, S., Malik, L., Manary, M. et al., “Seatbelt Entanglement: Field Analysis, Countermeasure Development, and Subject Evaluation of Devices Intended to Reduce Risk,” SAE Technical Paper 2019-01-0619, 2019, https://doi.org/10.4271/2019-01-0619.

Shiobara, D. “Do Seatbelts Really Save Lives?” Medium.com May 15 2020 https://medium.com/@dossy/do-seat-belts-really-save-lives-74f4c0b79444

Posted in Causal Argument, Giants, Portfolio Giants | Leave a comment

Definition-blueee

Posted on March 30, 2023 by blueee04

Money is a necessity in the world we live in, you need it to survive. It’s just a piece of paper but it has so much value to it. When people get ahold of a lot of money whether it’s inherited, won from a lottery, or earned, people grow a different behavior. Money causes people to become greedy and careless. This has always been an issue but of course as the years go by it gets worse. The prices in the market gradually increases making it easier for the poor to struggle while the rich are living no differently. There isn’t many people in the world that are willing to help the ones that are less fortunate. Money has become a dangerous necessity.

We know that money is ‘valuable’ but every one doesn’t know the history or background of it. Money truly has no value, it’s just a piece of paper. When trading first started it was with gold. In the broadcast by the Planet Money team at NPR, they explain how money began and that money just represents the value of gold but it’s not worth anything. Now with this information it’s confusing how people can be considered ‘wealthy’ because of the number in their bank account. It’s odd how this also causes a change in behavior, we are all human and deserve to be treated equally. Money should not be causing a division in our world.

Another example of people acting differently with money is when they suddenly win a big amount of it. Anyone could be greedy, when being wealthy their whole whole life and even if they had hard times themselves. All anyone cares about is themselves, this could be good but also bad. If someone has the money or opportunity to help someone, they should. There isn’t enough good in the world. We are divided into classes and it’s normal to us. The lower class gets treated poorly while the higher class gets worshipped. People with more money have more opportunities in life, they get advice from other rich people on how to continue having a good flow of funds or maintain it properly.

There are experiments that have been used showing how people’s behavior change in situations. In the article “The rich are easily offended by unfairness” the author explains how studies were held to show if the less wealthy or the more wealthy would accept the unfair offer. “In this game, the proposer gives the responder an unfair offer of CN¥2, but keeps the remaining CN¥8 out of CN¥10. If the responder accepts the offer, each receives the proposed amounts; otherwise both receive nothing. We chose the ¥2/¥8 offer that can elicit roughly 50% rejection rates” this states the basics of the experiments. The three studies were all very similar, showing that more of the poor would accept the unfair offer and the rich would deny it. This shows how money has such a quick effect on ones behavior, the less wealthy, only are thinking about how they never had that amount of money and how much it could benefit them. Money is so important in our lives that they don’t even second think in these situations.

Another unfair act is our taxing system. There should be greater acts in taxing the rich more than the poor. It is unfair given that the poor are already struggling as it is and now they are being taxed more than the ones who have enough money to pay. It makes absolutely no sense and is one of the inequalities in our world. Stated in the article “Taxing the Rich”, “Scheve and Stasavage argue that governments don’t tax the rich just because inequality is high or rising—they do it when people believe that such taxes compensate for the state unfairly privileging the wealthy.” This just explains how messed up our government is. It shouldn’t be that hard to make both the rich have higher taxes and if not then both classes have equal taxes. Our world is built on inequality and no matter how much things are changed everyone will be treated unequally.

Resources:

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, The rich are easily offended by unfairness: Wealth triggers spiteful rejection of unfair offers Published, 5April 2017

Scheve, Kenneth and Stasavage, David. Taxing the rich , published 2018

Posted in Blueee, Definition, Portfolio Blueee | 1 Comment

Definition Rewrite-blueee

Posted on March 30, 2023 by blueee04

Money causes behavior issues

Money is a necessity in the world we live in, you need it to survive. It’s just a piece of paper but it has so much value to it. When people get ahold of a lot of money whether it’s inherited, won from a lottery, or earned, people grow a different behavior. Money causes people to become greedy and careless whether it’s the poor or rich. This has always been an issue but of course as the years go by it gets worse. The prices in the market gradually increases making it easier for the poor to struggle while the rich are living no differently. There isn’t many people in the world that are willing to help the ones that are less fortunate. Money has become a dangerous necessity.

We know that money is ‘valuable’ but everyone doesn’t know the history or background of it. Money truly has no value itself, it’s just a piece of paper, the power it holds is to be used to purchase goods. When trading first started it was with gold. In the broadcast by the Planet Money team at NPR, they explain how money began and that money just represents the value of gold but it’s not worth anything. Now with this information it’s confusing how people can be considered ‘wealthy’ because of the number in their bank account. It’s odd how this also causes a change in behavior, we are all human and deserve to be treated equally. Money should not be causing a division in our world.

Anyone could be greedy, when being wealthy their whole whole life or even if they had hard times themselves. All anyone cares about is themselves, this could be good but also bad. If someone has the money or opportunity to help someone, they should. There isn’t enough good in the world. We are divided into classes and it’s normal to us. The lower class gets treated poorly while the higher class gets worshipped. People with more money have more opportunities in life, they get advice from other rich people on how to continue having a good flow of funds or maintain it properly.

There are experiments that have been used showing how people’s behavior change in situations. In the article “The rich are easily offended by unfairness” the author explains how studies were held to show if the less wealthy or the more wealthy would accept the unfair offer. “In this game, the proposer gives the responder an unfair offer of CN¥2, but keeps the remaining CN¥8 out of CN¥10. If the responder accepts the offer, each receives the proposed amounts; otherwise both receive nothing. We chose the ¥2/¥8 offer that can elicit roughly 50% rejection rates” this states the basics of the experiments. The three studies were all very similar, showing that more of the poor would accept the unfair offer and the rich would deny it because they took the others into consideration. This shows how money has such a quick effect on ones behavior, the less wealthy, only are thinking about how they never had that amount of money and how much it could benefit them. Money is so important in our lives that they don’t think twice in these situations.

Another unfair act is our taxing system. There should be greater acts in taxing the rich more than the poor, they should pay double. It is unfair given that the poor are already struggling as it is and now they are being taxed more than the ones who have enough money to pay. It makes absolutely no sense and is one of the inequalities in our world. Stated in the article “Taxing the Rich”, “Scheve and Stasavage argue that governments don’t tax the rich just because inequality is high or rising—they do it when people believe that such taxes compensate for the state unfairly privileging the wealthy.” This just explains how damaged our government is. It shouldn’t be that hard to make the rich have higher taxes and if not then both classes have equal taxes. Our world is built on inequality and no matter how much things are changed everyone will be treated unequally.

Center the word References, not Resources, not bold, and unpunctuated (don’t use a colon)

References

Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, The rich are easily offended by unfairness: Wealth triggers spiteful rejection of unfair offers Published, 5April 2017

Scheve, Kenneth and Stasavage, David. Taxing the rich , published 2018

I like your linking technique! 🙂

Posted in Blueee, Definition Rewrite, Portfolio Blueee | 9 Comments