“Suicide Series,” Tio Davis (2013) — Inquiry 3/4

Project Reflection

Inquiry 3 was the most interesting Inquiry I’ve done so far in my ENG 112 course. It allowed me to do something that I normally do as a hobby to raise an issue in society. I had different choices of which medium I could use. I had the options of Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc. I already had my choice of medium decided though and that would be YouTube. I already had a head start because I’ve had a YouTube channel for almost a year now. So I had experience with uploading and editing videos. You can say it’s my craft in a way. I was just left with the question how was I going to use this medium? It was hard deciding what issue to address and I was brainstorming ideas, but an old YouTube video caught my attention, the Amanda Todd incident. This is a video where a teenager shot a YouTube video with sheets of paper as a dying note before she killed herself. I found this sad, but at the same inspired me to use texts with a medium that usually doesn’t use that form. I thought if I could combine texts with a visual approach using the same method as someone who killed herself that would address my issue in a new way, and draw in an audience.

I began collecting information and lots of printing paper for this video. I even talked to some people that will promote my video. For example, Dr. Tom Keith who made the sexist video, and came to Miami to present it. I was content with the production of my video, and even made a trailer for my first draft, which killed two birds with one stone. It served as a first draft, and it gave Dr. Tom Keith something to look forward to. His words were “Great buildup!” “I look forward to seeing your finished video.”

The issue of my video is that it’s rather long so I decided to split it into two parts. One with the Amanda Todd approach, and the other with a snippet of a song I wrote with commentary at the end thanking everyone for watching the video, and telling the audience to create video responses not just liking and sharing my video.

All in all I enjoyed creating, editing my YouTube video. It took a lot of time, and work, but I’m glad I did. Inquiry 3 has helped me critique my editing, and camera skills, and also has helped me drawing in an audience.

[flowplayer src=’http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NciBHaGOQw8′]