Multimodal Projects
by Taylor Smith
Author's Statement
In my podcast project, I enacted the voice and point of view of the main character, Ellie, in the novel The Fourteenth Goldfish. I started out by introducing myself (Ellie), then included a paraphrased/slightly altered excerpt from the novel, then tried to illustrate some potential thoughts and feelings on behalf of Ellie. I used this format to try to give audiences a glimpse into the story and convince them to want to know more, without revealing too much. I attended to author’s craft by carefully choosing the script, character’s voices, the musical selections, and the timing of music/voice/pauses. In the script, I purposefully used Ellie’s point of view in order to set the stage to tell a story. I thought it would have been more personal and exciting to have the character speak, instead of a third-party narrator. When speaking as Ellie, I tried to use my voice to sound confident in myself and also somewhat juvenile. When speaking as Ellie’s teenage grandfather, I tried to lower my voice but sound humorous enough to not be taken so seriously. When speaking as Ellie’s babysitter, I tried to sound ditzy and “valley girl” to mimic Nicole’s inability to think about others and their feelings. For the musical selections, I started off with a piece that was pretty happy-go-lucky. I did this because, even though this is a science fiction story, there is a lot of light-hearted incidents and humor that move the novel along. I then chose to suddenly stop this happy music when Nicole spoke about something bad happening to grandpa. I chose to suddenly stop the music to mimic how it must of felt for Ellie to suddenly, abruptly, be told bad and worrisome news about her grandfather. I also chose to not have music when Nicole shared the bad news so the audience would be forced to listen and pay attention to this part of my audio. The second song I chose played during the paraphrased excerpt from the book. This music, I think, did not have any one emotion/mood attached to it. This is because, we the audience, and Ellie, do not yet know what happened to grandpa at this point. The music has, to me, feelings of curiosity, quickness, and mystery – which is probably what the character was feeling during this portion of the book. I then went back to the first song during the part of the script where Ellie shares her thoughts and feelings. Choosing the happy song again was meant to show Ellie’s returned sense of assurance and also to lighten the mood. The song then fades and an outside party (a narrator) is heard encouraging the audience to read more about the book. Fading the music and not having strong music to accompany the narrator was meant to separate Ellie and the narrator in the project.
In my podcast project, I enacted the voice and point of view of the main character, Ellie, in the novel The Fourteenth Goldfish. I started out by introducing myself (Ellie), then included a paraphrased/slightly altered excerpt from the novel, then tried to illustrate some potential thoughts and feelings on behalf of Ellie. I used this format to try to give audiences a glimpse into the story and convince them to want to know more, without revealing too much. I attended to author’s craft by carefully choosing the script, character’s voices, the musical selections, and the timing of music/voice/pauses. In the script, I purposefully used Ellie’s point of view in order to set the stage to tell a story. I thought it would have been more personal and exciting to have the character speak, instead of a third-party narrator. When speaking as Ellie, I tried to use my voice to sound confident in myself and also somewhat juvenile. When speaking as Ellie’s teenage grandfather, I tried to lower my voice but sound humorous enough to not be taken so seriously. When speaking as Ellie’s babysitter, I tried to sound ditzy and “valley girl” to mimic Nicole’s inability to think about others and their feelings. For the musical selections, I started off with a piece that was pretty happy-go-lucky. I did this because, even though this is a science fiction story, there is a lot of light-hearted incidents and humor that move the novel along. I then chose to suddenly stop this happy music when Nicole spoke about something bad happening to grandpa. I chose to suddenly stop the music to mimic how it must of felt for Ellie to suddenly, abruptly, be told bad and worrisome news about her grandfather. I also chose to not have music when Nicole shared the bad news so the audience would be forced to listen and pay attention to this part of my audio. The second song I chose played during the paraphrased excerpt from the book. This music, I think, did not have any one emotion/mood attached to it. This is because, we the audience, and Ellie, do not yet know what happened to grandpa at this point. The music has, to me, feelings of curiosity, quickness, and mystery – which is probably what the character was feeling during this portion of the book. I then went back to the first song during the part of the script where Ellie shares her thoughts and feelings. Choosing the happy song again was meant to show Ellie’s returned sense of assurance and also to lighten the mood. The song then fades and an outside party (a narrator) is heard encouraging the audience to read more about the book. Fading the music and not having strong music to accompany the narrator was meant to separate Ellie and the narrator in the project.