Annotated Bibliography Assignment

By Christopher Meltzer, Storyboarding Project

1. "Adobe Dreamweaver". Adobe. February 13, 2008 <www.adobe.com/product/dreamweaver>

Dreamweaver is a web-designing tool that incorporates both coding as well as visual creating of websites and hypertext creations. The website developing tool can be used for both academic as well as personal obligations and is designed in order to benefit those individuals who are both code-based experience as well as those who have never built a website before. Similar to our class Wiki, the Dreamweaver program has a way to create a website based on the common, HTML code, as well as a way to create a website based on general text, which the program then translates into an HTML code for the user. Features of Dreamweaver CCS include frameworks, widgets, effects, layouts, browser compatibilities, and a Photoshop integration system. Essentially, users can develop a fully functional website that includes both the visual aspects of a website as well as the information necessary to make the website compatible with all Internet browsers (i.e. Moxilla Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, etc.). Not only is Dreamweaver able to help individuals make a fully functional website that can be used for various reasons, it also allows individuals to be able to create a membership-based, search-engine based, and even blog-based websites that allow other individuals, besides the actual creator to be a part of the web-developing process. Other Adobe products that help in the creation of a website and are also compatible with Dreamweaver are Indesign and Photoshop (as mentioned before). With these two other programs, individuals who are creating a website can incorporate design elements and photo effects that may not be as readily available in the Dreamweaver web-developing tool itself. Overall, Dreamweaver is a user friendly web-designing tool that allows individuals of all coding expertise to create a website for various purposes ranging from academic to personal reasons with options to create a membership-based or just visual/interactive site.

2. Atkinson, Cliff and Lanier, Mark. “Tap into the power of a PowerPoint storyboard: want to produce evidence that captivates jurors, makes complicated ideas easy for them to understand, and seamlessly complements your case themes and verbal delivery? Turn on your computer and open your PowerPoint program.” Trial 42.4 (April 2006): 18

A rising form of literary or event interpretation has been given to the idea of a Powerpoint Storyboard. Modern society is completely “saturated” with media and visual representations of items or events and as such, in order to better understand a situation or text, it is better to put the facts into a visual representation that is organized in a specific manner. Even in court cases that deal with various events, such as the Vioxx Trial, Ernst v. Merck, a storyboard was used in order to tell the story of a woman and her husband. Storyboards are key into understanding different concepts, facts, scientific theories, or complicated ideas through a visual representation of the aforementioned ideas, allowing viewers to pick put different points of vulnerability as well as existing loopholes. When the creator has the idea of what they want to develop, they narrow their ideas into about three or four main ideas for conceptualization. After they can combine all existing elements into these ideas, they spread out and further explain and exemplify the evidence that supports those four points. The basis of creating these points are to outline what is being examined and put it into an organization that is easy to interpret and understand as well as to make the more complex or unidentifiable items of a theme more digestible. Visuals and other forms of graphical concepts help the viewer to understand what is being told in a better manner. For example, in the Vioxx trial mentioned above, the presenting attorney created one of these Powerpoint storyboards in order to present the facts of the case as they stood and present it to the jury. The attorney took the facts of the case and narrowed it down into about three to four main concepts that he then placed on a Powerpoint storyboard in the form of a visual representation. From these four topics, he then used various graphics and different forms of visual cues in order to present the more detailed facts of the case. While keeping this in mind, however, the attorney also created a form of graphical uniformity in order to make it even simpler and more digestible for the jury.

3. Hemingway, Ernest.  "Indian Camp." 1924. 13 February 2008.  <http://nbu.bg/webs/amb/american/4/hemingway/camp.htm>

Ernest Hemingway’s Indian Camp is a short story that develops the relationship between father and son while experiencing the birth of an Indian child at an Indian camp located across a river. The story begins with Nick and his father being transported across the body of water by an Indian because of a sick woman in a shanty. Upon arrival, Nick and his father, as well as Uncle George had been taken through the woods to a shanty where an elderly woman was guarding the door with a lantern. They entered to a woman screaming because of the excruciating pain of childbirth, which she had been experiencing for two days. The women of the camp had tried to help the woman give birth and the men had left up a hill to get away from the screaming. After realizing that the baby was not going to come out regularly, Nick’s father had decided that he had to operate on the woman in order to get the child out. All the while, Nick is watching the events progress; however, quickly becomes disinterested with the situation as the woman continues to scream and the visuals of childbirth become unbearable. After the operation had taken place, Nick’s father had asked him if he had liked being an “interne” to the operation. He responded saying it was “alright” as he became less curious as the whole event processed. After the operation had taken place, they realized that the father of the newborn child had committed suicide by slitting his throat from “ear to ear”. After this event, Nick had asked his father questions about death and suicide and whether or not it had happened often to people and whether or not it was hard. His father’s response was simply that it was not hard, but rather easy, and that it did not happen often. The story ends with Nick and his father in the boat alone and Nick coming to the realization that he will never die.

4. Stevens, Jane. “Multimedia Storytelling” Knight Digital Media Center 2007. Regents of the University of California 2007. <http://multimedia.journalism.berkeley.edu/tutorials/reporting/starttofinish/storyboarding/>

A storyboard is a thematically designed outline of a text that is used in order to better organize a story and/or narrative. Each section of the storyboard uses a different element that compliments the story, but is not redundant of the rest of the sections. It is also used in order to help develop the specific medium that the story will be best represented in. Such mediums include text, photos, videos, graphics, maps, etc. Contrary to popular belief, a storyboard does not have to be designed in a linear format either. Instead, the sections of the storyboard can be developed in a specific way based on thematic elements, events of the novel, character descriptions, pros and cons, history of the novel, etc. Essentially, a storyboard can be represented in numerous ways that does not always have to follow a linear, time-oriented pattern. Instead, it is better represented in ways of elements, like the aforementioned, rather than just focusing on time as a way to present the story. When creating a storyboard, it is also important to make a visual representation of your sections and then work deeper into the subtopics, or explanations of each frame. One of the best reasons for creating a storyboard is to help identify different parts of a story that do not necessarily seem apparent at the initial reading. What it is aimed to do is to create a visual representation of a text that helps identify holes in the story or other ideas that may seem otherwise vague or misunderstood. For an example of a basic storyboard, see the site above.

5. “Summaries and Commentaries: Indian Camp”. Cliffnotes. Wiley Publishing Company 2008. <http://www.cliffsnotes.com/WileyCDA/LitNote/Hemingway-s-Short-Stories-Summaries-and-Commentaries-x93-Indian-Camp-x94-.id-10,pageNum-17.html>

An interesting idea to bring out about Hemingway’s Indian Camp is the contrast between life and death and fear and content. One of the biggest themes in the short story is the idea of a ritualistic event being placed upon a young child, who would otherwise seem ignorant to the practices of the Indians, especially the birth of a child. The birth of a child is something that is rarely seen by children, especially in the setting of a foreign atmosphere with an abnormal birth (that of having an operation take place, rather than a traditional birth). With this birth, Nick also witnesses death, with the suicide of the Indian man that was in the room with the woman who has given birth. When asking his father why the man had committed suicide his father replies with an answer that is uneasy, as he is unsure as to why the man actually did commit suicide. Speculations may state that the man either committed suicide because he could not handle the screaming and the events that took place over the course of the childbirth. Another speculations may be that other events in Indian society may have caused him to kill himself, such as a failure of manhood for not being able to withstand the situation that was occurring. Another binary comparison is the contrast between fear and content. Nick’s questioning of death is something that would lead a child of his age, especially after the event that he just witnessed, to become fearful of death and the events that would cause someone to die/commit suicide. Contrary to this common speculation is the result of Nick’s response to death and life as he defies the moral life and is ready for all that it brings. This idea of death and suicide in Indian camp deals with various themes and aspects of life and death, but also Hemingway’s common theme of either being able to stand a situation or not being able to stand a situation. The idea of suicide is something that Hemingway often portrayed as the conclusion of those men in his stories who could not stand something. Ironically, even though Hemingway constantly portrayed the “real man” as one who does not succumb to anything therefore does not commit suicide, Hemingway and his father both committed suicide.