WELCOME
As you go through this portfolio you will be exposed to different artifacts of writing, production, design, and creativity, enjoy.
Hello
My name is Juliana Cano
But you can call me "Juli"
I am a first generation college student from Miami, Florida. I am currently enrolled In Florida State University on pursuing a bachelors degree in English, Writing, and Media along with a minor in Spanish and a graduate certificate in Multicultural Marketing Communications. After interning with Public Relation and Marketing firms in numerous events like Miami Swim Week and Art Basel Miami I am looking to a gain a new area of experience in News Broadcasting.
PROJECT 1
What do you think works well within your project?
I think my acknowledgement of the dynamic audience is very interesting because while each of these genres target different audiences, one is for children and one is for adults. It is the previously young viewers of iCarly who are the targeted audience of Jeanette McCurdy’s memoir. I think its very interesting for the audience to be able to read what was actually happening behind the cameras while Jeanette was playing such a silly character and be able to compare both artifacts and think “Wow this show was so silly and it made me laugh so much ten years ago but now I really know that not everything is at it seems.”
What did you make? How does it relate to what we’re learning in class?
For this project I decided to compare two artifacts that had completely different genres and audiences but still held ironical similarities. I decided to compare an episode of iCarly particularly the iWas a pageant girl to Jeanette McCurdy’s (better known as Sam Puckett) new memoir “Im glad my mom died”. I thought this was a very interesting comparison because the audiences of these materials are very dynamic while iCarly is targeted at children “I'm glad my mom died” by Jeanette Mcurdy is directed at adults. However since iCarly aired in the early 2000s it’s main audience is now in their early to mid twenties and with the new reboot of iCarly being released in 2021. It makes McCurdy's timing for release just right because it appeals to old fans of the sitcom while still being an engaging read for older audiences.
What creative decisions did you make while writing this? How / why did you make them this way?
I think that the selection of which chapter and what episode I was going to choose was very important to the direction of this project. Throughout the memoir I read about many traumatic experiences that McCurdy dealt with as a child. And as I binged iCarly I also saw several episodes that alluded to very serious subjects. However I wanted to choose an episode and a chapter that discussed the same subject but through different perspectives, for my artifacts they discussed vanity and the effects of it on young girls.
What challenges did you encounter during this project, and how did you overcome them?
It was very difficult to rhetorically analyze a show that I have been mindlessly watching since I was 7 years old. I think that when I'm given texts in class it’s easier to analyze even if it may not be particularly as enjoyable because of the genre that it is in. While I was watching the episode it was difficult to not just unplug laugh and at the mindless comedy but instead focus on the scenes and analyze them deeper along with eluding them to such a serious and uncensored piece of text. However when I found a particular episode that worked very well in componence with the chapter I chose it was much easier.
If you could work on this project for longer, what would you change / tweak / fine tune?
If I could alter my project I would honestly analyze the book as a whole. I think the chapters were very short but also held a lot of context. The book as a whole has so many issues to comment on like eating disorders, self image, sexual assault and many of these issues could be eluded to several episodes of iCarly as well. So even though it would be an extremely long paper I would like the opportunity to compare the whole book to at least an entire season.
Skydance Animation
Written and Directed by Joe Mateo
What do you think works well within your project?
I think that the poem and the short film work really well in unison. I feel like the poem does a really great job at providing visual imagery to try and incorporate specific scenes from the short video all while still being a formally written poem with strong figurative language. The short film uses a very obvious visual contrast to describe the relationship between the beautiful martian and their surroundings. They start off on a dark desolate planet when suddenly she arrives glowing with a pink hue and immediately starts bringing life to her surroundings. Through out the poem I tried to recreate this contrast by focusing on how she brought brightness to his days and an end to his internal darkness by utilizing imagery, repetition and metaphors.
PROJECT 2
What did you make? How does it relate to what we’re learning in class?
For this project I decided to recreate the short film Blush written and directed by Joe Mateo into a love poem. Blush is a short original film by Apple TV animated by Skydance Animations, it's a semi-autobiographical work about Mateo's wife and his story. A curious astronaut crash lands on a deserted dwarf planet and struggles to survive, only to be saved by the arrival of a bright, outgoing martian, who makes the planet bloom with plants. they create a life together and shortly after she passes. I decided to create this touching film into a poem because I think the themes transitioned very well, people typically write poetry about tragic love and loss and I also felt like it contrasted audiences very well with it being an animated short film for children to a poem for literature lovers.
What creative decisions did you make while writing this? How / why did you make them this way?
There are many creative decisions that go into making this project, I think the first one was probably choosing a fruitful text to remix in the first place. It needed to be something very dynamic that could be changed to another genre. The second being deciding what to remix it to and it was not until I did some research on the background of Blush that I was able to get some inspiration, I learned that the short film was inspired by the creator's loss of his wife and this helped me think of the mood I wanted to accomplish in the poem along with the themes I would be incorporating from the short film. The writer created this short to help him overcome his grief and I wanted to create a poem that would accomplish the same thing. as an elegy style poem there were parts that were bound to be sad and mournful but in the end I really wanted to emphasize how she changed him and brought color and vibrance to his life.
What challenges did you encounter during this project, and how did you overcome them?
I think the largest challenge I faced through out this project was trying to create the poem for a new audience while still incorporating
elements and story points from the short film. I really wanted to ensure a difference in audience when I remixed the original text and I did this by using literary elements typically found poetry in my original piece. This is an elegy style poem with themes of love and loss, this ultimately changes the type of audience drastically. I utilize visual imagery within the poem to illuminate the contrast between light and darkness and how she brought light into his life of darkness. I divided the poem into stanzas basically following the plot scenes of the short film and how their story unfolded. I also decided to utilize enjambment throughout my piece to demonstrate the momentum of their love story and how forever seemed to last seconds. It creates tension, adds complexity and also plays with syntax.
If you could work on this project for longer, what would you change / tweak / fine tune?
If I had more time on this project I would have incorporated more of Mateo's personal story within the poem. As I did research on what inspired Blush in the first place I learned the unfortunate story of how the creator lost his wife to cancer and I felt a lot of empathy towards him and found myself battling to include some of these details in the poem but I had to remember that I was remixing the short film solely and could not include things that most audiences would not be aware of without prior research on the film.
The Perfect Eyeliner: TikTok Tutorial
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The Perfect Eyeliner: Magazine Tutorial
PROJECT 3
What challenges did you encounter during this project, and how did you overcome them?
This was a very broad project, there were many possible routes I could have taken and because I tend to be more on the creative side I really struggled with sticking to one term. I felt like there were many ways in which I could have executed each one but once I chose multimodality I felt like this would be the best to display a clear translation between a text based example and a non text based one. Once I chose the message that I wanted to display and the mediums I was going to use: TikTok and a magazine spread. I think I struggled the most making the TikTok. I have never been use to creating personal verbal interactive content like the tutorials we watch on YouTube and etc. Thus I struggled really trying to perfect my verbal script in the video. I would tend to jumble my words and mix up my thoughts at first and have to restart but once I reviewed the steps thoroughly and practiced off camera I was able to execute it well.
What do you think works well within your project?
If you could work on this project for longer, what would you change / tweak / fine tune?
I think my favorite part of the project was designing the magazine spread. I used inspiration from cosmopolitan and vogue spreads to follow a sleek yet fierce theme and tried to replicate a real magazine page as much as possible I even included page numbers. However I think that what works the best within the project is the perfect display of multimodality with these two text genres. Each one utilizes a combination multiple sensory and communicative modes. The TikTok uses sight and sound within a video to appeal to auditory, visual and kinesthetic learners some people benefit more from a visual example including a verbal step by step explanation so they can actively follow along with the creator. On the other hand the magazine spread uses sight and print to display the tutorial and it appeals to visual and reading/writing leaners. By displaying several genres we see a perfect display of multimodality.
I think this was my favorite of all the projects because I felt like it was the one where we got the most creative freedom without having to follow as many guidelines. and because of this I would have loved to spend more time on the magazine spread portion of the project. Besides the fact that when I downloaded the file into a PDF it slightly shifted a couple elements on the page, I do think I worked well with the resources I had to design this, which was power point. I wish I would have had the software I used to design my yearbook in High school and the adobe design that came with it. I was much more familiar with how to add certain elements on this other software and it took me a little practice to get adjusted since I had not really used powerpoint in several years.
What did you make? How does it relate to what we’re learning in class?
For this project I chose the term multimodality. When choosing the message I wanted to display I originally thought up the idea of doing a makeup tutorial because makeup is something I have always been very passionate about. I think a tutorial is the perfect way to display multimodality, makeup tutorials are so popular now a days they exist in a huge variety of text genres including pictures, written text, videos and etc. the idea is to expand the reach of the audience by displaying the same message in multiple modalities. In The Multiple Media of Texts by Anne Wysocki she argues about the difference in effect when using different modalities and how removing text can remove "Seriousness" from a piece. But my project proves that a piece can be just as valuable and fruitful without using written text if it uses an array of modalities that appeal to audiences as well.
What creative decisions did you make while writing this? How / why did you make them this way?
I made several creative decisions when creating each portion of the project when I created the magazine I was going fo a very fierce and intense theme with popping font and the black background color to go for a very cosmopolitan and Vogue vibe. However when I created the TikTok i went for an extremely different approach. I really enjoy TikTok videos that display the creator's authenticity so I really tried to show my personality in the video along with providing a realistic easy to follow tutorial that makes you feel like your on face time with your friend.