John Costa

Visual Literacy Narrative

October 1st, 2009

FOOTBALL: MORE THAN JUST A GAME

The purpose of a visual narrative is to highlight an event in your life that has played an

important role in your literacy development. My visual literacy narrative is based on playing

football. Starting in the third grade I was not skilled or coordinated, but through years of

teamwork and hard work I prevailed. Through the accomplishment of football I graduated from

high school and am now attending Bridgewater State University. Considering I am presenting

this project to my classmates I knew that I had to provide a detailed piece of work that

someone could watch and know what I was going through. I decided to use windows movie

maker to show the improvements in my skills, coordination and mental aspects. It helped

enhance the hardships I went through and my emotions.

In the process of making this movie I took all the pictures that I was going to need. Then

I ventured out into my backyard to take a few clips. I used a mixture of pictures and videos

because it truly showed what I had transformed into over the years. Then I strategically placed

the clips into a linear order. I thought that a linear timeline was best for this movie because I

am showing progress in my skills eventually leading to my academic career at Bridgewater State

College. Movie maker allowed me to emphasize my main points. The color and audio in my

video was carefully chosen to capture the mood and time. At the beginning of my video the

images and video clips are in black and white to portray the past. In the beginning I also chose

the song “Going Through Changes” which is a slower song to show that my earlier years in

football were hard. About half way through my video I have the images and clips back in color.
This is to mark the climax that I have overcome my problems. I show these improved video clips

of myself doing the fitness tasks better as I play the song “All I Do is Win”. This song is up-

tempo and the lyrics show that I am working to overcome my problems. Next I show images

representing the mental aspects of life I have learned through football. “My Time” is played to

show that at this point in my life it is ‘my time’ to apply these skills at college and in life. Finally

at the end of my movie there are some images of me graduating and Bridgewater State

University. During these images the song “Crack A Bottle” is played to introduce myself and

show that I have longed to attend college. For example, the lyrics “the moment you’ve all been

waiting for” play. I feel as though these words symbolize my thoughts of my desire to go to

college.

Colors can symbolize a lot especially pertaining to moods. I chose the colors of my slides

specifically. In the earlier clips I chose green letters because green was my High School color,

and when these letters are shown it goes along with the clips showing my experiences in school

football leagues. I chose to have a black background for two reasons. The first is because the

black makes the green pop and emphasizes the green of my town colors. Secondly, black

represents mystery. I thought this was appropriate because I was discovering myself through

football during this time in my life. The slide titled “road to success” had a yellow brick road

image because in the Wizard of Oz this road symbolizes the journey the people took in the

movie. I thought in my slide, the yellow brick road symbolized my journey through football. I

chose to have the colors yellow and blue because these colors represent happiness and joy. I

also chose these same two colors for the Bridgewater state college slide for the same reasons.
 I placed animation feature on the patience slide to show the transformation I made in

my mental skills. I also chose to have similar features on the next two slides to show the

transformation I made from being a very unorganized person to having great time management

skills.

Football has played an important role in my life; it is much more than a game.

Throughout my years on the field, even though I did not know it at the time, I was learning

these essential skills that would stay with me through life. Now I have come to realize that

these skills are important for my school work as well. Listening has helped me in school because

it has enabled me to comprehend what my teachers and classmates are saying. Patience has

allowed me to overcome stressful situations as well. Lastly Time management has allowed me

to work sufficiently on assignments.