Maha Khan Dr.

Erin Dietel-McLaughlin Multimedia Writing & Rhetoric 3 December 2012 My Final Purpose: A Call to Action The focus on media in this class has interested me from the beginning. For this visual essay, I was sure I wanted to do something related to media again, as I had in my research paper. I decided to dig deeper into the medias portrayal of Pakistani women. Initially, I thought of creating a whole new project about the relationship between clothing advertisements and womens body images. I decided against that because I wanted to further enhance my research on the relationship between Pakistani women and the media. I felt that my research paper, though it was argumentative, was not a call to action. By changing the purpose of my argument and maintaining my main idea of how media cover stories risk the lives of those who stand up for Pakistani women, I created my visual essay. After reading Dr. Es comments on my research paper I added a section on Mukhtar Mai. She was a victim of rape in Pakistan and spoke up about the disgusting acts that she had suffered from. I was shocked to read that my research paper came off as negative towards Malala and other women who I had written about. In order to diminish any doubt that I was undermining the work of women like Malala, I added a positive section about Mukhtar Mai. My attempt with Mais story is to agree with the counterargument that there are women in Pakistan who are speaking up, but it also sheds light on the fact that there are not enough women speaking up. Mukhtar Mais story connected well with my new purpose of calling my audience of people passionate about Pakistani politics to help more women in Pakistan speak up like Mai did.

Through individual stories like Mais, I tried to show the bigger story of Pakistani women. In the part about Malala I thought it would be much more effective if she told her own story because I wanted to make the most of my medium. I no longer had to tell Malalas story like I did on paper. As for late Salman Taseers story, his daughter, Shehrbano Taseer, was the next best person to tell his story. The tears and the ache in Malala and Shehrbanos voices are what make this video far more emotional than my research paper. There were several effects that enhanced this emotion in my video. I started my project thinking that since my video was going to be serious I would not use any effects. I was absolutely wrong because I realized that different connotations could be taken by words slowly appearing on the screen or a picture being zoomed in on. These effects allowed my video to go to a solemn level. I had an absolutely different picture of what I wanted my video to be like when I began my project. I spent all of Thanksgiving break trying to figure out the organization of my video and came up with only 15 seconds of video. I shortened some of my points by giving less examples and added new examples to other points. I based these additions and subtractions on what would spark more emotions. For instance, in my research paper I gave two examples of leaders efforts towards womens rights that had caused their deaths, Benazir Bhutto and Salman Taseer. I only showed one example in my video because I thought adding both would make it too repetitive. I chose Taseer in particular because the way his daughter told his story was very moving. Thankfully, fretting over the organization was a good thing because when I came back from break it was much easier to work on my video. Other than the organization, I also had trouble deciding whether I was going to make a Prezi presentation or a movie. I initially thought that I would make four different movies and place them into Prezi since I had four main points in my research paper. When I started making the movie I realized that the different frames were flowing very well together so I

decided to keep it as one video. Making a video also made it easier for me to see what parts of the story I was trying to tell were missing. Watching the movie over and over again, I have realized that the story I was trying to tell about the need to help Pakistani women is much more apparent in my video than it was in the research paper. This project helped me realize the different emotions that music, video clips, pictures and effects can incite. After this project, I am more aware of different sounds and effects that directors use in movies, advertisements and trailers. This was my favorite project because during the process of making my video I forgot I was doing it for a class.