Community Multimedia Project

For this assignment, you will be defining the concept of community by analyzing a group that
you are a part of (or know someone who is a part of, i.e. friend, sibling, parent, etc) and creating a
script and video showcasing that community. This community can range anywhere from social
networking groups, to Purdue clubs, to online games, to your dorm floor, to your sports group.
Your community should be focused enough to analyze in this assignment: for example, you
shouldnt focus on all of Facebook as a community, or all of Purdue, but rather a group that you
can get a better sense of who the members of that community are and how they build a cohesive
whole.
While you are building your definition of that community, consider the following: What are the
goals of this community? Why do its members work together? Who are these members, and how
do they reach out to new members in the community? Why is this community important to you,
and/or others in the community? How does the community function as a discourse community? Is
this community opened or closed and how does that affect your definition? If the community is
online, you could also speak to the ways that community is established without face-to-face
contact, or in unique ways that take advantage of digital mediums (i.e avatars, global members,
etc.) You do not need to answer all of these questions but rather use them as a jumping off point
to help you build your argument.
You will need specific evidence from this community to back up your claims. Think about the
visual rhetoric of the community and how it uses color/sound/text to present itself. Think about the
people that build that community, or the space(s) your community lives and works in. Your video
will establish how you define community as well as how your group functions as a community,
why they work together, or perhaps even how you stick together in spite of yourselves. Having
defined your group as a community, the video will be your chance to introduce others to the
community, specifically non-members. It could be recruitment, it could be a retrospective, but it
needs to argue why your group is a community.
For the handout, I am requiring some level of CRAP/HATS design be put into the document. You
may use Publisher, Word, Photoshop, whatever program youre most comfortable with. Bareminimum include at least one image (formatted correctly) and some sort of textual design, such
as headers, although the best handouts will go above and beyond.
For the video you may use still images, video, interviews, screenshots, text, music, etc. to support
your claims and make your argument through the use of visual rhetoric. You may use any video
editing software that you are comfortable with, but we will be running a tutorial on Windows Movie
Maker in class. For groups, the video should be 5-7 minutes long. For individuals, the video must
be 3-5 minutes. Your video must include images, text, and music, but I highly encourage you to
be creative and go beyond just the bare minimum.
Objectives:

Create an argument for your community

Explore digital vs non-digital elements of community

Analyze and use visual rhetoric in both handout and video

Include some CRAP/HATS design in your document

Make a well-crafted video suitable for publication

Your handout should be about 500-800 words and a rough draft will be due Thursday March 12th
for a peer-editing workshop and both handout and video are due Monday March 30th. You will
submit your video as an .MP4 file with your handout in .pdf format.