Neal's New Media Blog

My classmate and colleague Neal has offered me great feedback on many of my posts and in return I will be analyzing his blog from the criteria laid out by our professor, Dr. Gideon Burton.

Discussion
From the beginning of Neal's blog posts to the concluding post on landscape functions in film, his thought process as a writer has flourished. He has done extensive research and has had come across difficulties, not being able to get certain scenes from his Sjostrom DVD and others but he has been able to communicate with people outside of our classroom including Tom Gunning, the Chair for the Department of Cinema and Media Studies at The University of Chicago. His blog postings are frequent and not only does Neal responds well to peers blogs and his peers respond on his blog postings too which I think have helped him in his writing craftsmanship. Neal even dedicates a post where he includes comments from fellow classmates, Allison, Chris, and Heather and responds to their feedback. He is in touch with his readers.

Focus
The overall research of Neal's blog clearly focuses on landscape in film. He offers several different videos to show readers/viewers the impact that landscape has on film. Each blog post has sub headings that are easy for the reader to understand what he is about to discuss. One thing I have noticed from reading Neal's blog is that there is a clear thought pattern. He asks himself questions and then will answer them in future blog postings. He, in a way, posts his brainstorming which allows him to progress in his writing.

Cohesion
The posts relate well with each other and there is an overall flow of posting.

Post Variety
Neal narrates his writing process well in his postings as I have mentioned before. His main source of literature Victor Sjostrom's Terje Vigen is linked well with his writing process and he refers back to it throughout his postings. He profiles Tom Gunning in a post where he displays their e-mail conversations and how Gunning has helped shaped his project. Neal frequently in each post refers his readers back to his hub post and reformulated hub post which lead to the overall creation of his concluding post. He includes current event posts and even examined copyright laws on uploading film found in this post.

Personality
Neal does not separate himself from his writing. His thought processes are laid out well within his posts and he even in one post expresses his personal love for landscape and the outdoors. As a reader, he comes off as a person that I could have both scholarly and informal conversations with which gives the author more appeal.

Currency and History
Neal had the challenge of being the only one in our class to look at landscape and film and literature. Other classmates focused on civil disobedience, the sublime, and online identity, or a mixture of the three. I think that Neal accomplished this task of grounding his writings in historical film.

Sources
The main literary source is well analyzed throughout Neal's blog postings and he makes connections to it and his personal research. He takes his sources from all different areas: scholars, literature, and youtube to display a variety of context.

Interactivity
Neal engages scholars who are familiar with his topic and classmates are interested in his research and provide useful feedback for him to continue in his studies. I have linked Neal in some of my previous blog posts for the useful feedback he has given me and as mentioned previously, Neal responds well with his classmates. He has a very high level of interactivity.

Community
A link to Diigo and other bookmark tabs are listed on Neal's sidebars. He also has avoided isolated work by demonstrating connectivity with readers.

Analysis
Throughout Neal's posts he provides firm analysis on film and literature. In his post on "The landscape of landscape and film", Neal analyzes a text entitled Cinema by Tom Gunning. He provides quotes from the literature, provides his own feedback and then links his findings in Cinema to other research he has accumulated.

Length
I think that some of Neal's blog posts seem long but only because of the font size. I think that they will draw readers in because of the media content, the way he forms his quotes and analysis. The format of his blog postings allows readers to easily read through his thoughts and writings.

Links
There are links everywhere in the post! This can be a bad thing and a good thing. In ways I see so many links that I don't know which ones I should click on and then I end up overlooking many of them. It is important to link previous posts and research but I do think that Neal links extensively throughout his postings.

Media
Media? Oh no media on this blog post! Absolute sarcasm right there. Neal uses media as his main source for each post. Media, film, drives his research and he frequently embeds videos for his viewers to watch in order to let them visualize and understand what he is aiming at in his writing. His blog posting on June 1 links four videos for viewers to watch linking the landscape to the narrative using Victor Sjostrom's early films as his case study.

Design
I would have liked to see Neal's blog with more of a landscape and new media feel. Maybe have a piece of landscape as his background. I also think his pictures illustrated his topics of discussion.

Quantity
Neal definitely has enough blog posts that have allowed the reader to regularly follow the blog.

Overall I think Neal did a wonderful job at fulfilling our assignment to take a topic and discuss it in a new media aspect. I have enjoyed reading his thoughts and as a reader of his work, I have been offered new insight into the importance of landscape in film.