4/25/12

These last few months have been full of great advice. I have learned a lot about how to write. I also have learned a lot about making money. Professor Jenkins' advice was spectacular. Today we finished up with business advice. In the end, it's about enjoying what you do and helping others. No matter how far you go you must remember where you came from. Young or old, we all started somewhere and that help should be passed on.

4/23/12

How much does it cost to wake up? What is the dollar amount per hour? We went through how to figure this number out depending on your own personal preferences. The steps to making a successful business: plan, llc, website, cards, cost to wake up, clients (market), do the work, invoicing.

4/20/12

Today's lecture was on owning your own business. Being your own boss has its advantages. 1)plan 2)LLC 3)build a website/get biz cards.

4/16/12

Fear was today's topic. How can you use fear to sell? We touched on: the 4-part fear appeal, emphasize the negative, strengthen the fear appeal and personalize the message. The 4-part fear appeal discusses: introduce the threat, demonstrate that the audience is at risk, introduce the solution, show the audience they can perform the solution. Also, we discussed keys to strength and peronalizing. For strength: serious (likely to happen), many references, vivid word pictures. For personalization: refer often to your audience's chances, personalize ("you"), emphasize commonality.

4/13/12

We finished watching the McDonalds ads today.

4/11/12

McDonalds. They are in the business of real estate and not burgers. We watched some of their early ads and worked our way up from the beginning.

4/6/12

We continued watching more car commercials today. AIDA was applied to these commercials. I also enjoyed the trunk monkey ads.

4/4/12

Last class we talked about the value 0 scale. In this class we watched more car commercials. Cars went back and forth from being dependable to being about sex and class.

4/2/12

This class started with a review of the process of selling. It ended by watching car commercials. How the individual came to be was covered. The 20's to today has seen a major change in advertising. It used to be towards families and today is all about the individual.

3/21/12

Today we spoke about A.I.D.A. Attention, Interest, Desire and Action. In other words: "Hey you!" "You want?" "I've got!" "Buy it now!"

3/19/12

On this day we talked about selling corn. We focused on three audiences: college, family and retired. We looked at each group individually. Our focus was on their lifestyles. These lifestyles help decide their choices. By figuring that out we can focus our advertising.

4/16/12

Fear
Sometimes fear is used to sell a product. There is a four-part fear appeal that involves 1) introduce the threat 2) demonstrate that the audience is at risk 3) introduce the solution 4) show the audience they can perform the solution. Using fear can help us to sell a message or a product, but should not be used too often or the threat loses its believability.
To strengthen the fear you must make the audience think 1) it is serious or likely to happen 2) refer to it often 3) use vivid word pictures. Also, you should try personalizing the message. To do this 1) refer often to the audience's chances 2) personalize by saying "you" 3) emphasize the commonality.

4/13/12

We finished watching McDonald's ads and were assigned to come up with an ad for them in 2050.

4/11/12

McDonalds took over the world with real estate. We watched how they brought people in with advertising.

4/6/12

The car commercials continued into the 80s to today. We discussed how the ads followed AIDA and who the audience was. Cars became an extension of ourselves and not about performance or dependability.
We were assigned to make an ad about the 2020 Go.

4/4/12

Our day consisted of watching commercials. Specifically car commercials.

4/2/12

We talked about how the individual came to be from the 1920s up to today, which had to do with the vale 0 scale. This scale finds different generations at different places on the scale.

3/19

Selling is what our class discussions center around now. We focused on different audiences today and what they are like. On Wednesday we will come up with different campaigns for diff audiences.

3/9/12

We watched George carlin and discussed "soft language" as well as how advertisers abuse language to create circular arguments in advertising.
Is it possible to advertise w/o lying is our question to ponder this weekend.

3/5/12

We reviewed and discussed dialogue, language and words

2/27/12

When adding dialogue it should serve a purpose. Laying out some descriptions of characters can help you decide what motivates them and their actions.

2/24/12

We discussed "what is the message?" "How is the author trying to change you?" We also went over ways to improve dialogue.

2/22/12

Today we spoke about what emotions can be drawn from a characters dialog and what does it tell about their background.

2/20/12

We began discussing dialog, the mistakes, and the scene. We also watched full metal jacket opening scene

2/17/12

Friday we discussed the 10 story types. Romance, success/failure, Cinderella, conversion, sacrifice, family, triangle, return, crime/punishment, heroic. Then we were given directions on how to develop our ideas into stories. Hunt and gather, play with it, let it stew, eureka, just do it.

2/15/12

We turned in our papers, had a small pop-quiz about what we have covered so fa, and I lost a piece of my pen and now it doesn't work. Also, Joel said a naughty word. But honestly I think it is funny.

2/6/12

Today's conversation was on conflict. We also went over 3-part act. I wonder though if this is the preferred method then how do people like Tarantino make movies because they jump around and don't (initially) seem to follow this method.

2/3/12

We talked about the "heroes journey" and what five parts make it up. Call to adventure, road of trials, achieve goals, return to real world, and application are the five. Then we began talking about the antagonist and the "g.a.s.g."

2/1/12

Today we talked more in-depth about characters. We touched on Maslow's theory and animal v soul. We also spoke about staying away from characterization and focusing on characters that are unique, not cliche.

1/30/12

We talked about essential components of a character in class. Characters are active or passive.

1/22/12

Meeting the parents is a situation that is always quite funny and has a lot of cliche characters.
-The overbearing, protective father. He usually comes from some type of military background and this makes him extremely intimidating. His hair is crew cut and short, blonde if possible usually. He is "always watching" the new boyfriend and making sure his princess is not being mistreated. He is absolutely in love with his wife, and that is the only person he ever answers to.
-The horny wife that constantly teases and tempts the boyfriend without the rest of the family knowing. She loves her husband but is bored with her married life so she goes after younger men. She doesn't really want them to sleep with her though, she just enjoys the thrill of the chase. She usually drinks a lot and wears fancy clothes and hats.
-The often uneducated, loser brother. He still lives at home with his parents, does drugs, has a part-time job at some grocery or convenience store. His hobbies include sitting around getting high, watching porn, and mooching off his family. He sometimes helps the boyfriend to rediscover his love for his sister and encourages the boyfriend to go win her back.

1/20/12

Friday we all discussed our own personal stories. Some were funny, some enlightening, and others lost my attention. I remember one in particular that, from the very start, I got disinterested in because of the way they started telling the story.

1/18/12

On Wednesday we continued to talk about story and what makes a good story. The main message was that every story has two main characters, one conflict and one resolution as its minimum. Stories should be concise as to not lose the audiences attention. He also corrected himself in saying that we read at a seventh grade level instead of fifth grade.

U.C.A.

The other day I was driving in Brookside. One of the houses caught my eye. There was a cement lion statue on the porch. I thought to myself, "There must be a story behind that statue." This made my imagination run wild. What if it was purchased in Asia? What if it was a gift? And so on. I settled on this: the husband saw the statue at an Ace Hardware store and loved it. However, when he brought it home his wife went rampant. She hated it. In fact, she hated it so much, she left him. Now he lives alone in a big house in Brookside. He has to pay two mortgages by himself. He holds by his lion though. That is dedication. That is love.

1/12/12

Wednesday we continued to talk about power. Most Americans do not read after high school. They have some form of illiteracy. Many read at a fifth grade level. They are not stupid however. Americans just have a short attention span. They read only the headlines. Also, sentences with more than eight words tend to lose that short amount of attention. We have only a finite amount of energy to use each day. Our brain decides what to filter out. This method allows us to retain information we let through our "WIFM" barrier.

1/9/2012

Yesterday in class we talked about gaining power through our writing and what that meant. Many of us have probably not had many opportunities to gain power or influence in any instance in our tiny lives. This class will let us hone our skills and become masters of our own words. There are a lot of creative thoughts swirling around in our heads, we just need to bring them to light. Writing for the media can be a powerful tool, and I for one cannot help but be excited about this class.