A Movie Review

For this weeks assignment, we learned about collaborative writing and wrote a movie review. Arda, Mert and I decided on The Machinist (2004), starring Christian Bale, who is actually one of my favorite actors.

We actually had 2 weeks of time for this project so all of us had more than enough of time to ingest and analyze the movie. We used Google Docs for the whole project which is a program that lets everyone in the group to edit and view the paper, as well as peers to comment on it, which we also did for another group.

We each wrote our own seperate reviews first, picked the best parts from them and combined them in Google Docs while adding a few extra things and correcting mistakes in the process.

I found the app very user friendly and easy to use just like Google's other products. The ability to give specific permissions to people like viewing, commenting and editing makes collaborative writing very easy. The option to comment on particular words or the whole paper is also very neat.

Collaborative writing allows every member of the group to work in unison, fix each others mistakes and create something that every member contributes to. It can be used in a classroom environment where writing skills are to be improved and teamwork is to be encouraged.

I provided a screenshot of our review as well as the peer comments below. You can view Arda and Mert's blogs by clicking on their names.

A Digital Story

 For this week's assignment, we were tasked with creating a digital story. Me, Arda and Mert decided to create a story about a 1930's mafia deal in New York.

The story starts with Cianno, Alberto and Tony in a truck full of booze pulling up to a dark warehouse owned by Sullivan, a sketchy bussinessman. Just as the transaction was coming to an end, they were greeted by Falcone, a rival gang leader and things take a turn for the worse.

I don't want to spoil the story any further so I'll get into the production process. We first started by creating the characters, writing their lines and configuring the plot. After we were done writing, we started voice-recording. Everyone voiced a main character, along with a side-character.

After that, it was time for the graphics part. I used ChatGPT's 4o model to generate scenes. It took plenty of attempts to get it to perfection but it was certainly easier than fishing out specific images out of the internet for every single scene.

Finally, all there was left to do was to put everything together. I used Vegas 14 Pro which is actually a very old paid program but I was experienced with it and I already had it. Initially I was thinking of using CapCut which I'm also experienced with but it charges for some features which were necessary for the process.

An activity like this can let students use their creativity and imagination while encouraging teamwork. Creating stories and voicing characters can help improve their writing and speaking skills. I would definitely consider giving my students a project like this.

You can access the story through YouTube by clicking here, and you can access Arda's and Mert's blogs by clicking on their names.