Nostalgic for Nostalgia:
A Reflection on English 282
Composer: Maya Falodia
MP #1: Retrospective Podcast
A Moment Frozen in Time
Final Podcast: Strengths and Weaknesses
We had strong multimodal analysis, especially of the aural and visual modes. We discussed how the lighting impacted the mood of the movie at times and how the music helped build intensity. We connected the character's appearances with their relationship to their loved ones. Having audio clips and music from the movie helped strengthen our podcast and helped make our composition multimodal. Adding the audio clips and connecting our analysis closely to our main themes was based on feedback we received from peers and our instructor. One piece of feedback we chose to negotiate was the “Snow Queen” section. While others felt like it took away from the main points of the podcast, we liked how it added fun facts and told us about Frozen’s origins. Instead of cutting the section, we reformatted it to tie with the theme of familial love and how Frozen shifted away from romantic love like in the “Snow Queen”.
Moving Forward:
We could extend the run time of the podcast, as Leah and I talked at a faster pace, which can be harder for some people to understand. We could maybe have closer to a 15 minute podcast, which would also allow us to bring in more information related to “found families” and diversity, allowing us to have additional secondary sources. For example, when talking about the lack of diversity, we could have a section towards the end of the podcast where we compare Frozen’s diversity to other disney films. We could pull in secondary sources that show data about new Disney movies being made–a lot of which have protagonists of color and/or protagonists that are implied to be queer. Some examples that come to mind are “Wish”, “Encanto”, “Raya and the Last Dragon”, “Luca”, and “Elemental”. Other secondary sources could bolster our multimodal analysis: we could look at how animators pay close attention to lighting and design details while creating a movie to elicit certain audience responses.
To elaborate on the found family theme, we could dive into why Anna was so desperate for connection. Anna didn’t have anyone in her own family she connected with for a lot of her adolescence, especially with Elsa being shut off from her. Thus, when Hans entered Anna’s life, she latched on, feeling seen by someone.
Finally, the biggest area for improvements in our podcast is transitions, both technologically and linguistically. Sometimes the transition between music and speech was awkward, as the music overpowered our voices. We could work on fading the music even more and turning down the volume of the music. For example, we should decrease the volume of “Let it Go” before and after the ad. To improve speaker transitions, we should read the script out loud and can make note of awkward transitions. I think ad libbing some transitions could also make our podcast feel more natural and less scripted.
Example of improved transitions and deeper discussion of found families.
