Moby Dick in a Minute

When we first received the assignment to mediate the text of Moby Dick, the first thing that came to mind was doing some kind of "Moby Dick in a Minute" production. I thought about doing an illustrated video, but decided instead to do a kind of text slideshow. I uploaded it to YouTube and have embedded it below.

What I realized first is that condensing a novel this long into one minute is difficult, especially considering that I chose a medium that required time for transitions and time for readers to actually read the text. However, while the main points I chose may seem very basic, I think this basic format has a place on the internet. We are all about simplifying and condensing in order to fit more into the 24 hours in our day (can you tell I still have Present Shock in the back of my mind?), so finding simplified versions of things sometimes becomes a priority.

I initially got the idea from the Barats and Bereta Bible in a minute video:

(Sorry for any sacrilegiousness)

The advantages to having a visual and audio video rather than a text video is that they are able to fit a lot more in to the one minute than I could. They did this in one take (or so I assume), and then they added effects later. They get right at the basics of the Bible, which is what I tried to do in my video. One thing I noticed between the two is that the Bible in a Minute video gives keywords rather than full descriptions. These keywords would not mean much to someone who had never read about or studied the Bible. I think my video does something different, in that it tries to tell the story of Moby Dick to someone who may not be familiar with it.

While I was creating the moving text in PowerDirector, I knew I wanted to enhance it with an image and with sound. I found the image on photopin.com. I thought it was a cool interpretation of Moby Dick. As I searched for music to add to my slideshow, I tried to find something that would convey the harshness of the life at sea that Ishmael experiences. It was fun to combine these different elements to create something new. And who knows, maybe some 9th grader will stumble upon it and it will help them understand a few of the basics of this long novel they have to read for their English class.