Digital Essay:

Your final assignment in this class is to produce a five-minute video essay on a topic from the Troubles in Northern Ireland. We have three assignments leading up to this final product.

• Select on of the dramatic segments of film from the Northern Ireland Archive, do some web research on your own, then consult with your library liaison during our library instruction session.
• Pick a personality you will write a narrative about, produce a script, and record that script.
• Produce a paper and script that chooses an event in which the personality you selected for the last assignment is significant. Explain the context of the event and the involvement of the personality.
• Produce a final, polished video essay linking these assignments.

The main objective of your final video is to explain the event you have chosen to an audience that does not know anything much about the conflict in Northern Ireland. Imagine that your film will be part of an exhibition at the Samek Art Gallery on campus so that the audience will be other students, faculty and staff, campus visitors, and parents who view art in the gallery. This means you need to concisely explain what the conflict in Northern Ireland is about and also explain your event and your personality.

As preparation for this final assignment, we have a series of exercises listed in the syllabus like identifying a personality and explaining that person to class, picking five images, presenting them to class and explaining what they are and why they impact you. In each of these exercises an important part of the drill will be for you to explain the material to other students in class and, on the other side, to respond to the presentations of others by asking questions and giving feedback that will help them to more effectively convey to an uninformed audience what is important about the NI event.