My blog really grew a lot and matured over these past eight weeks. When my blog first started, it was a bland page with one picture of the movie that I was reviewing. Then there was a brief paragraph which gives my critique of the movie currently playing in theaters. It had a bland white background and was boring to my viewers. I can admit I have never made a website in my life and it was really confusing to me. But as I played around with it week after week it started to become familiar to me. I changed the theme and background of my blog and it was right around Halloween so I chose the black and orange color scheme. Things started to just fall into place. It is a satisfying and rewarding feeling to finish a blog and to know people will be reading it and also commenting on the movies I was reviewing.
As I was reviewing the movies, I started filling in many pictures from each movie. This gives my blog more detail and made it look more like a real blog site. It also gives the viewer a better idea what each movie is about and also supports my review of it. I wanted to find the best pictures to draw in my audience so they would read my review and respond to it. Pictures and an attractive background are very useful for getting people to read what you have to say. That is the main purpose of creating and maintaining a blog. It would be pointless to have a blog that viewers just skim over and don’t leave any comments.
When my blog first began, it was very nerve-racking and very frustrating. I’m not really good with computers and really never have been. I was overwhelmed at the idea I was creating my own website and posting a different blog every week. But when it came time to pick my topic I knew exactly what I wanted. I wanted to review movies that are currently playing in theaters across the country. I had great insight of what I wanted to
get out of this assignment. I have always loved movies and working with them for eight years gave me a chance to see almost every movie as it came to theaters. I believe when writing a blog you should really care about what you are opinionating and should have some knowledge on the subject.
My favorite entry to my blog site would have to be my review on the movie, “This Is It,” starring Michael Jackson. This is my favorite blog entry mainly because I love and respect Michael Jackson so much. Not to mention Michael Jackson died before he could perform this concert for all of his fans. The whole movie is Michael Jackson’s rehearsal of his last concert called “This Is It.” This movie really touched me and in my opinion, would touch anyone who watches it. I do my best writing when I truly care
about what I am talking about and this was definitely the case here. Hopefully that blog interested my viewers to go out and watch this movie, or at least buy the movie when it is released on DVD.
The entry that I thought that secondly epitomized my best work was my review of the movie, “The Blind Side.” This was the amazing true story of a homeless boy named Michael Oher, who was picked up by strangers and became part of their family. The family who took Michael in helped him improve his grades which gave him an opportunity to try out for high school football. In this blog I included some pictures from the actual movie and also a picture of the real Michael being drafted by an NFL team in last years draft. In my opinion, there is no better movie than one that is based on a true story and still has an amazing and dramatic plot. This blog is one of my best blogs and has a lot to do with my love of football. My love of the game combined with my love of movies is the perfect recipe for a good review.
My first review was the movie “Zombieland.” It was a very short review with no pictures to go along with it. I really did not know what I was doing at the time. Adding pictures to go along with my text frustrated me and I couldn’t get it. But as time went on and I had a chance to play around with some things I got better at it. You can really see my improvement by just looking at my first blog entry compared with the most recent blog I submitted. As I got my footing with the blog, I updated my first couple of posts by adding things to improve them.
My blog was very frustrating at first, but as time went by that frustration turned into satisfaction with myself. My attitude changed from nervous and not wanting to do it, to excited and anxious to start my next movie review blog post. Even though many people did not comment on my posts, I could still see a lot of people were viewing my blog site every day. I understand it is hard to comment on a movie review when you haven’t actually seen the movie. But as long as people were viewing my blogs, I felt that my site was a success.
Ever since I was young, I always enjoyed writing. I loved writing essays, short stories, and most of all writing poems. Math is my strongest subject but I would have to say that writing is, and has been the most interesting scholastic in all my school years. In saying that, writing in a blog on my own internet website is big change from just writing on a piece of paper for only a select few to actually read. Writing a blog is very intimidating with the wide variety of people who surf the internet every day. I can be very subconscious about my writing and this had my nerves tingling with the first blog that I posted on my site. I do not think it was very good at all, but as my blogs increased so did my confidence in my writing. There is most definitely a big difference of normal writing assignments and this type of blog writing.
There was a student whose blog was similar to the subject of my blog. His main content was to review music albums and giving his opinions on what he thought. Buying an album is similar to buying a ticket to a movie. You either watch or hear previews of movies and music and also reviews of what other people thought of them. The person critiquing is only trying to help people decide whether those people should watch that movie or buy that album. Even though people might not have the same interests as the criticizer, they can respect that their opinion is based on some sort of expertise of the subject at hand. I think his purpose was to help people who love music to purchase the right music albums for themselves. Just as my blog is helping movie goers decipher the good movies from the bad ones and whether or not they should spend their money to see them.
This class has given me a great opportunity to explore things that I would have never got to experience in my life. I would always here about people blogging but always thought to myself, “That’s dumb,” or “I would never do that.” Now that I have made a blog website it has opened my eyes to another world that is out there. I want to see what people have to say and I want to see all the interesting sites that people took a lot of their time to make. I also will continue with my blog and share what I have to say with all the people out there.
This blogging experience has really been life changing. It has opened my eyes to the different kind of media that is out there. I never realized that writing on the internet was actual writing. I just thought it was playing around and had no important significance of any kind. I was very wrong. I guess it’s the same a reading a comic book or a newspaper. You read them for your own enjoyment but you are still practicing reading techniques although you’re not really thinking about that. While I was writing on my blog, I didn’t realize at the time but I was practicing my skills as a writer. It just didn’t feel like it because it was online. I am glad I created and maintained an actual blog and I feel pretty satisfied with myself. I really got a lot out of this experience and now I have the tools to become a good writer, not only on paper, but on the World Wide Web as well.
