2001: A Space Odyssey Draft 1

Stanley Kubrick’s “masterpiece” 2001: A Space Odyssey has many mixed emotions from viewer to viewer. On one side people absolutely love it and say that it is an amazing work of art; while, on the other side of the spectrum, many say that it is not that good and mostly do not enjoy the movie much at all.
The beginning 20 seconds of the movie brings a strong sound and excitement to the viewer. Then it goes to a deserted land with no noise whatsoever and only shows random animals. For a lengthy amount of time, it shows these animals drinking water and arguing with others. This is a horrible start to the film because the audience is already losing interest.
Then the apes wake up to a very annoying noise and see a black block. They approach the block and its increasingly loud noise and start screaming at the object. Suddenly the scene changes to the apes’ bones lying around where the block was. Another ape comes up and grabs a bone and starts to smash the bones and use the bone as a weapon or tool. This is to show how the first weapons and tools were to come about. It was pretty interesting how Kubrick showed this, but used way too much film and time to get to this point.
The next scene moves forward several years to around the year 2000. This is another long segment showing space shuttles, satellites, and other space objects floating around with annoying orchestral music. Again the audience is losing interest due to the fact of how much time is being used showing the same things over and over. Given the fact that this movie was made in 1968, it does have great special effects, for the time period, such as floating pens and other objects, but is still way too long of an introduction to the upcoming scenes.
Then the first scene of any scripted acting came next. Dr. Heywood Floyd goes onto a boarding station outside of earth before his flight to the moon. This scene shows many futuristic ideas such as a waitress walking upside down due to her “sticky shoes,” a video telephone, and food trays floating due to no gravity. The scene sets the mood for the rest of the movie and also brings a mystery to the plot when the Dr. is questioned about an epidemic occurring on the moon base.
Once Heywood leaves the boarding station, he stops at another station that appears to be a very important and secretive base. He then talks to a panel of people that there has been, “the most significant discovery in the history in science.” The panel is discouraged about the secrecy of the program and question Floyd about it. Finally this scene starts to bring some action to what has been a very mellow, almost exhausting plot.
Then Dr. Floyd and some other men are on a shuttle heading to the moon. They are in futuristic space suits and talking about the discovery they had made. Once they land the men go out onto the surface and walk up to the same annoying noise and block that the apes had seen. All of a sudden the block makes a loud, screeching noise and the scene cuts out to the Jupiter Mission, eighteen months later.
The shuttle is very intriguing and a great part of the movie because it is so realistic. It shows the astronauts defying gravity and running around the station. It also introduces the most controversial character of the movie, the computer Hal 9000. He is representing the futuristic technology for the movie. This brings up the problem. “He” is supposedly flawless and has never made a mistake; however, when there supposedly is a computer error, the astronauts decide to disconnect him.
Once this happens, Hal kills the hibernating astronauts and locks the other two out of the ship causing ones death. Then the surviving astronaut disconnects him and heads on the Jupiter.
Once he reaches Jupiter it shows the random black block floating around and then starts to send the astronaut in an uncontrolled time lapse with great visual effects. This goes on for quite awhile and brings the audience at edge. Once the time warp is complete, the final scene comes on.
He somehow is put in an elegant room that appears to be exactly like earth. After he walks around he sees a man sitting at the table. He disappears and then the audience realizes that the old man is actually the astronaut. Then all of a sudden it shows him become older and laying in the bed much older staring at the block once more.
The ending then shows a baby fetus in space. This is supposed to represent the monolith had sucked him in and turned him into the star child, which needs no technology to survive and is supposed to be the ultimate being. This brings a very confused but excited audience in the end.

Compiling a Portfolio

Today's reading was about making a portfolio for artists and such. Why create a portfolio? Well some reasons are to create a record of your writing, organize your research, and even to just explore you literacy. You can include several different things in a portfolio. These include drafts, source materials, responses, in-class writings, etc.

There are two main portfolios. One is paper portfolios. You can use a two pocket folder or something of the sort and just find all of your papers and work and put it in there neatly organized and filed. To help you can create a main page which shows where all papers are at. The other portfolio is an online portfolio. This can include a home page and have links to the contents of your work. If you look on pg 228 of The Norton Field Guide to Writing, it shows a helpful table showing you what to put on your website.

Individual Response

Our project is choosing between a Mac or a PC for upcoming Ball State students. We believe that the best way to do this is through a website. We are using the freeware site weebly. Our website is going to have a lot of different aspects to it. The home page is very easy to see and gets straight to the point with two different links for either Mac or PC.

We are going to use this website for more of an informative piece for both sides rather than trying to persuade to one way or the other. It is going to show all of the aspects for both sides and try to show the best parts of each.

Our group gets along really well and we are all doing our part in the project. Two of us are researching PC and the other, Mac. This is really helpful because we can try to stay with our one side rather than having to flip-flop between the two.

Group Project

Our group is working on a website to help current and future Ball State students to choose between buying a Mac or a PC. We have split our jobs up to where two of us are gathering information on Macs and the other two are finding PC information.

This is going to be helpful to try and decide which type of computer is better for your specific needs. We aren't going to be going for or against either one, we are simply stating the facts about these two products. This is why this website will be very helpful.

From Beginning to End

The beginning and ending of a paper is a crucial part of your writing. I believe the most important is the beginning. If you have a catchy and exciting start, your readers will want to continue to read and explore what you are saying. You can start it with a rhetorical situation or a story; either way, you need a strong beginning.

The ending to your papers are also important. You need to leave your reader wanting more after the paper is done. There are several ways to end a paper. One is to summarize everything that you have explained. Another is to end with an anecdote. My favorite is to refer to the beginning of the story and tie it in with everything else.

Cause, Classify, and Compare

There were three main points to the reading today. First off was cause and effect. This just basically told us how to organize and analyze different kinds of causes and effects. There are several ways to do this but I believe that the best way to is by identifying a cause and then discuss the effects.

Next was classifying and dividing information. When you classify something you are grouping it with similar things. The book uses the example of how a linguist would classify certain languages as romance languages.

The last part of our reading was comparing and contrasting. There are two ways to do this. One is the block method. In this method you find all of the information about one object at one time and then move on to the next item. The second method is the point-by-point method. Here you focus on specific points of comparison.

Reading Strategies

Reading is so much more to just reading the text and turning the page. You have to try and understand exactly what they are saying to you, the reader. Are they trying to convince you to buy something? Are they trying to tell you an old childhood story?

No matter what, you are definitely going to have an opinion on this. If you are wanting to show how you feel there are several strategies to truly understanding that and the text. One in general is the "believing and doubting game."

Text Analysis

There is so much to textual analysis. This section showed all sorts of different kinds. One in particular that I liked was how the Gettysburg Address applies to Americans after 9/11. I think that is really cool how it can be used to today's terms.

With all of the different kinds of textual analysis, I think it is kind of hard to say that there is one form of a correct way. Everyone has so much different opinions on things. However this will be a very useful chapter to help out on things of that such.

Editing and Proofreading

Editing and proofreading is an essential part of writing. If you take the time to do this right on every paper, your writing will have much more to it and also cleaner. You need to check your paragraphs and make sure that they don't run off course of the paper. Also when you are proofreading, make sure that the words you use are correct (ex: wright, right.) If you continually do this, your papers will become much better

Read, Reread, and Reread Again?

This section was about revising and fixing your writings. I didn't really get that much from it because, honestly, it felt like it was stating the obvious. I think it gave some good points on peer revising. It went as far as asking is the title catchy?

However when the book was giving pointers on how to write it I felt that it wasn't much help. They kept saying how you need to always keep rereading it over and such. Duh. You can't fix a paper without reading it over. All I'm saying is that I believe they could have emphasized other points, but that's my thoughts.

More to Writing than Meets the Eye

This section was primarily about writing techniques for narratives. I believe that this is going to be extremely helpful in my writing for our technology assignment. As I was reading the chapters, I couldn't help but stop and think about how much there truly is in writing that we don't even think about.

What type of writing is it? Who am I writing to? Should I put a quote or a story? These questions are unending. However, even though it puts so much more in my writing, it will help me to make my papers much more interesting and enjoyable to write.

Literacy for Freedom

This reading was primarily on ethnicity and fighting for freedom. They were narratives that ranged from not learning a language because of pride to Frederick Douglas to Malcom X. Many of them used literacy to help them fight for equal rights. One of which that I really thought was interesting was Frederick Douglas.
Frederick Douglas taught himself how to read and write so that he can find a better way of escaping and moving on to a better life. He states, "I consoled myself with the hope that I should one day find a good chance. Meanwhile, I would learn to write." Since he chose to do that, it helped him in the future of becoming a free and educated man. He showed other slaves that it was possible and was a huge influence on how slavery came to and end.