Tips for the Visual Argument


  1. Your project should be a fun exercise, which reinforces all of the elements about textual and visual rhetoric which you have learned in class.
  2. Your movie will be a self-contained argument, and your argument should be made by your media choices. So, choose a topic that is argumentative in nature, choose one side of that argument and support that argument using various media.
  3. Utilize still images, video clips, music, video elements, video transitions, text, title and credits team members and sources) in your film. Narration is optional.
  4. Your images and video clips can come from your own personal collection, from internet sources or can be original material captured just for this project.
  5. Make a folder on the computer where you plan to create/save your project. Place all media (images, videos, etc.) in this folder and import all of these files into Windows Movie Maker.
  6. Your movie should be 4-5 minutes.
  7. Your music should reflect your topic, work well with your images and text, and should set up the tone of your argument. Keep in mind how music is used in ads, movies and music videos. How you time your music and imagery of very important.
  8. Remember, you must identify your rhetorical purpose and your audience. Your choice of media should be dictated by those two elements.
  9. Do not move your files before you are finished. WMM searches in the same place as the original source file even after you have imported it.
    1. If you see a big red X in your collections or in the movie itself, this means WMM cannot find the file.
  10. SAVE! SAVE! SAVE! If you end the session but have not completed the project and would like to continue working on it at a later time, choose "SAVE PROJECT AS" from the file menu.
  11. To show a draft of your finished project, you MUST choose "SAVE MOVIE FILE" from the file menu. Until you do this, WMM will look for your media where they are originally stored on the computer on which you are working.
    1. Your final project must have a wmv file extension or it will not be able to be viewed in class. This is the students responsibility. If your movie does not work on the day it should be viewed, your grade will most likely reflect this.
  12. You can save your finished movie in the wmv format on a Flash drive, burn it to a CD or DVD.
  13. Good luck and have fun!