Visual Essay Reflection:

Why did you choose your genre and how did your intended audience affect your choice?

I choose to combine different quotes from celebrities talking about agism in Hollywood with the song Liquid Smooth. I think creating a video that combines music and quotes is a compelling way to get my message across, especially when discussing things like gender issues, ageism, and societal norms within Mitski’s music and Hollywood. Music has the ability to bring up deep emotions, and Mitski’s music, in particular, often deals with personal and societal struggles. By combining her music into my video, I think I was able to tap into the emotional feel of the song. This helped the audience to connect with the theme on a deeper level. The combination of the music and visuals created a more immersive/memorable experience for my audience. It makes the content more relatable and impactful

What rhetorical strategies did you use to engage your audience? Did you draw on pathos (appealing to emotions), logos (appealing to logic or reason) and/or ethos (your own ethics/credibility)? How so?

I was able to appeal to pathos and ethos with my visual essay. I appealed to pathos
because I used the emotional impact of Mitski’s lyrics and was able to show the audience an emotional journey with different quotes I used. I think I was able to make the audience not only feel empathetic but also feel that aging isn’t something to be afraid of because of what the different celebrities were saying. I appealed to ethos because I used quotes from recognizable faces. Doing this made it so, I added credibility to my arguments because I added people with real experience with the issue I was talking about

How did composing a visual essay differ from writing a traditional essay?

Composing a visual essay differs from writing a traditional essay because, with the visual essay I feel like I was more focused on how to engage the audience and how to make it as visually appealing as I can. Writing a traditional essay, I feel like I focused more on different issues regarding how women are looked at in society but with the visual, I focused on writing about celebrities because I feel like people would be more engaged when they see a familiar face