Respect on the Road

Respect on the Road

Script

Jesse: Fun fact: semi-trucks cannot stop as fast as cars. I’ll be honest. I feel like our driver education system has a major flaw in it. They don’t take the extra time to educate student drivers about how air brake systems operate and how much more of a delay there is for a big rig to slow down.

As a truck driver myself, I can say that I’m literally astounded by how many people I have seen in my short career pull right out in front of me like they have a deathwish or something.

Bottom line is, respect trucks, respect their drivers, and always give them plenty of room on the road and don’t cut them off, unless you want to risk your life and the life of anyone else in your vehicle. Because if our 105,000 pound truck smashes into your 3,000 pound car, it’s not going to be pretty.

Storyboard

Best Advertising in the Country

The once-a-year Super Bowl commercials are a thing for several reasons. Firstly, the Super Bowl is the most watched event in the United States of America. The only event in American history that had more viewers than the 2023 Super Bowl was the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969. From a marketing standpoint of view, this is obviously going to be the best opportunity to make sure as many people see the ad as possible. Not just that, it’s also the best opportunity to make sure they are actually paying attention to it. The commercials at the Super Bowl are renowned for being powerful, emotional, funny, and unique. Therefore, some people probably watch it just for the commercials!

https://www.forbes.com/sites/prospernow/2012/02/06/the-power-of-super-bowl-advertising/?sh=a61e3472cbb5

The more emotional commercials, like the ones used as examples for this assignment, tend to show the more human side of the company. In my opinion, I would be willing to bet that most of the time this is done, it’s purely for profits and not so much for just doing the right thing given the fact that these advertising slots can cost millions of dollars for a single minute. The marketing professionals with these companies know that if they pull on your heart strings, you will be very engaged with the ad and giving it your full attention. Your brain will be storing it in memory more efficiently. Therefore, once you are fully immersed in the powerful and emotional story of the ad, you will tend to remember the brand name that is displayed at the end better.

https://youtu.be/TSJEKU9qKJI

My Motivation

Video games motivate their players with mastery all the time! I am living proof of this. Some of us grew up wanting to master sports in school. Some of us wanted to master computer and technical skills. There were also some of us that grew up addicted to video games and the only thing they were worried about mastering was the Xbox Live achievements for Assassin’s Creed II. In case you’re wondering, yes, I am referring to myself there. I was what some would call a completionist. I couldn’t just play the game and finish the storyline. I had to make sure I went through and found all of the different locations, found all of the collectibles, and completed all of the side quests. These games were intentionally designed with all of this extra content to motivate players to put all of this time into it so they could get the “achievements” as a reward. While completing some of these tasks in these games can be very daunting and repetitive at times, it would help the player get tens or hundreds of hours of gameplay out of a $60 video game which made it so much more worth the price.

Another very neat aspect of the Assassin’s Creed game series was the fact that there was so much history incorporated into it. You would travel back to ancient times and go through locations such as Italy, Egypt, Syria, and Greece. You would encounter historical characters and work alongside them during historical events as the game developers devised a way to tie your fictional game character into the event somehow.

There are many different ways people can be motivated by information, education, and mastery, but I can whole-heartedly say that the thing in my life that motivated me the most in all three of those areas was certainly the Assassin’s Creed video game franchise.

Respect & Responsibility

Those are two very strong words when it comes to the world of art and ingenuity. When it comes down to it, one of the biggest driving factors that inspires creativity is the incentive of recognition. I’m very sure that it would be completely devastating to spend countless hours, days, weeks, months, or years on a new project or piece of art, just to have someone else copy it and take all of the credit for it. I kindly ask anyone reading this to put themselves in that person’s shoes. Just imagine for a moment what that would feel like. It is absolutely inhumane if you ask me.

To be honest, I was very disrespectful and inconsiderate in the creative realm myself before taking these classes. I suppose I just hadn’t ever stopped to think about the fact that using copyrighted music in my video projects was rude, wrong, illegal, and disrespectful. I’m glad that I can see that now today and act accordingly. After all, if we don’t practice good ethics and let all responsibility go out the window, the incentive of recognition becomes compromised. With that jeopardized, the flame of inspiration may be short-lived in what could’ve or would’ve been potential new artists.

Virtual Tourism!

Today I decided to visit several different types of SL locations and report on them.

Educational – Museum of Tournament

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Kismet%20Northwinds/35/50/3506

I didn’t expect to find this! Apparently jousting in SecondLife is a thing?!? I was super intrigued. In face I might be interested in participating in this at some point myself! I really enjoyed the architecture of the building, fonts and colors used in the graphics, and the interior textures. I will certainly revisit this place at some point. Only issue I had with it was the location wasn’t wanting to load very well at first. However, that could have been an issue on my end.

Nonprofit – Inspiration Island

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Inspiration%20Island/16/202/701

Inspiration Island is a non-profit project that has been around for 12 years. I decided to visit its Hall of Heroes. This was a very unique place. Here you can add a photo of anyone whom you consider to be a hero to the display. I couldn’t help but notice that Richard Dawkins is there. He is definitely one of my personal heroes! The welcome hall that you first arrive in is well laid-out and does a good job of showcasing what this location is all about.

Retail – ContraptioN

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Contraption/116/66/119

This store was awesome! I don’t currently have any Linden dollars yet so I didn’t buy anything here but there was tons I would’ve liked to have! They have a wide variety of Victorian and steam-punk styled outfits and accessories. The layout of the store was very neat as well. It appears to be an old warehouse and the pictures of the items are hanging on stacks of crates. Love it! Feels very steam-punky. I will certainly return once I have gotten myself some Linden dollars.

Art – Metaverse NFT Gallery

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Lusiana/111/26/2501

I decided to check out the Metaverse NFT Gallery because to be perfectly honest, I still wasn’t totally sure how NFTs worked in the first place. Upon arrival, I found the entrance to be very welcoming. The lower level had all kinds of information about what NFTs are and how they work. They even had a YouTube video posted on the wall that explained it. Today I got to learn how NFTs work and I got to see some breathtaking examples. This one in the screenshot particularly caught my eye.

Performance – Royal Opera Garnier

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Royal%20Opera/103/126/3601

I’ve never been big on opera, except for The Phantom of the Opera of course! However, this ad for an upcoming show has me intrigued. I might just have to add that to my calendar and come back to see what it’s all about! It is fascinating how intricate SecondLife is. I had no idea that people come here to a virtual world to put on virtual performances in a virtual opera house. Super cool. The design of the building is another feat all in itself. It is beautiful!

Role-Playing – 1950s & 1960s America in Time Portal

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Time%20Portal/140/85/3501

This was a real blast from the past. I saw that there are loads of different role-playing communities in SecondLife. One of the most unique ones is this one right here, where you step through a time portal back to what a small American town looked like 70 years ago. It’s really interesting seeing what things looked like back then and I very much appreciated all of the detail the designers paid attention to here. The only thing I was bummed about was I was not able to interact with these sweet bubble gum cigarettes. It’s pretty crazy how much the tobacco industry used to promote smoking to the little ones back in the day!

Real Life – Venezia

http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Venezia/204/72/23

This was my favorite location that I visited so far! I got very excited when I saw that there was this virtual replica of the city of Venice, Italy. The reason for this being the fact that I am planning on going there in real life in September of this year. I’m super excited about it and it’s pretty much all I can think about. I can’t wait to see all of the architecture, experience the food, see their culture, and more. Everything I tried to play with in this location seemed to work and I was actually able to give myself a bit of a virtual tour to prepare myself for the real thing later this year!

Strategic Storytelling

It’s no secret that people tend to process information that is in story form better than information that isn’t. This is for several reasons. One, we tend to be able to retain and remember the information better. Reading something in story form typically will make it seem more significant and interesting to the reader, therefore, causing them to better remember. Something else the story form does, is help viewers relate to the character, share perspectives, and empathize with them. This makes it more personal to us.

Another appealing aspect to information told in story form is it isn’t just an assortment of random facts. It is a series of events that demonstrate cause and effect. Whenever someone reads something or watches something, they are more than likely trying to seek out the story being told within it. Story telling can be used for all sorts of multimedia tactics. It is employed in marketing and advertising all the time. In fact, I would say that if your ad or marketing strategy doesn’t somehow involve telling a story about a problem and how your product or service can solve that problem for the consumer, then it probably isn’t going to be very effective!

https://www.health.org.uk/newsletter-feature/power-of-storytelling