Fashion in the 80s Project Report
Luz Lorena Torres
CUIN 7358
The topic of my project is Fashion in the decade of the 1980s. The major objectives of the project is to present some of the fashion icons that were established in this decade, celebrities that influenced popular culture and fashion, music and famous artists, major events that occurred and impacted people’s life at that time and after, and how this decade and its characteristics shaped in some way my life and personality.
I selected this topic because the theme for the presentation in Popular Culture was Fashion. At first I was going to create a photo storytelling about fashion through several decades but the material that I was planning on using was vast and significantly large, therefore I decided to reduce it and focus in only one decade.
I chose the decade of the 80s because those years were incredible influential in my life and I enjoyed them greatly. In the 80s is when I attended college and started to work at the end of that decade. The people that I knew by then became part of my life and with some of them I am still in touch from time to time. The music from that decade is still among my favorite songs. The events that we lived in my country and around the world were significant to people’s future. The celebrities that changed fashion in the 80s still are a symbol of that decade.
By selecting this topic I wanted to share my point of view about this decade and the significant influence that the 80s had in my life. The 80s was a great time for a lot of people and I believe we still evoke it with nostalgia.
The intended audience if I wanted to tie my photo storytelling to my Popular Culture theme project will be high school students. I could have used it as an introduction to my pop project presentation.
I think that my project might be used in the classroom as an opening or way to introduce the fashion theme in Social Studies subjects. It could be used to develop some of the curriculum social skills objectives. We could also implement it in Math to create time lines according to years of major changes in fashion, events, people, etc.
The technology that I used to create my project was Photo Story 3 for Windows software, a Blue ball microphone, internet to obtain the digital images, some pictures, dvd/cd reader recorder, Adobe Photoshop for some of the pictures, and mp3 music files for the background, and a cd to burn my project.
I found the majority of my material in the internet. Most of the images were found doing a Google search and a couple of personal pictures. I could not use more personal pictures because the pictures from the 80s I have them in Guadalajara. The script was obtained from different sites about Fashion. The music was obtained from my collection of CDs from the 80s.
My project had a big change compared to my preliminary plan. At the beginning I was planning on creating my project about Fashion through the years which will include de decades of the 50s until the present time. As I was working on my project I realized that the theme was very broad and I will need to include a lot of information, pictures, and a very long script. Including that many material was going to make difficult to personalize my project and represent the symbols, events, celebrities, music, etc. of the 80s in an effective manner. On the other hand focusing only in one decade will allow me to better explain the importance of the decade in general and in my life, and I will be able to use material that will represent those years in a valuable way to show how and why this decade was significant to me.
I did not have any major challenges while developing my project. Sometimes the difficult part for me is choosing the right music but for this project I knew that I have to select my favorite music from the 80s that will have some relationship with what was being presented.
Other challenge was the narration of the script because I have to do it very late at night to avoid the common noises in the environment.
My voice and my strong foreign accent represent also a challenge, but there is little I can do about it unless I ask somebody to make the narration. The level of the recorded voice was a concern and I have to do it several times to keep the pace and the pitch in place.
One of the most significant things I learned from completing the project was how to match the images to the narration. I had to practice it several time until it got better.
Another key thing that I learned was that having the script is much easier to develop the project. In this way we only need to follow the script, insert the pictures as needed, and make the modifications needed. I also learned how to mix narration with background music in order to be able to hear both without interference from each other by decreasing the music background level.