Explainer

Create a 5-7-minute video, in collaboration with your peers, on an issue related to sustainability, in the style of a Vox Media “explainer.” Successful videos will mix audio from tour guides and guest speakers with interviews, external footage, still images, and a voice/sound track. To be composed in groups of 4-5, uploaded individually as an .mp4 to Canvas with a 300-400-word explanatory headnote and works cited. You are also invited, though not required, to publish your video on a social media platform of your choice.

• 1. Identify and explicate the central claims/concepts of theoretical prose through a local development issue
• 2. Explain the central claims/concepts of theoretical prose in a video 
• 3. Persuade an audience of their peers of the efficacy of their argument via situationally effective visual and verbal rhetoric
• 4. Respond to a rhetorical situation through process: invention, drafting, peer review, and revision

• 1. Introduction: A 300-400 word introduction, in MLA format, uploaded to Canvas as a .pfd or .docx file on date poster is due. See below for the Explainer Introduction Prompt.
• 2. Explainer Prompt: Explain a key concept related to global warming and/or sustainability that is both psychological/individual and social. For example, carbon emissions, deforestation, species loss, waste, ocean acidification, drought, or rising sea levels.   
• 3. Explainer Design: Video must explain the key problem in global warming and provide solutions, through a mix of audio from tour guides and/or guest speakers with interviews, external footage, still images, and a voice/sound track. 
• 4. Explainer Specs: final draft of Explainer needs to be 5 to 7 minutes long and available as an mp4
• 5. Explainer Process: Script/Proposal Workshop, Video editing workshop, and independent group conferences
• 6. Explainer Submission/Publication: for full credit submit the video as a .pm4, the 300-400 word introduction, and any process documents to Canvas.

Why is the sustainability topic you present in your video both psychological and social?

• Google Slides, Photoshop, or Power Point, Visme, or Canva
• iMovie

• 1. Rhetorical Awareness: Does the Explainer address writing the situation (and assignment) completely and/or with unexpected insight? Does the Explainer fulfill the assigned design requirements and include an introduction?  (20%)
• 2. Stance: Does the Explainer clearly articulate a unifying argument/goal? Does the video explain a key concept related to global warming and/or sustainability that is both psychological/individual and social? (20%)
• 3.Development of Ideas: Does the video develop the claim/goal by illustrating the key concept through a mix of audio from tour guides and/or guest speakers with interviews, external footage, still images, and a voice/sound track? (20%)
• 4. Organization: Does the author establish a clear pattern for reading through CRAP and color, lines, etc.? (20%)
• 5. Design for Medium: Does the video use the affordances of its mode to enhance the goal/content? For example, does the video reinforce the content of the audio track visually and vice versa? (10%)
• 6. Process: Does the final draft demonstrate planning and revision? (5%)
• 7. Conventions: Does the video meet grammar, mechanics style, and syntax conventions with few or no errors? (5%)