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Hannah Tran
Professor Lynda Haas
Writing 37
27 November 2015
Rhetoric In Practice Essay
When trying to figure out how to create an entertaining medium in which to communicate
to people a message, it can be in no other words I can think of, hard. For this project, my group
and I were tasked with creating an informational and educational video about the history of folk
tales in Ancient Greece, and we decided to focus on Aesop and his fables. In order to do this, we
had to take into account the rhetorical situation around us. First there was the audience. The
audience we took into account was out class, the professor, and a scholarly audience in general.
When thinking about the class and the professor, we wanted to make our video entertaining, but
when thinking about the professor and the scholarly audience, we wanted to make our video
informative. Relating to the audience, the environment and society in which we were creating
our video was also important. The cultural context in which our video was created was in a
culturally diverse college environment in southern California in the United States of America. As
for the historical context, we created our video to cater to a 21st century audience in the year
2015. Our purpose for creating this was to demonstrate that we understood the rhetoric behind
our cultures fairy tale genre and to be able to communicate this through a visually entertaining
and informative medium. Through our rhetorical situation, we created a video that hopefully
fulfilled its purpose, and through this essay, our videos elements will be further explored and
analyzed to see what was done to fulfil this purpose.

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In order to have a successful text, we knew that we, as the rhetor, had to appeal to the
audience. In our video, the voiceover itself and the script itself was not very entertaining but
instead very educational and somewhat formal. For this part of our video, we knew that this
would appeal to a part of our audience, the professor and the scholarly audience. An excerpt
from our script that showcases this is In 1476, Heinrich Steinhowel translated a biography
description of the life of Aesop and Aesops Fables which he then put into a Latin-German
encyclopedic version called Ulmer Aesp. This sentence is rather bland, but it did accomplish
the job in terms of relaying information to the audience.
However, we knew that we also had to make our video entertaining in some way to
appeal to a room full of college students and again, the professor. In order to combat our audio,
we knew we had to make our visuals entertaining by being funny or make them continuously
active. To achieve this, we attempted to add humor to our video. In addition to this, we tried to
create a fast-paced video by not allowing one set of visuals to stay on the page for too long. We
had done this because as audiences to other educational videos, we had noticed that fast-paced
videos grabbed our attention. The conclusion to try to add humor to our video was also a result
of this observation. Since we are college students ourselves, we strived to create a video that if
we watched it, we would be entertained.
Our video was fast-paced and an example and throughout our video, none of the pictures
stayed on screen for more than 10 seconds and most of the pictures were only on screen for less
than 5 seconds. This was especially essential in the creation of our video because of how people
perceive visual media nowadays. People expect quick and entertaining content, and evidence of
this can be seen through peoples use of social media and the internet as a whole. Most peoples
attention spans are short, and in order to hold that attention, we decided to make our video as

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fast-paced as possible. Even for us watching our own video, just staring at the same picture for
more than 5 seconds made the video seem static and dull.
We attempted to incorporate humor into our video through our visuals. Rather than just
find images directly related to the content, we also edited the images and added pop culture
references. There were numerous instances where we did this, and my favorite pop culture
example was our usage of Donald Trump. In our script, we mentioned how many scholars debate
over Aesop's existence, and for a visual, we had a picture of Donald Trump. We did this because
of the recent news about Trump and his presidential candidacy and his performance at the
republican debates. I was the one who decided to add in this picture, and when I read the word
debate in our script, the first thing I thought about was Trump at the debates. Knowing our
audience and the cultural context of Southern California, we knew they would enjoy that visual.
The song we used was Forbidden Fruit by J. Cole. Not only did we try to find a song
that matched the pace of the video, we also found a song that was a popular song among our core
audience, the students in the classroom. On the first presentation of our video, a prevalent
comment was on our music choice. Many people recognized it and rather than focusing on
whether the music choice actually went with the video, they commented on the music itself and
how they were fans of the artist. By doing this, their attention was automatically drawn to the
video. Another side effect to this was that some of the students may have not even listened to the
content of the video, and instead were only drawn to the video for its instrumentals. Although it
would have been preferred that they also pay attention to the content, the students being invested
in our video was better than them not caring at all, another purpose that we thought was
important.

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The examples stated above reflect our current cultural situation. If we were to show our
video to any audience from any century before ours, or even to an audience from a couple of
decades prior, some of our content would not make sense. Most of the dialogue from our script
would probably make sense, as it isnt anything unusual and is mostly formal, scholarly writing,
but the visuals are the opposite of that. Showing our video to an audience from the 17th century
would in itself make no sense to them since digital media didnt exist back then. Other elements
that wouldnt make sense is the inclusion of slang. In some of the pictures, we edited in thought
bubbles to the people in the pictures and what they were thinking was what was being said in the
script but in a less formal way that often included slang. An example of this is in the shot
mentioning Aristotle. The script stated, Aristotle himself even wrote in his book Rhetoric that
you could use these fables to support your arguments, and the picture that accompanied this was
a picture of Aristotle thinking, His fables are gr8. Another instance of this was the inclusion of
a troll meme over Aesops face when the script stated, No one knows for sure if he actually ever
existed. If someone even 20 years ago had watched this video and had seen these parts, they
wouldnt have understood the leet speak or the internet phenomenon that occurs daily today.
This applies as well to the cultural context that surrounds our video. People from
countries such as England or Canada would probably understand the video in its entirety.
However, someone from China or Turkey would probably only understand some of the
references such as those to the internet but probably not other statements using slang. Even
someone in America could be confused by some elements if they didnt grow up around the
same context I grew up in.
As for the video itself, I conducted research on the life of Aesop, wrote that part of the
script, wrote the introduction, wrote how Greek fables evolved over time to grow into their

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rhetorical situation, and I edited the video and put everything together. For the part I was in
charge of, I dont think I wrote anything particularly noteworthy, but I was also the editor of the
script. For the part in our script about what the rhetorical situation in Ancient Greece was like, I
edited the original paragraph and added details such as, That is why animals are commonly used
throughout Aesops Fables. They are personified, and the animals appear in human situations
where they make bad decisions that they eventually learn from. This allowed ordinary readers to
reflect on previous decisions they had ever made while in similar situations as the animals in the
story. Another reason for the use of animals was that they were a stylistic convention in which
they were used to distinguish the story as being a fable and to show that the story was obviously
fictitious because of the talking animals. I did this throughout the entire script and added details
I felt were necessary.
I also edited the entire video and recorded the audio. I found and edited most of the
pictures used in our video. I was the only one who knew how to edit a video, and I used the
video editing software iMovie, something I already had on my computer. I also recorded the
voiceover, and to do that, I just used my phone. My groupmates did contribute some of the
pictures that made it into the video, and I edited most of the pictures using Photoshop. They also
decided on what song we were going to use for the video. I decided on the style of the video. I
actually used another YouTuber that I am a personal fan of known as CGP Grey as a model on
how to create an entertaining educational video.
Through this rhetoric in practice assignment, I was able to analyze my own work and see
why I made the decisions I made. I was able to understand the rhetorical situation and what that
means in terms oh how to use that in order to appeal to an audience.

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Works Cited
A Brief History of Santa. Dir. CGP Grey. Perf. CGP Grey. YouTube. YouTube, 19 Dec. 2011.
Web. 29 Nov. 2015.
Handford, S.A. Aesops Fables. England: Puffin, 1954.
Horgan, John. "Aesop's Fables." Ancient History Encyclopedia. Creative Commons, 8 Mar.
2014. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.
"Who Is Aesop?" Aesop's Fables. University of Massachusettes, n.d. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.