Screen Story Rhetorical Rationale

My screen story video is about how childhood has been changed with the advent of television. The totality of the video gives information about how television has negatively affected children. Although informative and serious there are parts in the video that convey a rather hopeful and cheerful essence because the ending elucidates that ultimately there can be a solution to excessive TV watching with more cautious parents.

The video begins with the famous Looney Tunes theme song, the familiarity that everyone has with the Looney Tunes cartoons is the main reason I wanted to employ it in my video, because everyone has had experience watching it as a child. Also since this is a video about television I wanted this beginning to serve as a symbol representing television and the majority of the audience has most likely watched these cartoons before.

After this delightful video ends a solemn background music comes with the chattering of kids in the background as well, and on a black screen with white and red writing comes the title of my video: “How Television Changed Childhood.” The reason I wanted to start off with a cartoon and rather a cheery cartoon and then go into a serious state was to elucidate that although we are all in love with watching these cartoons and essentially TV, there is a dark side to the aspect of watching TV as a young child.






A rather serene music comes on in the background as there is a
video about a little girl waking up and going downstairs and just watching television. I took this video in hopes of depicting the nature of kids not caring about playing and going outside, and the first thing they aim to do when they wake up in the morning is watch television. I believe this posed a good start for my video instead of listing statistics back to back after it started.

A different background music comes on, I can characterize this music to be very stern and grave, as I incorporate different statistics about children viewing television, the reason I only put a black background for the first four statistics is to show the real impact of the information and to set a rather serious tone. Also I did not want my viewers to divide their attention to anything else on the screen to make the information more effective.

Afterwards, not to make the audience bored of reading only the statistics, I utilized videos to help the audience visualize the statistics and the impacts of television viewing in children. The reason to why I did not speak in the background was because I wanted the statistics to be read and understood by the audience so it could be open to their interpretations, instead of me telling them the information.

To give a break to the back-to-back statistics I incorporated a video I took during spring break of my sister’s 5^th grade classroom and the survey we did in her classroom. This part of the video, I believe is the best part because it shows the statistics of an average classroom and how their TV viewing varies from the rest of the nation. The statistics I show for how the students compare to the average

child of their age comes after the clips of the 5^th grade classroom. The music I utilized for this part of my video is cheerful and merry because the results of the classroom illuminated that they were different from the average and their TV viewing were minimal compared to the other children of their age group.

The national statistics begins with a tranquil music playing in the background of an acoustic guitar. The reason I employed such music is because although I began the video quite sternly and with an elegiac tone I am getting closer to the end of the video and I do not want my audience to feel depressed as the video closes off. Also melancholy music could also result in the audience closing my video not wanting to see the end. Therefore the hopeful background music leads up to the conclusion where I provided a link for parents to find valuable tips about parenting and managing screen time for their children.

For the ending I utilized tips from videos that I was searching to get ideas from in order have an effective ending for my video. This was very important because just like the beginning which needs a catching hook to gather the attention of the audience, there needs to be a effectual ending in order to leave a mark on the viewer and so the viewer can see the extent to which I was trying to depict the message of excessive TV watching. The title of my video was "How Television Changed Childhood" and I end my video with a quote saying "It's a changing world". I wanted to tie the beginning to the end, so my audience can remember the beginning of the video and acknowledge it's entirety. At the very end the last scene that is exposed to the audience is a list of sources of where I gathered my information as to show that I have credited a few sources and that they information that was within the video was based on research.