Webspinna Battle

It’s an intimidating thing, going up in front of one’s entire class and their families and friends dressed as cartoon characters while pretending to fight with each other. This project was much different from anything else in the film program, and because of that we were able to develop some talents that we otherwise would have never been able to.

The project combined the use of sound effects, costume design, and acting to tell a story. Since these elements are not part of the norm as directing, cinematography, or screenwriting are, it forced us to be more creative. By using the lessons from this exercise, the creativity of the media we create in the future will be more rich and well rounded because we have learned to think about other elements as storytellers.

The webspinna battle also brought up questions in regards to plagiarism and its sometimes confusing lines. Every sound we used was created by someone else. The look of our costumes were arguably a rip off of Pokemon. If these sounds and costumes were used together as a way to create a new, original story, is it still plagiarism? After creating this battle and watching others, it seems they are a completely new work of art. Much like textual poaching, we used elements of other media to create something completely new. Our Pokemon battle used familiar and new characters while adding an original story. The example of Bob Dylan in the article, “The Ecstasy of Influence” by Jonathan Lethem describes this point well as he used lines and stories from other authors in order to create songs with deeper meaning.

Not only were the costumes and the sound originally created by other people, but elements of the story we acted out are also present in the Pokemon television series as well as the games. Disobedience is depicted in the show by the main character having a pokemon that doesn’t respect him. This leads to contention between the two. Our battle used elements from that story, but ultimately created something original by adding in modern elements with texting and putting in headphones to listen to music. The mixture of modernism with the popular show creates media that most people can connect with.

The Webspinna Battle itself is a creative media where our creations and combinations of other media make something original. The combination is something that shows how pokemon and other elements can mix together to create something fun and interesting.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/12A58FeV4kr0ogy-ZLHFhE5fc8DZ9mQmSSNKFDOQ-zGM/edit?usp=sharing