By: Bianca Christina
Gossip Girl
Introduction:
This website showcases a few weeks of my work, learning how to do text shifts based on a single source, which I chose as the Gossip Girl Season Finale Transcript. My task as a Grade 11 English Student was to create 4 text/media-shifts, shifting the actual Netflix script of The Gossip Girl Season's Finale to shift its purpose, design, form, structure, literary devices to enhance my skills in shifting the text type, all in one theme, one topic, Gossip Girl.My text shifts are: The Spectator (Newspaper Article), Gossip Girl (Blog), Dear Diary, XOXO Blair Waldorf (Diary Entry) and a video showcasing and summarizing Blair Waldorf & Chuck Bass's love story from Season 1 - Season 6 with the background song "The Way I Loved You - Taylor Swift".Why did I choose this as my project?
I have always loved the Gossip Girl TV show because of the aesthetic setting, backgrounds, cinematography and mostly, I fell in love with the characters on the show, maybe also some of your favorite featured characters in the show, keep reading to find out!What is Gossip Girl aboout?
Gossip Girl is based on Cecily-von-Ziegesar's best-selling book series "Gossip Girl". It's about a group of over-privileged, Upper East Side rich kids in Manhattan, New York, starting off as highschool students. This show showcases the drama, gossip and exploits of these students and how their relationships throughout the show, breaks, mends and becomes stronger as they face conflicts in the Upper East Side together. The hit TV show Gossip GIrl was realeased for the world to see in 19th September, 2007.- Keep on reading to enter the world of Gossip Girl -
THE NY SPECTATOR
Gossip Girl Blog
Dear Diary
A diary entry made by Blair Waldorf, embodying her deepest, darkest, personal thoughts.
Movie Time!
Tired of reading? Watch this recap of Blair & Chuck's love story from Season 1 until Season 6!p.s. sorry for the bad quality, exporting it in better quality isn't available at the moment :(
Comparative CommentaryRegarding the structure of the text shifts compared to the transcript, is that the transcript was written in short sentences, only stating the quotes of the characters and not who said what quote, which may appear quite confusing for some readers, because most of the audience prefer the visual representation, also known as the actual show and not the transcript, unless they want to act it out. It may be more efficient for actors to read from the manual transcript rather than memorizing the actual script from the live-action drama television show. While all the other text types for example, the blog, it gives a specification from whose point of view it is written from and who is writing it “Gossip Girl” and the “Dear Diary” text shift was from Blair Waldorf’s point of view, it gives a clear point of view and perspective while the transcript, does not. “The Spectator” adheres to a formal news article structure, providing facts and events in a chronological order. While the Diary Entry embodies the form of a personal diary entry, a more unstructured approach, using paragraph form to be written and its purpose is to let out all their feelings, so for the Diary text, I wanted to embody the personality of Blair Waldorf herself and express her scattered mindset with a twist of her big ego as well, especially at this stressful time. That’s why the structure of the diary entry is less structured and organized than the newspaper article, one text is for the whole Manhattan to see, but the diary can appear more personal, to usually let out feelings and express them in a private, informal manner, using words such as “ I always get what I want.” Shows low lexis in this sentence, and rather informal, but it is normal in a writing such as a diary because a diary shows that it is her safe place, this re-cast, the diary shows that Blair Waldorf does trust this diary to make her feel better, instead of sharing her sorrows to others, she writes down her frustrations and deepest darkest thoughts in hopes of making herself feel better, so Diary entries, especially the one in this recast does not necessarily have to be high lexis or be structured, creating a story plot, a story line, but instead more like a “rant-bucket” a place where you can throw away your frustrations to make yourself feel better. It’s a sort of personal writing, offering a more subjective as well as emotional perspective, again, comparing it to the newspaper article and the transcript. The transcript is a little more in between of both, the script of the show actually emotional perspective, showing the characters saying it first hand, not second-hand, while the author still has to maintain a certain storyline, especially in the last episode of the last season of the show, the author needs to give a big ending a BANG. At least to make it memorable. So since the characters are actually interacting with one another, though sometimes on an emotional level as well, it also provides features of a newspaper article, it still keeps it professional, giving an end-goal, written in chronological order.Diary entries are often written in first person, but this one is not fully written in first person because the character Blair Waldorf has a personality that just speaks so highly of herself as a human, that sometimes, she refers to herself in third person to prove a point. Such as using “All girls want to be me. This is not my ideal situation, but Blair Waldorf always comes back.” This refers to a mix or first person using the word “me” and “Blair Waldorf always comes back”, referring to herself by using her name, not “I” or “me”. Sometimes in other episodes regarding the transcript Blair also refers to herself in third person, “I’m the best of the best. I’m Blair Waldorf.” From the transcript, this was also applied to the diary entry showing both representatives and showcasing Blair’s personality and portraying her as this unique character. Though, in the newspaper article, the article does not fully focus on Blair’s character, but instead the other characters like Chuck Bass, Dan Humphrey, etc. The language used in the newspaper article appears to be more formal and informative, focusing on converting facts and events objectively, not subjectively.The Spectator Newspaper utilizes and showcases a longer, more complex sentence to convey information in an informative and formal manner. The sentences in the text are formed to achieve maximum readability and detail, to reach the customers. Short sentences are often only used in the newspaper article to show indication that the information is important and to create suspense such as, “Could they be the culprit? Possibly.” the only short sentences utilized in the newspaper article is only to make the readers inquire and raise a sense of intrigue within them, which is a more common writing style and technique to pique the interest of the reader. While the diary entry often uses short sentences to convey more on the character’s emotional turmoil as well as introspection, self-introspection. Such as when this was written in the diary, “ Sometimes being Queen Bee Blair Waldorf is just suffocating me to the core.” this is a short sentence, but it gives the reader some light and insight, emphasizing Blair’s emotional state, attempting to calm herself down and giving herself time to think about what she feels and how she can get over this hard time in her life.In conclusion, there are so many different techniques and methods to compare and find similarities of different text types, finding differences in their form, structure and also language. Authors use different techniques to simply fulfill different purposes, though they can all be connected to only one storyline in the end.