The Wicked Sick Project

I was looking for ways to use media in the writing classroom and I came across the Bedford/St. Martin Bits blog. One particular entry stuck out - Traci Gardner's 4.5 minutes on Audience, Purpose, and Voice. In the post, she links to a video short made as part of an advertising bid (The Wicked Sick Project)and explains how it could be used in a composition classroom to teach about audience. She does such an amazing job of laying out the video's potential that I won't attempt to summarize. Go check it out for yourself:
4.5 minutes on Audience, Purpose, and Voice

I want to add a couple of thoughts. First, if you are wary about the use of explicit language in the song, you could possibly play the video on mute. There is no dialogue anyways so it wouldn't really affect your students' ability to understand what is happening. If, however, you do choose to go ahead and show the clip as is, you may be able to talk about how the creators are advertising their advertising skills (after all, this is something like a video resume of sorts). This could be especially useful in a business class. Just something to think about.

I am also pondering an in-class activity to follow up the video. Perhaps you could bring in something ordinary like a notebook and ask students to create their own ads and let the class vote on which ones are most effective. This could lead into a more in depth discussion about what one much think about when thinking about audience.