Oct 20 - Body Gestures

Reporting from San Francisco!!! Had a long day full of wedding ceremony and banquet. But the ending was entertaining since half the people were watching the giants game. Could hear them cheer now and then, and a big "hooray" when they won. lol ^_^

For class, everyone sat in a circle again and had a discussion on body language. It's very important as it helps to communicate and connect with the audience in presentations. Body language can be a physical representation of what emotion the speaker is feeling in front of the audience. They can show signs of being nervous or confident based on the body gestures. This is vitally important to us design students as we want to connect with the audience by showing our confidence and ease by our body language. When we speak, our tone and volume also affects the body language. Other parts than can play a factor in body language are: clothes, acting, improv, movement, and eye contact. The most common signs of nervousness in body language are: body shifting, not maintaining eye contact with the audience, and small movement in arms, hands, or feet.

Then we had a fun activity of each person had to present themselves with 2 truths and one lie, and the audience decides which one is the lie through body language. It was a long time that I had to go up in front of class so I was obviously nervous. I jumped right in, spoke really fast that the audience couldn't hear the three choices, and forced myself to stay still instead of being comfortable/casual. Everyone saw that, so I really really need to work on my body language and presentations. Guess I'm also used to practicing before presenting, not being taken by surprise of representing. I believe we are going to do more presentations for future class to help us in that area, since other people had similar problems of being nervous "on stage." To be honest, I guessed the lies based on mainly the facts than the body language. Analyzing the options helps me to narrow it down to one truth. Also, I couldn't really see the body language clearly since I was sitting on the side and was unable to see the face or eyes clearly. So overall, I was looking at the whole body and listening to the people's presentation. Guess this is from listening to class lectures.

Last, I believe, we went over the same homework of having 10 different phrases/meaning to a new image. My image was a cute baby in a white bag being flown in the sky by a stork. I thought I did good, but I guess some of my choices were still too literal. After class ended, I kept thinking about it and I was able to make up more new inventive ones for it. The funny thing is, that ad was actually for drugs. @_@