Bird Arena
When choosing a place to do my promotional piece on my first choice was the clock on south green. After looking up information I realized there wasn’t too much information on the clock so I had to choose a different place. When trying to decide on a place I thought of places that took me by surprised in my first year at Ohio University. Bird Arena was the placed that surprised me the most. The atmosphere at Bird Arena is very unique, everyone there loves the place. Also since many people don’t too much information on the actual arena. These are the reasons why I decided to do my promotional piece on Bird Arena. Ohio University has many popular varsity sports that many people attend, and there are also club sport games that fans go to. One sport in particular that gets as much attention as the varsity sports is the club hockey team, this could be because it was once considered a varsity sport. The hockey games are held in Bird Arena, which also holds public skating several days a week. Hockey and public skating are important factors of Bird Arena that were kept in mind throughout my promotional piece. There were many other details I had to keep in my mind when making this promotional piece including; color scheme, target audience, song choice, also ethos, logos and pathos. These helped me to grab my audience’s attention while also keeping them interested the whole way through the promotional piece.
The color scheme for my slideshow is dark green surrounded by gray. I chose these colors because it still appeals to Ohio University students and alumni since its green like Ohio University colors, however the gray makes it seems dark gloomy and old. I wanted the gloomy and old effect because Bird Arena was never given as much attention as all the other sports facility which is why hockey is so well liked at OU, also the fact that it is no longer a varsity sport but once was. These factors help add to the gloomy and old effect. Bird Arena didn’t even have locker rooms until 2000-01. This shows some neglect for this building. I thought this would help me appeal to my target audience which is Ohio University students and alumni who are also hockey and skating fans. Just by going in to the arena you can tell it’s older and most fans or frequent skaters like the feeling the arena gives off. Showing pictures on each slide I think also helps keeps the audience interested because they are all old photos and not just random. By focusing on how this arena helped get hockey started at Ohio University made the piece more appealing. Without Bird Arena, hockey wouldn’t have existed here at Ohio University, many people don’t know about the history of the arena or the hockey team and they go hand in hand. So by killing two birds with one stone this makes the piece more appealing.
When going through small details of my promotional piece I had pathos in mind. Each of the small details gave off a different feeling, and to get the feelings I wanted, the details had to be just right. I chose the song “Sympathy” by the Goo Goo Dolls for multiple reasons I thought would appeal to and keep my audience interested. The song is soft and has a distinctive guitar and I decided to get the instru. I liked this because it gives off a nostalgic feeling. Since we’re talking about the history I thought nostalgia was best feeling to give off since there is so much history behind Bird Arena. Also with the fading transition between slides it was just symbolizing how everything came from one another. It started as just a skating arena and then became a hockey arena so I thought the fading transitions best fit the slide show. I thought these two effects would help give a nostalgia overall effect. Towards the end of the slide show I changed the transition because the information was more modern. Also the pictures were more recent, so a faster more modern transition was more fitting because nostalgia was no longer the wanted feeling my audience to feel. Instead I wanted to give off a transformation happiness feeling because after all of those years that Bird Arena was somewhat neglected from the budget, it finally got the renovations it needed. The colored renovation picture of Bird Arena was the first colored picture I decided to put in because it symobolized change in the building and the renovation was the first time any changes were made to Bird Arena. Lastly at the very end there is a comparison and this is to just help the audience see the transformation of the building from the very beginning to the end. This is also trying to appeal to an inspirational feeling.
When thinking about ethos I thought about how I wasn’t too excited to make a promotional piece about Bird Arena. The project was about finding out history and it made sense in my mind to do Bird Arena. The main reason for choosing Bird Arena was that most people don’t know much about it so I thought it was a good opportunity to inform people of the history of the Arena. When trying to make the promotional piece make sense I realized this was the logos part of the project. It seemed logical to start from the beginning when the building was built. Also I had to find certain aspects about the arena that I could focus in on. Bird Arena is used for public ice skating and hockey games and practice. Once I found two aspects to focus in on I showed the people skating because at first Bird Arena was just for ice skating. Being opened for skating lead to starting a hockey team since the public skate was such a big success. After talking about the starting of the hockey team I told a little bit about it and its successes. Towards the end the renovations were brought up and that was placed at the end because it was very recent. Bringing up how the hockey team eventually became a club game was important because it brought up the budget cut. The budget cut helped to give off the effect of neglect towards this building. Focusing on the neglect throughout is why I decided to make the last slide a comparison slide. It showed the old and new ice surface. This made sense to me because it showed the big difference in the ice surface but also how long it took for the arena to finally get those renovations.
