Truman Show

I really enjoyed watching the Truman show. This movie makes you think about your everyday life and if you are truly being watched. I think there is some truth to this movie. I do not believe people are watching my life or your life as much as they watched Truman's butt i believe we are all being watched some point throughout our day. With all the cameras watching us out there today, I believe we are almost always on camera; this is a scary thought to know we are never in privacy. We are not necessarily being "watched" (viewed by someone else at a particular time) but there are always cameras looking at our every move. That is was is the most creepy. It is sort of like the panopticon idea. You put people in an environment with evidence that someone could or could not be watching you and it molds their behavior. A scene from the movie that emphasizes this panopticon idea is when Truman's wife is trying to advertise the products. If no one was watching that show, she would not have made such an emphasis on the product. However, since she knows people are watching, she takes the time to point out the product and make sure people think about that product.

3 voices for assemblage

For my three characters I want to use myself, a sportscenter anchor, and Eric Kesten. My mashup is about how Ohio State and Michigan is the greatest rivalary in sports. Eric Kesten wrote "Michigan vs. Ohio State: The Rivalry." I want the sportscenter guy to critique my work, sort of being against me and the idea that Ohio State and Michigan is the greatest rivalry in sports. Since Kesten did a whole documentary on this rivalry, the sportscenter anchor will ask for his take on my mashup and ask if it proves or disproves my point about this rivalry.

Spurlock's Documentary

I loved watching "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold". In the documentary, Morgan Spurlock showed us how advertising really works. I think after watching it, what fascinated me the most was the control the advertising agencies have. For example, when Spurlock was talking to that guy who knows how to place products well and he was discussing the placement of the alka-seltzer pill with the movie director. He basically put the director on the spot by saying if the pill was used in the way he intended, he would take back all the cars they were lending him too. That amazed me. Also, I loved how no huge companies were willing to be in the movie. I think it just goes to show that theses businesses are strictly profit; they do not care about the consumers. I believe businesses should be about profits, but it seems like from this movie that very few top companies care about consumers. People need to be made aware of how much they are actually marketed each day. I think Ralph Nader said it best when he said the best place to be, away from all this advertising, is asleep. That is really the only realistic place you can be to not see advertising. In the movie, Morgan visits a very large city in Brazil, Sao Paolo. This is a city that has almost 19 million people in it, 7th largest city in the world, and yet they have no outdoor advertising. I found this to be simply amazing. How could this get passed into law? Don't get me wrong, this idea is brilliant. Yet, I don't believe anyone in the political system here in the U.S would ever suggest this. I couldn't imagine all the ways this person could be criticized. With all the ads for political positions today, if someone brought this up people would begin to blame him for wanting to destroy businesses and all sorts of things. That doesn't mean it shouldn't happen. In Sao Paolo, 70% of the people reported that removing the advertisements was beneficial to them. I think it would have the same effect here. After seeing that city with no advertising outdoors, I think it just goes to show how overwhelmed our country is with advertisement.

Assemblage

For my assemblage I want to do a mashup of the Ohio State Michigan Rivalry. I believe this is the best rivalry in all of sports and I want to make a mashup of these two playing eachother. I plan on using plenty of highlights from these games including big hits, big plays and even fights. I want to use the song by Linking Park called "Figure 09".

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-icIi6xuJ3w

There are thousands of videos on youtube about this rivalry. There will be plenty for me to use when assembling this video! My intended audience for this video will be Ohio State & Michigan fans and even college football fans in general.

Here are just a few links to the videos I plan on using:

I will use the entrances for both teams, the david boston & charles woodson fight here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCgHiFXY2e4&feature=related

This woody hayes speech
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ps_7MFIWSQ

Summary of what I watched

With the iPhone 5 getting a lot of hype, I had to watch a video about it! I wanted to see what was new about it and if it would be worth getting one! Definitely was cool to see the new features.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aURcUhYstEw

I imagine someone who got the phone early made this video. Another possibility could have been apple gave their phone to someone in exchange for them to make a video like this to help promote the product and get it hyped up more! The purpose seemed clear to me; to promote the iPhone 5.
The target audience is probably iPhone users or cell phone users. I imagine this audience was intended for people interested in purchasing the iPhone 5. I believe they wanted prospective buyers to see the phone and what it has to offer, in hopes to persuade them to purchase it.
The use a simple video, with different shots of the phone, and they add words on the screen and some music. The music choice seems a bit disturbing for the iPhone. Not really sure why that song was chosen. They persuade people by telling them what they want to hear. They want to hear that this phone is much better than the old one and its worth spending hundreds of dollars more to upgrade a few things. Seems a bit ridiculous in the grand scheme of things but I definitely think it will work. They did a great job of showing new things and comparing them to old ones. Definitely can see this item getting a lot more popularity, as if it didn't already have enough.
I think that the message being implied to the audience is to purchase the iPhone 5. I think this video was designed to show us that this new phone is much better and "cooler" than the new one and sort of bash on the old one. Basically that the new one is much better and the old one is not worth having anymore.
The information used is specifics of the phone. They use information from the phones attributes such as thickness, processor, features, weight, etc. to sort of explain or persuade us to buy the new phone. I think the information is definitely credible. I don't see any reason why the information would not be credible. There were actual pictures and video of the phone that seemed to line up with facts that they gave us.
Stuff that was left out was probably stuff that might stop potential customers from buying this phone. A big one was price. If this phone is released at carriers across the U.S. and people wait around to get it and then find out after waiting in line that it costs $600 or something ridiculous, I think that will hurt potential customers decision to buy it. Also, I think there were probably some features of the phone that were left out that people might not like. They may have removed something on the phone that people would not like, so of course they left that out. They only want the customer to see that this phone is amazing and nothing less. They wouldn't tell you anything bad about their product, especially if they know if could potentially cost them a lot of money!

Reading Meshes of the Afternoon

After our class discussion of reading film, I thought that "meshes of the afternoon" was easier to read. In class, we discussed ways to read film and when I watched "meshes of the afternoon" again, I paid closer attention to the ways of reading film. When you know how to read film, something as confusing and weird as "meshes of the afternoon" can seem much easier to comprehend. I noticed that throughout the movie important things are more obvious when using the rule of thirds. Also, using background to foreground and left to right helped play a role in understanding this film. Also, in this short film, I noticed there were scenes with nothing on the rule of thirds? It seemed as if they purposely left something off the rules of thirds "lines" to get the shot more complex? This is when i used the other methods such as left and right to try to figure out what the film was showing us. This helped because not every shot in the movie used the rule of thirds so I had to sort of slowly process the movie using other rules and re-watching certain shots time after time to understand what they meant, using other rules. Even after I watched the movie again using all the rules we just learned, I still found it difficult to understand at points. Yes, the rules make it more "readable" in a way, yet the movie is still hard to understand. I really think the creepy Japanese music and no verbal communication makes this movie that much harder to understand.

Picture

This is a good picture my dad took of my siblings and I. This picture makes me think of my family.

Director vs. Actor

After watching "Meshes of the afternoon" I am a little lost. That was a very confusing film. I think it was so confusing because of the constant change in character and camera shots and then the sound coming on and off. In this little movie there is a lady who seems to have a wordless discussion at a table with herself included three times. I am not really sure. I took from the movie that maybe this lady is just crazy and had lost her mind and happened to kill herself. Not really sure what happened but it was definitely a film that made you think!

I believe that in today's technology, most of what we see in a visual media is from the director. The one counter I had for this argument was that the actor is the one who has to portray the directors thoughts. Therefore the actor is sort of a middle man and should get credit for half the work because he is acting it. Because the director is wanting to put his message on screen, he can chose the actors to help get his message to the audience. This gives him control over most things that help him relay his message. Who acts the part, how the audience sees the part and etc. However, the director could also remove an actor because it might not fit his vision as well as he had hoped. With the director having so much power of what actually gets shown on screen, I believe the director should get most of the credit for the final product. I am not saying that the actor does not get any credit, because he does. He is a middle man. But, the directors message goes through the actor to get on the screen so we may see the message as if it was the actors, but in the grand scheme of things, it is the directors message.

I think a lot of what we as audience members think and feel help make the movie what it is. Because we are all humans and have different values or beliefs, we all see the movie in a different light. I have different thoughts than you so I may take away a different movie than you might have, even though we both are watching the exact same thing. Peoples views in life and what they believe in can contribute majorly to how a movie is viewed in their eyes versus someone else with completely different views. When watching scary movies its like we are trained to be warned that when certain music comes on we know something is about to pop out and scare us. This makes the movie that much more intriguing for the audience! Not knowing yet knowing, its a great factor that contributes to our part of the media. Also, if someone has a certain belief, they may be more biased throughout the movie if it is against their beliefs. Rather than someone who might enjoy the movie more if it is in their belief system.

Commercialism

No, film and video are never free of commercialism. Commercialism is always there. When I think of commercialism the first thing that comes to mind is advertising. When you a see a commercial something is being advertised. Every time you watch a video something is being promoted. Commercialism is a business; plain and simple. Businesses now know that advertising is the easiest way for people to see your product. Nothing is free of commercialism, not even the most basic videos, blogs. For instance, the one thing I thought might be free of commercialism is a personal blog. That is a video. If someone is blogging about their life they are promoting their life to you. They are telling you all this stuff that happens to them and they want you, the audience, to watch it. They want you to subscribe to them and watch their videos. That is what they are selling you! People create videos on YouTube for people to watch. If people knew ahead of time not one single person would ever see the video, they wouldn't post it. They want people to watch their stuff and continue to watch their stuff. Therefore, they are commercializing themselves.

I do not believe a message can come to the screen purely. Sure, a director can try to get his message out their clearly but that does not mean that everyone will see it that way. People will see the movie differently than other people will. This makes it tough for the directors message to get through if people are seeing the movie in all sorts of ways. There are just too many things that the director cannot control, leaving his message undelivered.