Everything is a Remix

This video was fantastic. Before this video I never really thought of movies like this. Of course, growing up when we went to movies with our parents we were periodically told that this was a remake or based off this movie, stuff like that. I never would have imagined that almost all movies today are remixed in some way. It just seems crazy to think about. Like the video showed us, some of the greatest movies to hit the box office use scenes from other movies. For example, Star Wars had a ton of things in it that were almost exact scenes from another movie. Hard to image what it would be like had these movies not used any remixing. Almost seems impossible. Definitely an eye opener though.

Unique Blog Post 3

I found this video I thought was rather interesting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AFFWPkcOmE&feature=g-trend

It's about how developers have created a program that enables our virtual avatar to reproduce our emotion into the virtual world. He didn't really say what it was for, so hard telling what it would be used for. I mean most video games I know of (or play) do not involve me communicating with other people, unless through a microphone. And I do not believe this would be used for video conferencing programs such as Skype because obviously human to human is better than avatar to avatar. So I wonder what they will implement this program into? I think the idea is great and would definitely change the way we communicate in the virtual world, like he mentioned. I am just not exactly sure how. Anyone see a good use for this program that I may be missing?

Unique Blog Post 2 - Call of Duty

I was browsing the internet recently, looking at some of the information for the new Call of Duty: Blacks Ops 2 game when I came across this article.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/technology/call-of-duty-black-ops-2-halo-4-set-for-a-sales-shootout/2012/11/13/b321dfd4-2d8d-11e2-a99d-5c4203af7b7a_story.html

The article discusses revenue brought in by these two popular games over the last few years. I was honestly blown away. The first call of duty black ops brought in over 650 million dollars in just five days. To me, this was astonishing. It got me to thinking, what are we really paying for in this new video game? Sure, the campaign is different and the graphics have been altered slightly but what about this game is so different that it can generate over a half a billion dollars in revenue in 5 days? It's because it's a materialistic item. I remember growing up, always wanting the new video game. That is what they are doing here. You don't want to be the kid that doesn't have the new video game when everyone else does so you go out and buy the new one. Even though the game is not that different from the other 8 call of duties that you already own,  but you buy it anyways. It just blows my mind that we continue to do this, and I am totally guilty of this I will admit. It almost seems like manipulation. They could reprint this same game, exactly the same, just change the name and kids would still buy it. Another way they manipulate this series is through media. Here is a commerical for one of the games that came out a while ago.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WD7WNmpKRW4

This old man basically tells us everyone is doing "it", if you know what the commercial is for, you know its playing call of duty. All the references he makes can be thought of in terms of call of duty. But even the people that do know this game know this old man could be referring about sex. I thought this commercial was wrong. It seems like they wanted to make kids laugh because they were references sex (kids laugh at sex jokes), and then it would let kids know the new game was coming out. This would lead kids to show all their friends how funny the commercial was and then all the other kids would know about the new game. Just seems like one big scheme to get the consumer to buy the next game, or just another materialistic item.