Bank of Hollywood

I saw this commercial for a new show coming out entitled Bank of Hollywood. After all the talk about reality TV and different types of television I thought this was a very interesting new take on a game show/reality TV series. People go up on stage tell the panel of judges what their story is and how much money they want to try to win, and then try to impress the judges enough to get them to give them money, supposedly out of their own pockets (ya right). I really want to see how this show will do, it seems like a good and unique idea, but will people watch this? Will you guys?

Jersey Shore

I can't believe I'm writing about this show, but it really pisses me off to the point that I have to vent somewhere. My girlfriend watches this crap, and I am stuck sitting next to her on the couch watching it too. For those who have never seen it Jersey Shore is a reality TV series about "those guys" aka "my new haircut guys" or muscle head guidos from New Jersey. I personally think these people are the scum of the earth, shallow retards, who have no cares in the world other than going to the gym, getting haircuts, and going out. According to my girlfriend that is particularly what she likes about the show, that she watches it to laugh at them, and how stupid they are. I on the other hand feel stupider watching them. Maybe I just don't get it. Do any of you?

Media Coverage...

I really don't get why the media always tries to ruin celebrities lives. Tiger woods, the newest subject of all controversy, every day there is a new girl who comes out to the media, who allegedly slept with Tiger. How did Tiger Woods go from a car crash to a huge scandal involving over ten women now. I don't understand why the media does this. Why did they follow Brittany Spears until she went crazy and flipped out on the paparazzi? I mean I know it's entertaining, but celebrities are not gerbils that we can look at and laugh, they are people and they have real lives too. Tiger Woods isn't even an entertainer, he's a professional athlete, what's the point of publicizing his private matters like that?

Oprahs Comments

So I never really had a problem with Oprah, but what I heard this past week really got to me. According to a Facebook group I was invited to, Oprah was giving her viewers tips for how to save money during hard economic times. One of her ingenious tips was to tip servers less when you go out, supposedly she said something like "instead of leaving the usual 20% it's o.k. to leave 10% if money is tight".

Well Oprah, as a part time server, I have to say that this is not o.k. in the LEAST bit. I am appalled that someone like Oprah would even say something so dumb. But really though servers whole salary is the gratuity they receive from their tables. Other than that servers get paid 2.63$ an hour BEFORE taxes which is essentially nothing. Being a server I took this comment very personally. I think that through her show, utilizing her media influence, Oprah's stupid little comment could have done a lot of damage.

Intervention

Out of all reality TV shows I think the most serious and real show is Intervention. For those who don't know what I'm talking about, the show follows victims of various different types of addiction throughout their daily lives. Each show is essentially a documentary about an addict of some sort, and they show their families, and their feelings about the addiction through interviews. At the end of each episode an intervention is planned and implemented on the subjects by the host and their whole family. Compared to all of the stupid MTV reality shows, I actually think this show is very interesting and educational. Not all reality TV sucks, there is still hope...

Free Choice?

In our discussions of free market and free choice, I couldn't get a sense of what people thought about our free choice. Do we have free choice? or is our choice/ market actually limited by factors out of our control? Things like huge media conglomerates and bias news stations, etc. I really would like to see how people perceive this other than me.

I think that we do have free choice, we just don't have a completely free market. Like I just said the market, or our choices, are limited or changed by things beyond our control. So although we can choose, the choice you want in particular may not always be available.

Adult Cartoons

I have always thought that it was very interesting that there are cartoons for adults. Typically when you think of a cartoon it is very childish, very fun, it is not meant for adults, and no serious topics are usually involved. Well in the case of South Park, Family Guy, and The Simpsons that is not the case. These cartoons are made for adults, their subject matter includes political, entertainment, and current events humor, things that children would simply not comprehend. I remember watching the Simpsons when I was younger (8-10) and not understanding 75% of the humor, now I understand everything, and think it's hilarious. What I find interesting about this phenomenon is that the chosen medium for this political satire is a cartoon. A fun way to represent current events, politics, and other news to adults.

High School

I really loved this weeks screening, High School. Mostly I enjoyed it simply because I haven't seen anything like it before. I generally enjoy watching documentaries because along with being entertaining they are also educational. With the typical documentary however, you have a narrator or a host, who is a constant subject in the documentary, and they go around and interview or explore things pertaining to the subject of the documentary. Here however we simply see what we see, there are no explanations, there is no narration, you see what goes on in a high school in the sixties throughout a school day. I thought it was very interesting to watch this "raw footage" that was only edited to flow from one scene to the next. What I found most intriguing is how when each scene starts you are sitting there trying to figure out whats going on in front of you. Then from common experience you understand that this is a kid who got sent to the principles office for skipping detention, or that your in Home Ed class... I thought it was really cool and interesting as a sort of moving photograph.

Mockumentaries

Reading about documentaries I thought about mockumentaries, where the documentary style is used to show fictitious events. Thinking about it further, my favorite movie **sarcasm** Paranormal Activity, is technically a mockumentary, because it is a horror movie shot in a documentary style which is most of the thrill factor. The sense that this actually happened to a couple, and they actually filmed themselves. A great movie which used the mockumentary style is Borat, where Sacha Baron Cohen used the fictitious character Borat, to go around and shoot a "documentary" including various interviews, and activities around America. By doing this he exposed a lot of the true American culture, and stereotypes that are not typically shown in movie theaters.

Paranormal Bullsh*t!!!

Ok so this post is a long time coming.... I saw this movie (Paranormal Activity) about two or three weeks ago now. As I have said before I am not much of a fan of horror movies at all. The ONLY reason I went to this movie was because I was with my girlfriend and her friend, and her friend really wanted to see it because he heard it was REALLY scary. Whipping out my handy dandy iphone I hopped on Flixster to check out the ratings and reviews for this horror movie. Things like "scariest movie I have EVER seen" and "I was almost crying in the theater" came up, with a rating of about 80% from the critics, which is a very good rating considering that I've watched movies that were rated much lower and loved them. However I did find one review which said something along the lines of "This is stupid, I laughed throughout most of the movie, and this is such a rip off because it only cost them about 11000$ to make with one camera and two unknown actors." Ignoring this review I thought that was just a bad apple, and decided if this movie is really supposed to be THAT good I'll go watch it, and see for myself what's so scary. To make a long story short, the movie sucked, I ended up being THAT guy who laughed throughout the whole movie, and walked out of the theatre pissed off.

Although thinking about it further for 11k and a single camera with two unknown actors the movie does a halfway decent job of doing what it's aimed to do which is keep the viewer on the edge of their seat. But mostly if your a 13 year old girl.... all in all I HATE this movie, just as much if not more than I hate the other barf-o-licous flick Cloverfield. Any thoughts?

American Movie

HAHAHA! American Movie was quite the documentary. My first thoughts after the first ten minutes of this movie were "what the $%*& is this?" but after watching for a little longer, I realized that this is real, this is not a high end documentary all cut and beautified to be more interesting than it actually is. It is the honest story of a struggling film maker with a dream. By the middle of the movie I was really rooting for Mark, although I thought him and his friends were dumb rednecks, he had a passion and a goal, and he would have given up everything just to see it come to life. This movie shows a lot of good life lessons. I learned for instance that as long as your determined and persistent, nothing will stop you from accomplishing your goals, man.... :)

Whats so special about Facebook and YouTube?

I'm back to my favorite subject Facebook and YouTube. What I was thinking about today is why did these two sites become the giants of social networking and streaming videos? How did this happen? I remember when I was in middle school and high school, there was a very popular website within the Russian community called www.whimit.com, it was in essence a "Russian Facebook", of course you did not have to be Russian to register, but the site was created by a Russian couple from Brooklyn and was marketed towards Russians. The thing that I'm wondering is why didn't whimit, or any other social networking site become as big as Facebook has? They have been around longer than Facebook, it's not a very original or unique idea. In fact as we have all heard the creator of Facebook, was accused of stealing the idea from his friend and former partner. The only thing I can think of that could have set these sites apart from the rest is luck. Anyone have any other ideas?

Modern Family

I have been watching this new show on ABC with my girlfriend called Modern Family and it's surprisingly good for a brand new show. The show illustrates the lives of a family in present day, however unlike most family type shows, it doesn't just focus on one immediate family, it shows three families that are all part of the same family. The main family, husband, wife and three kids, the wifes father and his new wife and her son as another family, and the wife's brother, who is gay and lives with his boyfriend and newly adopted Vietnamese baby. It's a very interesting representation of what the modern family in America looks like, and a very funny show, especially for ABC. I recommend watching an episode and seeing if you like it, it's on at 9pm every Wednesday night.

Interest Channels

I thought of this topic to blog about after sitting in front of my TV and flipping through the guide. Audiences are split up not only on separate shows, but on cable television you have a menagerie of channels to choose from, many if not all of these channels have a specific theme and audience. There are sports networks (NESN, ESPN, CSN, Fox Soccer Channel, NHL Network, etc.), educational channels (Discovery, History, Nat Geo, Science, etc.), kids channels (cartoon network, nickelodeon, Disney, etc.), Movie channels, cooking, cars, basically every special interest you can think of. I just thought it was interesting that each of these channels is intended for a particular audience, and that I have never thought of this before.

Flip Cameras

I keep seeing these commercials where first they show you what looks like a YouTube video, and then they show you that it was filmed by this "Flip" camera. In a very nice and easy to use package a company has come out with a camera that can shot in HD and record up to 120 minutes of footage. When your done recording your masterpiece you pop out the USB stick and plug the camera into your computer, and upload your videos wherever you want. For the YouTube video bloggers this is a great idea. An easy to use alternative to create high quality videos without the hefty price tag. A great idea in general, but even more great is how they are marketing it in their commercials, particularly as a camera for your internet video needs, making everyone their own director.

Audiences

I have always thought audiences for different media is a very interesting subject. For instance reality TV shows, there are so many shows to choose from, The Apprentice, Survivor, Flavor of Love, Extreme House Makeover, The Kardashians, and the list goes on. Each show is intended for a different audience, yet all of these shows find their space in our society. There are groups of people who watch each one of these reality shows religiously. My girlfriend for example loves The Kardashians and I really don't understand why. When I ask her, "what's so entertaining about watching this rich family and what goes on with their daily lives?" she simply responds "it's interesting to me." There is no real reasoning behind it, the way I see it she just likes watching celebrities lives and seeing their conflicts, relationships, and problems. I don't get it, but to her it's entertaining. Anyone else watch reality shows religiously? Anyone have a good explanation for why they find it entertaining?

You Tube

Similar to my post about Facebook, I was thinking about youtube and all of these other streaming video websites in general. This is a very new phenomena if you think about it. Youtube was founded in 2005 which is only 4 years ago. Now everyone and there mom knows what youtube is and uses youtube. It is estimated that every minute about 20 hours of video is uploaded on to youtube. That is CRAZY! I really don't understand what kind of genius sites will be next. Where will this crazy thing called the internet take us. What will be the next website people will not know how to live without?

Will all websites be run through Facebook???

The more I think about this "facebook/twitter revolution" the more it's becoming a reality. What urged me to write this post for instance, was a honda commercial I saw a couple of minutes ago, where at the end of the commercial it says "visit us on facebook at facebook.com/honda". I was in shock! No longer is a regular website good enough, now everything is moving to facebook.

From seeing this and noticing the same thing in a couple of other commercials, I thought of this crazy idea... What if facebook just takes over everything, you could access any other website through facebook, including checking your emails, reading the news, etc. etc. all while keep in touch with your friends. That would just be ridiculous, and obviously so absurd that it would never happen... but where will it end? especially if companies are using facebook now instead of giving people their regular website?

Facebook is taking over the world...

What a great idea Facebook originally started out as... what has it come to now?

I was watching TV the other day and was surprised to see that Facebook has now found it's way into TV commercials. The newest (as far as I know) Bud Light commercial shows a couple driving down the highway and two situations one where the guy just get's rejected. The second scenario is when she simply just throws him out of the moving car. After he get's up he screams "I'll friend you!" And then the Bud Light tagline "It's all about drinkability!"

What killed me was the facebook reference, the "I'll friend you!" This means that Bud Light is assuming enough people know what that means that they are using it as a marketing scheme in their commercial. It's just crazy how in only 5 or 6 years facebook has gotten to the point where it is like a formal accepted well known means of communication similar to email or instant messenger.

Video Games

Reading through the chapter about industries, I thought it was very interesting to see video games as a medium of production. I never have thought of video games as a source of media, but thinking about it now, I don't really see how they aren't media. Getting even more into it I thought about how media exchanges between different mediums of productions. What I mean by this is that if there is a bestseller military novel, or a super monster blowout movie, there will probably be a video game made based on it. Also the music in the video game is another way to spread media. Books turn into movies, movies into video games, and music is either selected or made for the games. I just thought this was very interesting and never thought of it this way.

Movie Ratings...

Growing up, I always thought movie ratings were a big deal. My mom would never let me watch anything rated R until I was about 15 or 16, until that age pretty much everything I saw was PG-13 or below. The only thing I can think about now is that I missed watching a lot of really good movies because of my age. Although I understand that I may have been too young to understand these more serious or dirtier movies, but watching them now just seems different. Watching This Film is Not Yet Rated opened my eyes to the world of how movies are labeled with a certain rating. I think it's interesting that we have this in America, because I don't think any other country has such strict ratings regulations as we do. In Europe their is nudity in practically every movie, and it's no big deal, but here if there is a boob on the screen the movie is automatically rated R. A bit harsh if you ask me...

Why do we fight?

After watching Why We Fight I was simply angry. I could not believe that a tragedy that hit hard not only in New York, not only in the USA, but around the whole world, was used as an excuse to start a completely separate and unrelated conflict. Using the attacks of 9/11 as a reason to invade Iraq was just wrong, and fooling the public into believing this and supporting a completely unnecessary war, was even worse. What really got to me is the story about the New York Police officer who wanted some kind of revenge for his sons death, and had the Marines put a dedication to his son on a bomb that was dropped on Iraq. I cannot believe that a man in such a situation was led to believe this crap. I have always thought that America is the least corrupt country in the world, that here everything is checked and rechecked so that there can be no fraud, no illegal payoffs, no bribery, none of that. However our own government, our own president lying to us, and putting the country at war against another country for false reasons is much worse than any fraud or bribery!

Blogging

Intersted in finding out more about this crazy thing we have to do for class "blogging", I looked up "why do people blog?" and stubled upon this interesting post in a guy named Dave Taylor's blog. He explains that his understanding of blogging is simply for people to share their stories, and to get their voice heard. Blogs, according to Taylor, can also be used as a very good marketing tool. I think that a cool thing about blogs is that anybody can make one and that it's almost like your own free website. I don't really know how I feel about getting my voice heard, but that may simply be because I feel as though nobody care what I have to say. To this Taylor would say that that is the beauty of blogs, it doesn't matter if nobody wants to read what your writing because nobody has to read it. However, if they do and they respond, it could get you thinking about something you wrote from a different perspective, or provide insight that you simply have never thought of before.

heres the link: http://www.intuitive.com/blog/why_do_people_blog_how_many_bloggers_are_there.html

News

Reading the case study on news got me thinking. News is in essence a documentation of reality in such a form that it is supposed to show the public the general updates on various subjects throughout our society. The problem is that bias, be it political, or just the stations particular biases effect the news and taint it to the point where it no longer really reprents the truth. What I immediately thought of is reality TV shows and who real those shows actually are... I believe that the way reality TV shows on channels such as MTV and VH1 are not reality at all. They are filmed in a way to make it appear as though it is, however the producers will keep the characters that provide "good television" and cut the ones that are not as interesting. I feel as though many news stations are the same, they will show you the most flashy and extraordinary stories just to keep you entertained. I think it's pretty sad that news media has become entertainment instead of a journalistic account of what's going on in the world...

Smartphones!

All my babbling about iPhone applications and such led me to the discovery of an app that I can use to write these blog posts directly fom my phone!!! After finding this and using it I thought to myself: "what don't they have for the iPhone?" then I thought deeper...

Only about 15 years ago cell phones became popular and cheap enough for mainstream society. They were not even close to capable of accessing the Internet. My iPhone can do all this and more it is the ultimate media device. It can stream YouTube, browse the web (at speeds much faster than a computer could in 1994), has 16gb of memory which is 32 times more than the first computer my parents ever bought... Technology is booming and the media has a direct feed through so many channels directly into your pocket! Where will it go from here? What will happen in the NEXT 15 years?? I can't even imagine...


-- Posted from my iPhone

Still on the subject...

This new style of media which combines mobile applications with social networking applications is insane. Esspecially with the iPhone...

Yesterday I was playing with yet another toy on my phone called "weird laws". It displays strange laws that are no longer practical but are still written down in law books in various states. If you like a certain law or think it's particularlly interesting or funny you can post it directly to your facebook status! I wouldn't have thought anything of this before this class, but now I've started looking at these things from a very different and critical perspective!

New media invading everything!!

I was on the T today and saw the newest McDonald's poster ad. Nothing surprising about seeing an ad for McD's on the T, what did surprise me was what the ad said. The photo illustrates the "new" third pounder burger and a large container of fries. Above this photoshoped masterpiece in bold white all capital type said the words: "They would friend each other" I couldn't believe my eyes. "Is that a facebook reference?" I started asking myself all these questions... Wow, what has everything come down to? Is facebook really that big of a part of our new culture that McDonald's, is using it it as their advertisement scheme? And all I could answer was: yes! Most people who know what the Internet is know about facebook, especially in my generation, which is the first college generation to have facebook since freshman year (5 years). I remember when I was going into college I got facebook, when it was the hot new thing, and you had to be in a college network to join. Now anyone can join, and peoples parents have facebooks, as well as celebrities, and even our president is on facebook. The site generated so much popularity in 5 years, and is already being considered common knowledge, and being used in a McD's ad.

I would have never even thought twice about this if it wasn't for this class but the media is part of everything. It is really crazy how these trends get so popular so quickly!

Media is creeping in to everything...

Well it's really no surprise, but I have discovered some crazy new ways that the media is creeping into our beloved iPhones... Before if you downloaded a free app from the App Store, it would either be a watered down version of the real application or have banner ads on the screen the whole time you would use the app. NOW they have come up with an even better tactic. Obviously people like the free apps more, simply because they don't have to dish out any of their hard earned money on them. However the software development company needs to pay their employees somehow, no one wants to work for free, so the way free things make money is through polluting their software with advertisements. This does not surprise me.

What DID surprise me is that when I downloaded an app called "most addicting game" (which I used to have before, when it didn't have any ads at all) I began playing the game that was already familiar to me. However every third time I lost the game would go to a black screen load for a couple seconds and then show me a full screen ad of some sort. After playing for about 5 minutes, about the 4th or 5th time the ad popped up, it said "Are you male or female?" and there was no way to bypass this without answering. So you click one, then the next time the ad page came up it asked what age group I was in, again without letting me bypass without an answer. Interested in if this would affect what ads would show up next, I kept playing mostly to find out, since I was tired of the game already. Sure enough the ads became more oriented to things that I would be more likely to buy, such as laptops, and men's deodorant, just to name a couple memorable ones. I was astonished by what they had done, not only are they playing ads, but now they are making sure that you actually care about the ads your seeing. I dunno, I thought it was crazy... and realistically a very good idea from a marketing perspective.

MTV Video Music Awards

So yesterday, I was forced to watch the MTV video music awards with my girlfriend. During the nonsense, I began noticing the commercials. Not only did they have nothing to do with music, television, or music videos, they were marketing fast food to the American youth. The one that stuck in my mind because it played every commercial break was the Taco Bell commercial.

In this commercial we have Evander Holyfield at the counter of a Taco Bell, and he orders some new crap challupa super shell crap, but he orders TWO of them! To which the astonished Taco Bell cashier says "but Mr. Holyfield one of these challupatacosupremes is enough for even a man of YOUR size!" This is when Holyfield steps to the side and informs the cashier that Mama Holyfield (who is Holyfield in a gray wig and a dress) needs one too, and they are not both for him.

The first time it was funny, however after the 3rd and 4th times it quickly got old. The media is selling junk food to youth utilizing false advertisement that Holyfield, a professional boxer, would ever eat there. Also, however comedic it was intended to be, they make it seem as though Taco Bell is a good place to take your mother for lunch.

Comm 229

So this is what it's like to blog... Well here we go, I'm staring up a bit late but, I finally got to blogging. Welcome to my Comm 229 Blog!

I don't know what to say right now so I'll leave it at this for now... I look forward to learning a lot about the media, and using this blog as a sort of media tool to express my ideas and feelings about comm 229, among other things. Bjorn is an awesome teacher, and I know I'll learn a lot!