Hollywood v. Hollywood

When we were doing the Hollywood activity in class, I was comparing my knowlegde of how Hollywood works to what was happening in the classroom. After class I looked up article on Variety about Samuel Jackson getting a role in the next Iron Man. The article stated that he has signed on to a long term deal to play this character in many other films. Now becasue he is such a well know actor in the industry, he was able to sign such a contract and the production company is able to pay what he needs, they are able to keep him busy for a certian period of time. When we were going around the class we had the "actors" themselfs coming up to us. This doesn't happen. The agents would have been making calls to find scripts that the actor would like and a company that he/she could work with. Within the company that I was working, we had to let the actresses pick the story that they wanted to do. This would not happen. Production companys pick the script that they want to shoot, the comes picking the producer and the director, who then pick the cast that they want. They would call the actor's agents to see if they would be interested in adutioning for the moive that they were going to shoot. Our Hollywood was more of a free for all. We were just trying to get things before other people got what we wanted. Even though this is how the real Hollywood is, it would be done over a much more longer period of time.

Reading vs. Watching the news

Last week in class we talked about wether it was better to read or to watch the news. This is something that I think is very important. When you sit down and read something, you are forced to pay attention to the words to get the full meaning. When you are sitting and having something told to then you are really not paying that much attention to what is being said but more to what is going on around the screen. I find that when you read something you get more out of it. You pay attention to the surface meaning, but the if you come back to the same story later then yuo can look for more to the story. When you read you can see all the signs infront of you instead of having to hear it cut down to a two minute segment of information that the producers deem important to all viewers. I find that when you sit down to read it is at a moment when you really want to pay attetion to the what is in front of you. Many times when people turn on the new to "watch" it, it turns into more of background noise that you don't really pay attention. When you read something you notice what the codes being used are and the signs that are being used by the writer. You see and retain more of what you read.

TV Genres

While I was going through my families dvr, I found myself think about what genres all the shows. I found it difficult to find a show that only fit one genre. We talked about how many shows are consider to be put into the "hybtidity" section. Meaning that the shows would fall into two genres. Take for example, Gilmore Girls. This is a show that should be considered a drama, but almost all the episodes have a comdy part to it. If someone where to ask me what genre I would put this show into the comdey section. Look at House. Something that should be mostly drama, but Dr. House it becomes a comdy most times. I think that it is very hard to say that a tv show only fits into one genre. You could say that Survivor is just a reality show. But if you were to look deeper you would see that this also has elements of a drama in it. The problem with that is this is a unscript show and you really dont know what is going to happen. That 70s show is something that you could put into three genres. Comedy, drama and reality. Drama and comdey are easy to see, but the reality is only in one part of every show. The part where they are in a circle can be seen as reality element. It is very much like doing a confession on another show. So to say that a show would only go into on genre is almost a wrong thing to say.

Media Shapes Us

Over the last few days I've been thinking about how media shapes the way we think about things. We watch a news broadcast and we form our opoinions on what is going on around the world. We see a moive about a group of people that we have never heard of and assume that what we saw is how it is. Think about it, we are constaly taking things in but we never stop to think about how it is effecting us. During the "Merchants of Cool", it talked about the feedback loop. But this doesn't only apply to teens. Look at the young adult age. We've been shaped by what we watched when we were younger and now as we beging to change in what types of media we take in we begin to change again. It might be reading a book or a news story, but everything we see tells us what to think about something. In one of my other classes we watched to movie "Whale Rider". This was a moive about the Maori people from New Zeland. I new nothing about this tribe before I watched the moive and then from the movie I took what I saw as really. We had to research the tribe and I found that a lot of what we saw was untrue. The didn't tell parts of the story right and even left parts out. When we had the class debate about if this was right or now it made me think. Did I have a wrong view of something else because I only know part of what is true? How many times have I judge a semotic domain based on what I've read about it? Too many times. If we all take a step back and think about what we are taking in, then see if it is true or not the world would be better off.

Feedback Cycle

In class today we talked more about the Merchants of Cool. We found that the big idea was that the decision of what is cool and what we will think is cool is made for us. But the media is really never feeding us anything new. Becasue of the feedback cycle, when the media trys to find out what teenagers are thinking is cool, all they are getting back is what they gave them in the first place. And then it gets caught in the loop. The media shows something, then teens imitate it and then when the media trys to find what is cool they just get back what they put out.
I don't think that anyone is compelety free from this. Everyone is, in someway, part of this culture.Everyone bends in someway to what media says is cool. It may not be in a big way but in some way.

Teens and Media

While watching the video today I found myself agree with what the one guy was saying. Teens are always trying to imitate what they see in they see on tv and in the movies. Big shots in the media world are still doing reasearch on teens and how they live, but nowadays all that they are getting back is what they put out. As I watch my brohter and his friends I see them doing just what they see on tv. No matter how much a teenager can try to be different they are affected the world and media around them. Those that go around to find what teenagers are into, are really not finding anything new.

Reading Words

When I was reading through the assignment, I found that one line really stuck out to me. "Did you hear what I said?" I can't count the times ive read a comic of watched a movie with subtitles and thought I was hearing it. I don't think that this is odd but something that I've never really thought about. When you watch a movie with subtitles you know what is happening in the beginning as far as reading them goes, but as the movie goes on you realize less and less what you are doing. When you see a cartoon on paper you can hear the voices in your head so you know what is going on. This isn't something that you find odd unless you were to sit down and think about it.

Bridgestone With the Taters

This commercial was one of the funnier ones that I saw. But now as I watch back through it, I'm noticing things that I didn't before. The whole squence of shots were what I would consider open framed. The car was always moving and you know that one of the taters was doing something when the other was talking. As far as signs go, the biggest on that I saw was the sheep. They are driving on a mountain road and then there is suddely sheep. Another symbol that I saw was when her lips fly off. The camera begins to following them down and then does a quick cut back up to her face where, at the very end, she puts on her angry eyes.