Once I had an internship where I did various menial tasks. I would often be sent to a highly disorganized storage room to retrieve various items that were in the most difficult and inconsistent places. Other days, I would be left twiddling my thumbs with nothing much to do. Well, one day, I decided to organize the storage room and put all the items where they originally belonged with appropriate labels. It took hours!
Well, there was one person in particular who didn't like my little initiative, complaining that she no longer knew where anything was. For everyone else, particularly the head hauncho, they were thrilled that the doorless space was no longer a blight or a safety hazard. It also set a standard for those other little cubby holes that were collecting slouching stacks of random material that so easily accumulates amongst artsy environments....
There is a lesson to be learned in that little anecdote. See if you can CVA it!
Okay....HOMEWORK....
For your convenience, I am posting it here. You are still responsible for taking note of the assignment in class. If you have any problem with the blog, remember to email your assignment to me. If you get locked out /forget your password, click the little question mark under the login box.
- WRITE A ONE [FULL] PAGE PAPER ANALYSIS OF A TV SHOW/MOVIE USING EACH STEP OF THE CVA. REFER TO YOUR HANDOUT. BLOG IN THE COMMENTS SECTION. YOU MAY DO SO HERE (BELOW).
- READ THE HANDOUTS GIVEN TO YOU IN CLASS. COME PREPARED WITH QUESTIONS/COMMENTS.
- I have emails for the following people (if you are not on the list, please email me asap).
Steve O.
Brittany H.
William P.
JC R.
Keven M.
Ruben U.
Tim V.
Lindsey A.
DeJuan H.
Imani T.
Angy N.
Anton J.
William P.
Manuel V.
Alan C.
12 comments:
Steve O’Brien
7-29-08
Week 2
People love watching just about anything on television. Anybody who might be interested in the slightest thing will always find something to watch. As for me, I enjoy the simple things like
anything on The Discovery Channel, or Animal Planet.
Watching The Crocodile Hunter gets me to think about how they run their program. Knowing
more about the role of a director has gotten me to think more about how I see things on the tube.
As they shoot, the director knows what must be cut out or put in. He knows that the people want
to see the excitement of what goes on in front of the camera. The producer knows that just about
all age groups are going to be excited to learn more about nature as well as see the man who puts
so much excitement into our planet and into conservation is a sure winner.
The goal of the program is reach as many people, no matter what age, as possible to get them to
learn about saving wild life and saving the planet. If reaching just one person watching the
program, they will have done their jobs.
The understanding of showing the viewer wild animals and critters that may come into the
picture means that the viewer will surely be interested and may begin to understand how
precious every creature is. With the main host, Steve Irwin, getting excited at every creature he
encounters and explaining how each one is unique, the viewer will be able to enjoy what they are
watching quite a bit more. After the program is over, the producer can tell how the viewer is
going to see and understand the message of the program. The producer has put together a very
knowledgeable and entertaining program for the viewer and he/she knows that what they have
put on film will be worth their time and effort and I too have enjoyed what I have seen!
The humor of the apple Mac commercials brings your attention in initially. The ads where it’s the two men, one represents a PC and the other represents a Mac. The commercial, basically shows the two characters standing in a white room as to not distract from the focal point, them.
Using the critical viewing model the producer has put the ad together in four steps. The first step connotation / intervention. The connotation is the PC being a gentleman dressed in a sports coat a tie and wearing glasses. The PC looks a little nerdy. The Mac is portrayed by a younger man dressed in jeans and a t-shirt and being a bit more laid back. The target market for this ad is in the 20s to 40s and for computer users that like technology and are more progressive. The intervention is the perception of the PC being stale and boring, not very exciting. The Mac is young and artistic and interesting.
The next step is denotation / goal attainment. In denotation the PC represents a computer that is limited in it’s capabilities in the creative realm. The Mac on the other hand has many applications to help you be very creative. The goal attainment is to understand what the Mac offers to the viewer that the PC doesn’t. Another part of the goal attainment is to get the viewer to buy or even switch to a Mac.
The third step is ideology / cultural understanding. The ideology the producer sees is that computer users want systems that are user friendly and have applications that are more exciting and creative. The cultural understanding of this ad is that everyone uses computers whether you own one or not.
The final step is the comprehension of the three previous steps. The producer taking all the knowledge in from steps one two and three has gained insight and becomes a viewer themselves. The perceived message is that the computer being great and better than the rest.
Recently I found myself attached to a new show that has been playing on the ABC family channel called “The Secret Life of the American Teenager”. The show is on its third week of airing, and so far the characters have been introduced, as well as their surroundings. Being your basic run of the mill suburban area, as well as showing many different aspects of what high school life is like.
The main focus of the plot line is following the life of Amy, a fifteen year old girl who ends up getting pregnant, and her struggles of dealing with being a teenager that’s pregnant, and the trials she will have to go through, between telling her family, and the school finding out.
I believe this show does come across one of the many issues teenagers do happen to face during high school, and a lot of the problems that do go with being in that situation. From watching other kids during my high school life go through this sort of thing, I believe the producer and director have grabbed the emotions of this even quite well, by showing embarrassment, fear, hurt, and love.
Psyrad is Me Angy Nylund, forgot to add my name at the top, sorry
Jose C. Rodriguez Jr.
July 28, 2008
HW Week 2: Film Análisis CVA
The film Project I am doing my analysis on is Gone in 60 Seconds. Which was produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. The connotation presented in this movie is meant to be a high tense, fast paced, action thriller that had to do with boosting (stealing), fast and or luxurious automobiles. The intervention that has probably come out of it would have been the people who do not like the fact that it was portraying a group of criminals stealing cars and making it seem like it was the best thing to do. There could have also been an intervention that some parents would not allow there youthful children to see this film in order to not have them brainwashed into thinking that stealing cars was a glorious thing.
The denotation of this movie is trying to catch the viewer interest with exotic cars where the goal attainment comes in, in where this movie is to be taken in more by teenagers and young adults who have a fascination with the cars or just the story line around the colorful group of characters within the movie.
The ideology and cultural understanding all just come together with the basic tactics the movie provides. Anyone would want to see a movie starring Nicolas Cage or Angelina Jolie and bringing these class of actors in a movie that’s meant for a young captive audience’s would catch the cultural phenomenon surrounding the movie. The overall literacy of this film is presented with the storyline that you would do whatever it takes for the safety of family love.
Spread Joy Through the World
Free Hugs!!! What feelings do those two words create in you? Are you comforted? Do they make you smile? The video I chose to analyze is “Free Hugs Campaign” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4). The video is an inspirational story of Juan Man and the free hugs campaign he started. Since it begun the free hugs campaign has spread worldwide, giving inspiration to people world over. It was first posted September 22, 2006 and since then it has had an astonishing 28,953,051 views. To touch that many lives from a single video is truly heartwarming. So why is this video so powerful to so many people?
The producer of this video made it with the intention of inspiring people to reach out to others around them. The main image of the video, hugging people, tends to bring a sense of warmth to those who watch it. Hugging goes back to our childhood, a mother holding her baby to her breast, crying in someone’s arms. Hugs give a sense of comfort and protection. Not every person is into so called “mushy” situations. Still others don’t like to be touched physically. However, this video has become widespread and has influenced millions of people throughout the world.
The popularity of this video is due to the producer’s ability send the message of inspiration in a way people are interested in seeing it. The opening shows us a world that feels playful, funny, and heartfelt. Then we find out that the free hugs campaign was banned and worry is generated. Banning free hugs could be comparable to banning happiness. Then the petition to bring it back begins. People of all ages and cultures begin to sign and as the signatures mount he feel hope that turns into overwhelming joy when the free hugs campaign reaches it’s goal. Happiness, protection, warmth these are parts of humanity and cannot be banned.
Our society can often exclude people and the warmth of those around us. The producer of this video understood that we isolate ourselves and he wanted to share with us the darkness of that isolation. He wanted to make us understand on a basic level that reaching out to people can cause surprises, and happiness not just for those you reach out to, but for you as well. He told the story using images every human can connect with and told it in a way that took us on the journey with him. The results have been phenomenal. Let us all work hard in the hope that someday we can reach out to people as strongly as “The Free Hugs Campaign” has.
Lindsey Ahrendt
Ms. Lichtenstern
DF1101: Digital Filmmaking
Critical Analysis HW Week Two
July 31, 2008
Homework Week Two
Recently, I sat down to watch a rerun of South Park, a cartoon aimed at the adult genre. It’s a thirty minute program that airs on the Comedy Central network was created by two comedic geniuses Matt Stone and Trey Parker. The first time I watched South Park many years ago, I enjoyed its humor but rarely divulged in its political satire. Now, I view it as its centerpiece of entertainment.
The most recent episode I watched was titled “Britney’s New Look”. The premise starts as the young boys of South Park are on a mission to get a picture of pop star Britney Spears and sell the pictures for money. At first site, the viewer may think that the episode was written to poke fun at pop star Britney Spears and the craziness that surrounds her. Throughout each scene, she becomes more mentally unstable and tries to escape the media. As the episode progresses they begin to show a startling reflection of the negativity aimed toward the President of the United States, George W. Bush and the pressure he is under.
The creators of South Park are careful not pick sides. They show an equal balance of pop culture humor and twist it with political conversation. By the end of each episode, there is a moral to the story. In “Britney’s New Look”, it was that no matter how favorable or unfavorable a person may be to the public, they are still only human and deserve to be treated with dignity.
I believe they did a great job at getting that message across. I understood by the end of that episode that we as a culture are engrossed in the media and what it wishes to tell us. This episode, tried to get us to understand what we have been learning in this class, which is to view each segment or episode as the viewer and producer. The creators of South Park did this beautifully, all while playing both roles.
Manuel Velazquez
7-31-2008
HW Week Two
For my analysis I chose the film “There will be blood”. It is a story about a man named Daniel Plainview; an ambitious oilman looking to extend his oil business to California. Here he comes across Eli Sunday, a young preacher who is very passionate of what he does. It is set in the early 1900s and is more likely to appeal to an older audience. The film does a great job of establishing the characters and getting its points across: oil is a problem and greed is bad.
The connotation, or what kept me watching, was that it was set in the very early 1900s. To me this kept it interesting and gave the film a dark, but historical feeling. Then there is what audiences would pull out of the movie by using the intervention process. You see these two characters, both fueled by greed, crash. Daniel is worse off because he also doesn’t want others to succeed. This causes him to lose so much more in the end.
The denotation, or goal of the film, was what was explained earlier. But it felt to me it had another goal. By setting it in the early part of the century it made me curious about the oil industry and how it worked back then. I didn’t even know how an oil drill worked, but the film has many parts that focus on that. So after watching it I looked it up. So maybe another goal was to give the audience some historical education, I know that’s what it did for me. The cultural understanding of this movie is simple; oil plays a part in our lives everyday. Especially now with so much fuss about the oil industry it was clever of the makers of this film to create a story involving an issue that exists today, only they set it in the past. The literacy of this film is that nothing good can come from greed, and that oil caused problems then and probably always will.
Even though I rarely watch television anymore, the one show I still love to watch is NBC’s The Office. When I first saw an episode and was introduced to Steve Carell’s character, Michael Scott, (who is the manager of Dunder Mifflin Paper Co.) my first reaction was that this guy is just ridiculous. I was wondering how this guy could have ever been made a manager, when he seems to lack the capacity to do anything right.
The more I watched The Office the more it got me thinking. Just about everyone can relate to having a boss like Michael Scott, where you sit there wondering how he got this job and how just about anyone else would be more productive as a manager. That’s what I like about the show is that they take every role in an ordinary office and exaggerate that character so the viewers can relate to working with or even being that character.
I think the producer of the show had an understanding that this would be a show that everyone could relate to in some way or form. The show has a lot of cultural awareness, with a lot of the topics that they deal with in the show. Like, the episode Survivor Man, where Michael tries to go into the woods with just duct tape and a knife to survive, which is the basis for a couple of reality shows that are popular.
So, I think everyone when first watching The Office is taken a back a bit by how outrageous Michael Scott is but once you watch for awhile you get that it is just an exaggeration of the general idea of a boss. This is why the show is so popular because everyone has had or has a boss. The show deals with things everyone deals with therefore giving them something to relate with. And lastly the show is just great comedy and entertainment.
DeJuan Henderson
Ms. Lichtenstern
DF1101: Digital Filmmaking
Critical Analysis HW Week Two
July 31, 2008
Homework week 2
Over the week, I got the chance to view Hancock, another summer blockbuster for 2008. Now when I first seen the trailer for this movie I thought to myself “Hmmm seeing Will Smith in a role as a super hero with problems, I don’t know” but I had to give it a chance especially since I wasn’t forking over the cash to see it, Thanks friend! Back to the story, it is a tale of a man with super human strength that has lost his way. Although he is the savior of the city, his depression while doing so causes him to leave destruction and chaos in his path.
Although he is a man with super human abilities, he is still a human with flaws and feelings. Throughout the movie, Hancock indulges himself with the constant consumption of alcohol to drown out the thoughts of being the only one of his kind, not able to remember his past, and the city fed up with his not so heroic attitude.
The ideology of this story I believe is, no matter how strong you are, how great you think you are, how many good deeds you perform, everyone has a weakness and sooner or later that weakness will be revealed and may come to do you harm. The key is to make changes in your life to correct the wrong- doings and except who you are so others may see and except you as well.
“With every great power, comes great responsibility” taken from Spiderman the movie and is pretty much the undertone for every super hero movie made. It is up to you to except that responsibility in order to have control of your life.
army of darkness is an old school style
comedy/horror flick that throws big unbelievable
plot turns all movie long. at fist glance.
its meant to be a family flick for another era and even
in that time period i think it got some good press and
of cource some bad as well. most people would
immediatley see bruce campell and think of the
movie as a big joke, were as others whom might
have not hurd or seen him in anything els might
not get the joke or just think of it in bad regaurd.
the cultural understanding of every body likes to
laugh is relativley universal, but some of the older
crouds might not think anything in this movie is
even funny, just a new kind of hummer for a
different age, mostly.
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