Think About the Themes

War films are quite common in American culture. The plot-lines are typically from the view of Americans who would be fighting for or to protect their freedom. The films show the military as protectors of American freedom, since it was the US army that won America's freedom from England during the revolutionary war, and it is willed that the US army be always shown as liberators. The war films that are created with the purpose of justifying violence when their 'freedom' is threatened. The films will also desensitize the American audience to the idea of armed conflict. When the U.S. military invades a country, the American people, for the most part, would not see the invasion as an act of terror, but an act that is necessary for protecting their freedom. And with the help of these war films, they will begin to not question their leaders, but trust them that they're striving to benefit the people.

Value and Idealogical Control

This is the trailer for the movie: Public Enemies.

This is the story of the last few years of the notorious bank robber John Dillinger. He loved what he did and could imagine little else that would make him happier. Living openly in 1930s Chicago, he had the run of the city with little fear of reprisals from the authorities. It's there that he meets Billie Frechette with whom he falls deeply in love. In parallel we meet Melvin Purvis, the FBI agent who would eventually track Dillinger down. The FBI was is in its early days and Director J. Edgar Hoover was keen to promote the clean cut image that so dominated the organization through his lifetime. Purvis realizes that if he is going to get Dillinger, he will have to use street tactics and imports appropriate men with police training. Dillinger is eventually betrayed by an acquaintance who tells the authorities just where to find him on a given night.

I agree with the film rating of 14A, because the violence shown is not very gory, the swear words are not too offensive, and the sexual activity is not explicit. 

Film Constructs Reality

A film that I had seen which presented reality very well was Paranormal Activity 2. I didn't know anything about the series or the movie, so when I saw the amatuerish quality of the film, I wondered if the film was real. But then I just decided to focus on the movie. What made it seem real was the handheld cameras, the crappy audio, no background music, all that. What made it seem unreal was the fact that every event was recorded. People don't just carry around cameras with them all the time. I realized that eventually..

Midterm Summative Blog

The film that I have chosen is the American film, "300" , directed by Zack Snyder. The film retells the Battle of Thermopylae, circa 480 B.C.E. from the perspective of  Leonidas I. The details of the battle were accurate for the most part. However, the inaccuracy is in the depiction of the Persians, which led to controversy, particularly in Iran(modern-day Persia). In 300, Persians are depicted as African, piercing-ridden, subhuman, masked, ruthless, and incompetent soldiers. King Xerxes I of Persia is depicted as a psychopathic, homosexual tyrant.

Persian Immortals depicted in 300
This is the reality of Persian SPEC-OPs soldiers that is presented in 300.
Persian Immortals as shown in Deadliest Warrior
The Immortals shown in Spike's Deadliest Warrior are far more historically accurate.
Historical depictions of Immortals
This picture was taken from Persepolis, Iran.

King Xerxes shown in 300
He wasn't black, bald, or gay.
Stone carving of King Xerxes I
That's what he looked like, but without the stone.

Based on the evidence above, the reality shown in 300 does not fit with reality.
The reasons as to why the Persians were shown in this light would be obvious to history scholars.

All film is a construction

The steps for making a film

- conceive the idea of the movie
-obtain rights to the source material (pay people to use their stories/books/whatever)
- hire a professional screenwriter
- a director, casting director, cinematographer, assistant producers, editor, musical director, and other professionals must be hired
- hold auditions for actors, negotiate with them, blah blah blah
- get a suitable location for filming, manipulate it to fit the needs of the movie (special effects, different atmosphere, etc)
- house and feed the actors for however long the filming takes
- film
- edit, add music, add sounds, spend hours and hours making the film watchable
- promote the movie to specific or general audiences with posters or trailers
- observe

Sound City

Led Zeppelin - Houses of the Holy
This song is freaking awesome. Listen to it. Stahp what you're doing and just listen to the whole thing.
Music ain't as good as it used to be because of the technology that's overused in modern day music. I would show an example of a modern song but I'm supposed to pick a song from either before or after 1995, not both. But holy crap this song is amazing. Do you hear autotune in this? Or badly tuned synthesizers? NoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOo, man, this is Led Zeppelin holy crap these guys were amazing. Sure auto-tune and modern musical technology is good and all, the problem is that the producers and artists use it too much. Their music is old as hell but listen to those vocals and guitar and bass and drums omg my ears are in heaven.

Media Ownership

Canadian Media Ownership Network Diagram

Parent companies
-Rogers Televisions
-Corus Entertainment
-TVA Publication
-Quebecor Media
-CBC Radio Canada
-CTV GlobeMedia
-Astral Radio Station
-Systeme Radio Canada
-CHUM Radio Network
-Kingston Whig Standard

Those are what I got. There are probably more. Some of them are related by smaller companies which two of them own. Yeah.

The Source

I don't regularly check the news, or stay up-to-date. However, the homepage of my internet browser at home is set as Yahoo. So I would catch bits of news on the homepage. Usually, I don't agree nor disagree with the contents of the news articles, usually because I only have time or interest to read the titles of the articles. I like how there would be five articles shown in a slideshow, with an accompanying graphic.
Yahoo is really owned by the buyers of its stocks. It doesn't really have a parent company.
Alfred J. Amoroso is the chairman of Yahoo.  He received both a B.S. in Systems Engineering and an M.S. in Operations Research from the Polytechnic University of Brooklyn, which is now called Polytechnic Institute of New York University.

Yahoo has some paid services to generate an income for them. They also make money from the advertisements seen on their sites. 
The content of Yahoo is impacted by its need to make money by posting content in their site from which a profit could be made.

Product Placement in wayne's World

Excerpt of Wayne's World

This excerpt is a good example of product placement, even though it's blatantly obvious. However, the obviousness of product placement does not always discourage the viewers from acting on the intended purpose of the advertisement.

Wayne's world is a movie made in accordance to the interests of teenagers or young adults. So, the target audience of the movie will determine which companies would advertise in that movie. The companies or products advertised are: Pizza Hut; Doritos; Reebok; some other thing; and Pepsi. These aren't things in which an older generation would take interest. I think that product placement, obvious or not, is an effective form of advertising because I now want a Pepsi cola, and am willing to put a little more coin in the pockets of the corporate fascists who own Pepsi.

Tough Guise

An example of media which portrays enhanced and superficial masculinity is the video game, "Assassin's Creed III"

The main character in this game (and any game in this series) is always male, shown as almost invincible, and with many weapons. In this game, Connor is part Mohawk and British. He had had his village raided and almost destroyed by Templars, during which his mother burned to death. He set out on a course of revenge against the Templars. In the game, Connor is either calm, or angry. His fits of rage are usually followed by a brutal and epic assassination. This is a perfect example of the portrayal of masculinity in the media, discussed in "Tough Guise". I myself often imagine jumping off of a tree and smashing a Tomahawk into the skull of a person I detest. This is clearly a result of exposure to violence in media caused by male characters. Violence has always been a part of not only mine, but almost all male, urban teenagers. Media such as this game only fuel this lust for violence. Yeah.

10 Minutes

In this video, two different scenarios are present. One of which takes place in Rome, Italy; the other somewhere in Bosnia or Serbia or somewhere during 1994. During the former, the audience perceives a foreigner getting his photos developed, which would take ten minutes. During the latter, it shows the life of a boy who lives with his family somewhere close to the front-line. In the ten minutes it took for the man's photographs to be developed, the enemy forces began shelling the area. The boy's family dies. The scene shifts back to Rome, where the foreigner the audience first saw receives his developed photographs.

The meaning of this is that in such a short span of time, a lot of different things occur at once. Ten minutes may be convenient for one person, but tragic for another. 

I suppose that the lesson learned from this could be that one should think about more than just oneself, and think of how life would be if one were in a different place. Or to think about how we should be grateful for what we have. Yeah, something like that.

As I'm typing this, there could be an entire village starving somewhere, or a man having his first drink, or a car crash unfurling. Something like that. I guess this theme could teach me to be more aware of the world. I guess. Here in the developed world, we take a lot of things for granted. For instance, literacy, and furthermore, education, with which I'm able to record and preserve my thoughts in cyberspace. There are many people who would love to have this skill, but it's beyond their reach. And yet, there are individuals who groan and complain about the obligation to go to school. 

That's just an example but yeah, I think that the producer of this video was trying to send the message that we should not take what we have for granted. 

Photoshop use

First comparison
 Advertised foot-long submarine sandwich from Subway
  Actual submarine sandwich from Subway, which isn't even 12-inches

These images are both of the same type of sandwich (Turkey breast), however, the former is the image advertised by Subway, and the latter the image taken by a customer. The color, shape, and most importantly, size of the two subs are different.
I work at Subway myself, so I'm not surprised to see that the size of the bottom sub is at variance with the advertised sub, since the length and width of the sandwiches are not always constant. If I were a customer, I wouldn't really care, nor would I make such a big deal about it like the pansy who took the bottom photo did.

Second Comparison


Hot Wheels commercial
This commercial shows Hot Wheels cars zipping around the track like holy crap. As a child, I found this commercials quite alluring. When I got a set of tracks and cars, I was eager to test them out. To my dismay, I found that the cars do not go nearly as fast as they do in the commercial.
Hot Wheels product test
Yeah I, like this child, found that the cars often get stuck. That made me sad.
As a kid, I found this to be very disappointing...

Media Literacy

Media literacy is a repertoire of competences that enable people to analyze, evaluate, and create messages in a wide variety of media modes, genres, and forms.

Being literate in media means being able to understand why media are presented in the various ways they are, how the audience affects the genre, format, and design of media. It also gives one the ability to create one's one media to target a specific group or generation. 

For example, our searches on Google provide the same company with ideas as to what types of advertisements that they would present to us. Be it on Facebook, YouTube, Hotmail, etc.