A new found awareness of the media

The media has been around for a very long time, and the media affects the lives of many people. The eyes of many people are glued to the media, and there are many job opportunites for people who want to be apart of the media. The media showcases itself through many outlets like advertisements, tv shows, movies, etc. The media tries to tell a message through all of these outlets and many of these messages that these outlets tell affect the lives of many people. In this blog post I will be talking about how because of my new awareness of the media and media industries, my relationship with the media and media industries has grown stonger. For example the media has made me a more confident person, my relationship with the media has greatly lowered my attention span, and my new found relationship with the media and media industries has distorted my view of reality.

I love to make references or jokes for no reason and of course the media is the source of it all. I cannot for the life of me go on for one day with out me making refernces to internet videoes like this:

My main point is that my relationship with the media has made me in to a much more confindent person. Back when I was a child one of my biggest weaknesses(and boy were there many) was that my speaking skills were incredibly lacking. I would hardly talk in any of my classes and I would get a lot of Ds on my report card when it came to oral and communication, I would rarely speak to other students, I would hardly ever answer questions in class, and when I would present in front of the class, I would sound really bland and boring. When I started to get more exposed to the media and started to watch videos like this one for example:



I started to become more opinionated. I started to realize that I should not just like a song, movie, picture etc because other people enjoy them, I should like a movie, song, picture, TV show etc that I myself happen to enjoy. Because of this I have managed to gain more true friends. Without my relationship with the media I would not be the same person I am today. Through these past months, my relationship with the media has grown even stronger because I am fascinated by the way the media has persuades people in to something as menial as buying a new toy, food, going to see a movie etc. It's like the media has changed me as a person throughout my life and thanks to my found relationship with the media I underdstand why. I seem to have learned a lot from my relationship with the media ie., talking more frequently, asking more questions, not being afraid of getting something I want and cracking bad jokes.

As much as my relationship with the media has given me positive affects. There will always be negative to balance out the positive. My relationship with the media has caused me to have a much shorter attention span. Whenever I plan a perfect work schedule, 99.9% of the time that work schedule always gets ruined because of my obession over the media. Here is an example of how my obession with the media lowers my attention span; I plan on working one subject for two hours, another subject for one hour, and another subject for three hours, but instead I get distracted non-stop because I try to listen to my favorite songs or video at the same time in the backround while doing my work. My schedule goes from perfect to completely disjointed and then I get the inveitable sleep at 1:00am or 2:00am. Whenever I do work on the computer, I always type while listening to my favorite video or listening to my favorite song in the backround while I am doing my work to boost my concentration, but in the end,  I always end up losing my concentration, and start to open up the window or tab that has the video or song and afterwards I go on a complete tangent for two or three hours and then I go back to work. I often try to do my school work while listening to videos like these in the backround:



Or songs like these:



I have given you enough examples of what music I listen to, and what videos I watch to show you what I play in the backround while doing my work. If you have watched what I have shown you. You might be asking yourself how can a person gain extra concentration while listening to these videos or music in the backround and doing homework at the sametime? The answer is that this is what my relationship to the media has grown into. I can not even do work for five minutes without my mind wanting to hear my favorite media piece. When I am planning to do some studying, I always want to watch some videos first and then do it half an hour later, but instead it takes me two hours later to get started on my work. I do not what will happen to me, if I lose any form of contact with the media. I would probably go through with withdrawal. The more media I watch everyday the lower my concentration goes down.

The last reason on how my relationship with the media has grown stronger is because I have been so obessed with the media to the point where I will sometimes think I'm in some kind of T.V show. Whenever someone tries to bother me, I always make an attempt to a witty remark in order to make myself feel cool inside or try to make myself feel like the "cool" protagonist. Sometimes in order to calm my stress down whenever I do bad on a test, I always think of me doing the next test as the sequel that improves upon the awkward predecessor. I always think of any second chance I get to improve my mark as the sequel that will improve upon the predecessor. Whenever I do my work, I always view the teachers as reviewers and I view myself as the producer. As a producer I hope the products I make get a good review or else I will feel really bad for myself and I also get no money out of my products. I will also try to recite quotes that I consider wise or funny from my favorite media pieces in order to calm down my stress. Whenever I am in a tough situation 90% of the time, I will always think of the media I watch to calm myself down. My relationship with the media has kind made me lose parts of my reality, but at the same time my relationship with the media is a great stress reliver. Whenever I happen to listen to a song I really like that I happened to have found on a movie, game or video. I will always think of that game, movie or video where I found that song from. Whenever I listen to that song while walking and thinking about that media product where I found that song from, I get this sudden burst of energy. A recent example would be this video:

                 

Now, when I ever listen to "Here" by Vast I will always think of that video. It's like I can never get this video out of my head. If I ever listen to song while I'm walking and I'm thinking about this video at the sametime. I will probably get an awkward burst of energy. My distortion of reality causes me to have constant day dreams. When I'm outside that is never a good thing.  

In conclusion, my relationship with the media has strengthed my personality, lowered my attention span, and distorted my view of ficton and non-fiction. If my relationship with the media grows any stronger I say that the positive and affects and the negative affects will increase ten fold. Despite the shorter attention span, I will figure out a way to cancel out the negative affects the media has given me. Throughout my life so far my relatioship with the media has grown stronger, and as my relationship with the media grows stronger, I grow stronger as a person and my relatioship helps me understand life better.  My awareness of new awareness of the media made me realize that I do many strange things.

3-D, is it really nesscary?

3-D has been very popular lately, and advertisers are making it look like if 3-D is the best way to watch movies, watch T.V, play video games, viewing pictures etc. 3-D has been around for a very long time now, and the movies off the top of my head are Jaws 3-D, Spy Kids 3, and The adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl. The main reason why 3-D was not popular at that point was because at the time 3-D clearly looked like a tacked on advertising gimick to make studios get more money by advertising something new and revolutionary.

Until the release of James Cameron's Avatar, 3-D became a huge phenomenom, and in fact the most hyped of things about Avatar was the 3-D effects. The most note worthy thing about Avatar were the visual effects that the film had. Due to Avatar being the big hit in the box office that it was, many film studios have tried to make as much money Avatar did. Advertisers make 3-D look like if it actully enhances the movie watching experience but in reality it makes the experience worse by wearing very annoying glasses and have images that look like this if you take the glasses off:

Worst part is that 3-D does not help benefit society because prolonged exposure can lead to many health issues and the 3-D movie tickets are quite high. These two reasons can drive many audiences away from seeing any 3-D movie in theatres. After all, why would anyone want to pay extra money to see a movie that requires you to wear annoying glasses? There are even some movies with no 2-D showings at all, and that can also drive people away from a seeing a movie that they want to see. Harry Potter gets away with this because many people are fans of Harry Potter, and they would not mind shelling out extra money for a movie that has a cheap advertising gimmick as 3-D. Other movies that do not have as much fame as Harry Potter might not make as much money as they could have if they stuck with 2-D or make 3-D just as option.

Rear Window and its camera work

It has been a long time since I have watched a movie that managed to intigue me as well as this one did. I really had no expectations going in to this movie and I was pleastantly surprised by this movie a lot. For a movie that came out in the 50s it is still really impressive to this day because it is mainly shot in one area. I'm mainly going to be talking about the camera work in this film. The acting and plot is very well done, but what stands out the most to me is the camera work. The camera work in this movie feels very unique. I have not seen a movie that had this much noticable amount of panning.

The scene where Lisa Freemont is in Mr.Therowalt's apartment room is an example of how Alfred Hitchcock cleverly used a medium shot to have the audience know what is going on. By having the audience know what opposition the protagionst may encounter it adds to the suspense because the audience desperately wants to know what happens next. The way Hitchcock used the medium shot in that scene is very well done.

Another example are the scenes where the protagionst is syping on the antagionst. Something really noticable about those scenes is that there is never a close up or we can never hear what the antagonist is saying that can greatly add to the mysterious atmosphere Hitchcock was going her because it leaves the audience wanting more. The lack of explicit information can immerse the audience in to a scene.

The use of transitions were kept to a minium and were hardly used throughout the film. Without the constant changes with the tranistions it can help the audience be more attached to the location that the movie is set in because they get to see how buldings, landscape and people are in this movie multiple times.

False advertisment on Youtube

Have you ever been Rick Rolled? If you don't know what that it is, it is when you click on a video, and the next thing you know the music video of Rick Ashtley's, "never gonna give you up" shows up, and the video uploader used a false title in order to get views.

There actually are people that do something silmilar to this and the worst part is, they make money off of doing this. There are people that litterally use false titles and thumbnails to get views, and they trick millions of people to watch their videos. Sometimes these very same people profit out of tricking people into thinking that they have footage of the lastest natural disaster but they don't. Instead it is just the video uploader talking about the natural disaster.

I find this to be very sad and pathetic at the sametime. There are people struggling to get jobs, and here are these guys are making thousands, if not million of dollars lying to thousands of people. The worst part these guys actually have fans. I click on some of these guys' youtube channel, and notice that they literally millions of subscribers. I really don't understand why people would find these guys entertaining.

Altough, this tactic has been noticeably toned down, and now the top tier Youtube partners do not use false thumbnails anymore. Why is it that those top tier partners do not remove the videos that have the false titles on them? Those videos are still making money, and I doubt many of these partners would remove the ad revenue that these videos make.

This video is a prime example of what I'm talking about:

The video title is spelt in huge capital letters, there's ads enabled on them, the title misleads the user in to thinking that the video has the content that the video title is claiming to have. You know for example, if video is about Justin Bieber slapping a girl then it should have a video of Justin Bieber slapping a girl, not some guy talking about it. Advertising tactics like that mislead many people to watch the uploader's video.

This tactic is not as overused as it used to be, but the real kicker is that these videos still exsit. This may teach many people in society to use false advertisment, and that does not mean only on Youtube, but in other ways because look at these youtube partners. They used make millions of dollars using false advertisment. Tricking the system may have worked in the past, but that doesn't mean that false advertisment can not be used in other places. There is no need to make quality or work hard to get what you want just find a way to cheat your way ouy. This is the message that society may get from this.

Sexy and I don't get it

I know you may have heard of this musical artist known as LMFAO by now, and if you did not then consider yourself extremely lucky.

LMFAO is one of those artists that I do not get why they have the popularity that they do. They make catchy techno beats but yet Daft Punk and The Prodigy make really catchy techno beats but they are no where near as popular. Maybe because the music industry does not overly promote Daft Punk and The Prodigy but that's besides my point.

This blog post will mainly be talking about their most popular song "Sexy and I know it." My god this song is just awkward, and the music video does not show too much sexism against women, altough there is some, but this song mainly shows sexism towards males because almost every 20 seconds there is some guy stripping down to their underwear, in fact that's the first thing that happens in the begining of the music video. One guy starts to move his penis up and down. I said before that there is some sexism towards women in this music video, there are some women who are wearing partially revealing clothing.
Just to drive home my point that this song and music video has sexism in it. The main singer kept on saying, "Just look at that body." Obviously implies that there is sexism in this song. There is a lot of erotic dances that are being showen in the music video while the parts whe the singer says, "Just look at my body." The lyrics make no sense but at the sametime the name of this musical artist is named LMFAO that implies that they are not trying to make serious thought-provoking music. There is a limit to how much you can do to make a good party song. A party song does not need lots of sexism to be fun to dance to, it just does not. Sexism does not need to be a common cliche for songs like this.

I get what this song tries to do in a sense that it tries to make you act the way you are, but this song shows this message in a wrong way. This song pretty much encourages teenagers to act like a bunch of stubborn individuals that don't care about what anyone says.

I say it encourages teenagers is because that's exactly who this song appeals to. From the constant sexual exploits with the lyrics of the song and the amount of sexual content in the music video with guys moving their penises up and down, this song and video tells teens it is okay to ignore everyone and act like a wild party animal.

Here is the song that is just plain werid:

Spike VGAs this year was bad...how surprising

I was in the mood to watch something awful and to an extent, I got what I wanted. Spike video game awards 2011 was just as bad or if not worse then I intially expected it to be. Many people especially the media look down on video games as an art form. Of course me being the gamer that I am, I strongly disagree with people who say video games are not an artform. With games like Shadow of the Colossus, Metal Gear Solid series, Assassin's Creed series, Deus Ex, Bioshock, Uncharted, Silent Hill and many more prove the point that video games can be taken seriously as an artform. But with all these games proving video game haters wrong...there's shows like this that give non-gamers an excuse to take gaming as a joke. My point is that this show is a joke, even gamers don't take this sorry excuse for a game award show seriously.

This "video game award show" is just a horrible comedy show with video games being referenced. Most gamers if not all don't even take the show's "credibilty" seriously especially when the awards Spike gives  look like this:



This is a video game award show and you model your awards after monkeys?! I really can't find words to describe how laughable these awards look. This is supposed to be gaming's version of the Oscar and you have awards looking like that?

Like I said before, the Spike VGAs is just a bad comedy show with video games being referenced. This show is about celebrities that pretend to like video games. I mean c'on everytime the celebrities are on screen they constantly remind the audience that they love video games. This is a video game award show! If you didn't like video games you wouldn't even be on this show. This show went on for 15 straight minutes and there were not any awards being given out. It was just bad joke after bad joke. This show completely misrepresents gaming and gamers.

Alright, the didgital reality technology looks cool but they get old really fast. You're not going to believe me when I tell you this, but there was a grown man tea bagging other grown men on this show. I'm not even kidding. When I think of video game award shows I think of this:



I wonder who comes up with this kind of stuff? Believe me when I tell you this, most gamers don't behave like this. As a gamer I felt offended watching that. Yeah sure, I know this show was going to be awful, but I would not picture the VGAs going this low for humor. You know when I think of video game award shows, I think of a grown man teabagging other grown men, Kevin Jonas lying aganist a wall, and there was random cow. Yes I'm being serious there was a random cow on this show. Why was it there? To be honest lets ask the excutives at Spike, and I bet you they even know their show is horrible.

I have been ranting non-stop about how bad this show is, and now you must wondering why did I watch this show? Other then the fact I wanted to watch this show just to complain about it. It was because of the world premire trailers. This is an advertising technique used by Spike VGAs where it would have a show off an announcement of a new game coming out in the near future. That is an advertising technique used to appeal to many gamers like myself and that advertising technique works brilliantly because I want to see a new teaser or trailer of a new game coming out.This is why I and many other gamers watch this show, and to an extent hope that this show would finally improve, and be the award show that gamers would be proud of. But sadly, no, it is far from the show gamers wanted. The world premire trailers is the only reason why I watch this show every year. Why can't I wait an hour after the show to watch the premire on the internet? Well, that's because watching the trailer live the first time feels really exciting, even tough I have to sit through almost two hours of garbage just to be excited here and there. This is not even close to being video game's version of the oscars.

The New Youtube Homepage...ugh

Why is that when Youtube redsigns their homepage it just keeps on getting worse and worse? No one, and I mean abosolutely no one like these changes that Youtube seem to be making on their homepage. Everytime Youtube changes the homepage 99.9% of the time someone in the comments will say that the homepage is horrible and wishes the old Youtube would come back. Yup, even the community hates Youtube's redesigns.

Youtube has done this many times in the past. In 2009, they remade the channels, in 2010 they remade the layout whenever you would click on a video, and that started the dislike button joke, and boy did those jokes get extremely old, I think in that very same year they remade the Yotube hompage, and now, in 2011 Youtube has remade their homepage again, and this time for the worst.

Whenever your subscriptions uploads a new videos, the user won't be able to see all of them. The only way to see all the videos is if you go on your subscription's channel. You are unable to see any comments that you have received by when you first log into your home.

The only people that this homepage redesign benefits are the advetisers because some ads can not be closed at all. Almost everytime I log into my youtube account, there is always a new advertisement and that advertisement banner takes up atleast a quarter of the homepage. Advertising is what keeps Youtube a float because well it keeps google a float and so obviously Youtube would make a homepage that would benefit the advertisers. It's just apart of their busniess. No matter how many people dislike it.

The new Youtube homepage looks like this:



Here is someone that can explain how Youtube's redesigned homepage very well and is more in depth with it than  I am: