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:

Looks vs Talent in music

What happened to mainstream music? Mainstream music has been going down hill for a while now. With aritists like Nicki Minaj, Kesha, Lil Wayne, Katy Perry, Drake, Justin Bieber etc on the scene, they are just extra nails added to the coffin. These artist artists use autotune, have lyrics in their songs that flat out make no sense, have sexism in their songs and music videos, and whenever they try to look like positve to young audiences, it just comes off as awkward and laughable because you look at what these artists have done in the past, you just can't buy for a second that they are giving a positive message. Lil Wayne, Katy Perry, Kesha, Drake, Rhianna, Bruno Mars, Justin Bieber, Wiz Khalfia, Taylor Swift etc, are primary examples of the how the music industry favors looks over talent. They are not there to make quality and thoughtful music, they are just there as a way for the music industry to profit from the people who into the lastest media fad.

Look at Miley Cyrus, The Jonas Brothers, Avril Lavigne and 50 Cent. Nobody seem to talk about them anymore. You want to know why hardly anyone ever talks about them anymore? It is because the mainstream music industry no longer have a use for them. They have either done something so wrong to the point their image to the general public has been damaged, or there is someone else that mystiously overshadowed their popularity. Society plays a huge role to the popularity of musical artists like Katty Perry, Lil Wayne, Kesha, Drake, Rhianna etc. Altough that can be said for trying to be popular in general. The difference is that the aritists that I mentioned are just pop cultures fads, and like all pop culture fads the time for their popularity will be up. Unfortunately since the artists I just mentioned are pop culture fads that means that those artists will be very popular, and their music are the type of music where teens are forced to enjoy because it is the new "cool" thing.

Look at artists like Johnny Cash, The Beatles, Michael Jackson, ACDC, Bethoven, and to an extent John Williams and Hans Zimmer all managed to gain a popularity through actually making quality music instead of people being choosen by the music industry because of their looks. Many of the people I just mentioned are pretty much legends. Many people know them and their popularity lasts even to this day.
My point is that at the end of the day, people who make quality music are more remembered than the people who rely on their looks because looks can only take people so far.

The Role Models of today

Little kids idolizing people who they should not be idolizing is really sickening and awkward at the same time. Little kids and kids in general idolizing people like Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Lil Wayne, Kesha, etc, is a sign that humanity seems to go down lower and lower. Many people found that little girl, Sophia Grace, singing the song "Super Bass" to be cute, but to me, I find this to be really disgusting. This is a a little girl singing a song about sex and "The Club." A song like that is a song that little girls should not be singing. Sophia Grace's parents seem to be encouraging her daughter. Sophia's parents are acting like if idolizing Nicki Minaj and singing a song like "Super Bass" is a something to be proud of. I can't help, but die inside while watching a little girl singing a song like Super Bass.  It took me a while for me to recover but I finally did it.

Hopefully, there will be better people for kids to look up to in modern society. All I can do now is hope.

Is society going down so low to the point, where little kids are looking up to people like Nicki Minaj, and parents are suddenly okay with it? Since Sophia idolizes Nicki Minaj that much, I wonder how she will end up in the future? I hope she will turn out to be a good person in life, and not try to recreate Nicki Minaj's image. Are these the people parents should have their kids look up to? If that is the case then society might continue to go down further.

Here's the video of Nicki Ninaj on Ellen:

Why this new Copyright Bill is pointless

If you have not heard by now there is a new copyright bill in the U.S that goes by many names like E-parasite, SOPA, and The Protect IP Act. What this might be become law is that if anyone ever uploads a video with copyrighted material it is considered a federal crime, and the website that video happened to be uploaded on will be taken down. If anyone ever uploads a video with copyrighted material on websites like Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter, well you can say good-bye to them.



This bill is not only pointless, but it is also nothing more then the government's, the media's, and big corporations' attempt at trying to regain the power that they once had. The main reason why this law has as many supporters as it does is because it only benefits the media and corporate entities because we can see different people on the internet use copyright information under fair use, and a lot of people finds those people who use copyrighted material to be a lot more informative because the media or the advertisers are not paying them money to hide certain information from the public.

What about reviews of certain types of mediums? Money is something that many people in society do not want to waste. As a result many people look up videos of what other people thought of what they are going to buy. Reading is not very popular in the general public, so they watch videos instead. What if someone uses video footage of what he/she is reviewing to help illustrate a point and uses the copyrighted footage under fair use? There is nothing wrong with that because after all, that person is not claiming that the footage he/she is using is there's.
Why do we need to watch T.V now, if we have a bunch of average Joes trying to entertain mass audiences? There are many people who find these average Joes more entertaning than anything on T.V. If there is something wrong with media, the people can now expose them for the lies that they might be telling. Using footage from their news reports can help people who don't understand, understand better, and they always tell where they get their sources from to avoid copyright infringement. The internet can help many people be famous, not only do internet entertainers telling their audience where they got their copyright footage from is fair enough, but it also gives the creators free advertisment in the process. I hope that this bill never sees the light of day. In fact there are many people who are also trying to make sure that the new copyright bill never sees the light of day.

Here is a man who can explain how unnesscary this bill is better than I can:

A really clever trailer parody

Here is a really funny trailer parody of the Assassin's Creed Revelations E3 (Electronic Entertainment expo) 2011 trailer made by the Youtube user of Tobuscus. At first, I thought this was a lame video made by a popular guy on Youtube that tries way too hard to be funny, but I gave this video a second chance and it was funny and clever. Some of the funny parts include the part where Tobuscus was making fun of editing techniques like the fade in, the white screen, and slow motion. Tobouscus made fun of the use of the camera pan in the trailer. The song had some really clever lyrics and Tobuscus kept on singing things that I never really expected him to sing. The parts in the lyrics where Tobouscus made fun of the production techniques used in this trailer went surprinsginly well with the flow of the song. I never really expected him to make clever jokes about editing techniques in a song like "Iron" by Woodkid. All I can say is that this is a great parody to a great trailer. 

Probably the only gripe I have with this parody in the it called "literal" that to me implies that the video may be a live action version of the trailer but when I click on the video it a guy making a parody. One way how Tobuscus advertises his literal parodies is the way he uses the word "literal." That to me is somewhat false advertisment, but maybe the use of the word "literal" may also imply that the parody will contain a lot of forth wall jokes, and makes fun the way how the trailer is produced.


Literal Assassin's Creed Revelations trailer:

Original E3 2011 trailer:

                                      

A long and entertaining analaysis on the Star Wars Prequels and film making

The reviews of the Star Wars prequels made by an independent film studio named Red Letter Media are very interesting, funny, and informative all at the same time. In these reviews, a man named Mike Stoklasa plays a serial killer named Harry S. Plinkett, and in these reviews he explains how mediocre the Star Wars prequels are, and at the same putting having a sub plot about the people he is murdering in his basement.  

If you want an example on how to make a good movie and write a good cohesive story without going to film school then here it is. During theses reviews Plinkett explains how to make a character that the audience can understand, and he explains that certain plot elements should be explained to the audience in order for them to understand. He even talks about things like overuse of special effects, how the audience can feel tension when watching a scene in a movie, the difference between paying homage and straight up ripping off other movies, racial diversity in Star Wars, how the Star Wars Prequels aren't kid friendly like how George Lucas wants people to believe, and how George Lucas is a shallow and emotionless business man. These reviews can really help aspiring film makers learn how to make a good movie for the masses to see, and it can help other people view movies in a different way.

There are a lot of jokes in these reviews as well. His most famous joke was the pizza roll joke. I said that very same joke about pizza rolls one time in my English class when I was in grade 10, and mostly everyone kept on saying that joke and wouldn't be quiet about it. Another one of his famous jokes included a scene where he saw an alien in the Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace review and said, "What is wrong with your face?"

These reviews are very long, but Mike Stoklasa does a fantastic job at keeping a steady pace, so that way his viewers never get bored. First, he'll get into a step by step analysis on what is wrong with the Star Wars Prequels, then he'll break it up with some comedy, and he'll also try to combine the step by step analysis with comedy. The way Mike handles his videos totally justifies the length of these videos.


                                                            Episode 1 Review Part 1:

Star Wars Episode 2 Review Part 1: