Week 13: Thinking Critically about the Web

The internet has greatly affected the way that media is consumed globally. Within the past decade, media consumption has become non-stop. The internet now connects all of humanity on phones, music streaming, and even TV’s so there is literally no escaping the grasp of online media. Besides the fact that media is now always present in an individual’s life it also has created a larger sense of community that has never before existed within the history of mankind. People from all corners of the globe can connect because of a single idea, movie, or music group creating a new sense of wonder that could have never been done before. The internet as created a global community that absorbs different types of media and then the community reacts to it.

The reading also talked about the difficult balance between fans and the product owners. Logically fans cannot exist without the product and the product can not survive without fans, therefore creating a complicated cycle that quickly becomes a culture. When fans have a deep interest they create art, stories, mini-films, and a slue of other things; many product owners, however, try to stifle fans from doing so because it can cause copy write issues as well as creating an unwelcoming (explicit) environment for any new fans. So product owners legally restrict and hold the rights to their creations all while maintaining a fake “fan friendly” environment that seems to promote the creativity within fans. If product owners restrict their creations to heavily, the fan base will begin to leave due to most likely feeling unappreciated and not free to express their creative interest in the subject. This is the power cycle that fans and product owners, one cannot live without the other so therefore once the fans or the product owners back out the product ceases to exist.

Within the past four years, however, it has become almost impossible to stifle a fan base’s creative works. There are too many platforms and more importantly too many fans to watch and restrict from creating different works. The constant role of the internet has created an enormous fan environment that cannot be controlled by legal practices like fan bases were controlled during the previous decades.

The video game industry as I see it is built differently than most media industries. Video games rely on fan interaction to survive. This is extremely evident on how many different Youtube videos there are of individuals and channels playing video games just so other people can watch them play that game. By working directly with the fanbase of different video game franchise the product owners of video games have created an alternative form of advertising that they do not even have to initiate. Instead of video game owners trying to stifle fans who record their video game experience and release it, like many movie media companies do, they allow fan culture to drive future sales of their game and the industry.

Week 11: Lights, Camera, Action!

Today is the day! My group is finally filming our final project. We chose to film in my on-campus apartment, due to the fact that the living room is very spacious and can be manipulated with props and set dressing. I am satisfied with the progress we are making so far even though we hit one major bump along the way. That bump would be our scheduling conflicts. While all groups have trouble scheduling around everyone’s individual life, I feel as though we are having an even more difficult time being that a half of our group, myself included, was planning on returning home this weekend for Easter.

While we all made plans to film on Thursday night one of our group members would not be able to attend the filming, so to compensate she will receive more of the writing portion. Through good communication we were able to evenly distribute the workload while accommodating everyone in the group, resulting in a positive ending.

Currently, we have not had any issues in our group other than the whole scheduling hurdle.

Soon after we finish the filming we do plan to edit the video as soon as possible. This is extremely important because I personally as well as my whole group would like the project to be done with not only so that we can concentrate on the paper portion, but also so that we can concentrate on the final exams and projects of other classes.

Being that we had no major comments towards our storyboard form the instructor we plan to use it throughout the video without making major edits. However, we do completely realize that edits to the storyboard might have to be made to keep our video high quality and to also keep it within the designated time limit.

 

Week 10: The Creative Commons Search

As we all steam ahead with our final projects, I turned to Creative Commons to find some free and legal material to use towards our skit for the final project.

The first piece of media I found using Creative Commons was the video shown below of a person typing on their laptop. During our skit, we plan for our actors to search on the web for Carrer Services, the Focus 2 program, and to scroll and click through the program itself. While this video will be useful, there will be a continuity error while using it. I do not believe that any of us have the laptop that is being used within the video so that varying aspect will bother me in particular. So we will most likely shoot this part ourselves and add it in.

The second piece of media is this picture which I found on Flickr. This image can be used during the beginning of the video in an intro section if we choose to do that. Being that this video will be more of a skit and not a direct infomercial I am not entirely sure that this image will be used because in the end, I’m not 100% sure where it can go. If we do choose to use this image, however, I think that it works well with the theme of finding a career and a major can be easy while using Focus 2.

The third piece of media I found was off of Soundcloud. It is upbeat ukelele background music, that is really good because it is free. While I am sure that we would all prefer to have a song everyone knows playing in the background of a college dorm room, due to copyright laws this song will have to do. It is cheery and subtle to keep the audience engaged in the skit that is taking place.

~The Storyboard~ Part 2: After

The storyboard process as mainly how I predicted it to be, easy but hard at the same time. While my group works well together, we are all really busy individuals so it took some time for all of us to sit together and come up with the main storyboard. We also all do realize that while we have the main idea of what the storyboard should be, it is always open to being edited. By keeping this in mind, I think, it will allow us to have a little more flexibility during the filming process in case we run into any complications.

In the near future, I hope that we write down a complete script. While our storyboard has stage directions and words written on it, I think a literal script would be helpful. I might feel this way because I was a theatre kid and seem to prefer to read blocking, stage direction, actions, and dialogue in a script format. I do believe that my group can pull this off without adding on more work to the whole project.

Concerning the reading and the final project, there is one main point. The biggest point the article makes is that today the main form of self expresion and creativity, is to create a combination of works previously produced in the past. This can be encorporated into the final project by referenceing pop culture and humor from our past and “remixing” it so it has purpose in the project.