Detail the silhouette

I guess I should thank my Journalism professor for giving me all these ideas for my media blog. One of my top three news stories for the semester was the SOPA and PIPA bills. As I re-read my article last night to brush up on details, I began thinking more about what the bills were really trying to do. 

For anyone who remembers that class, you would know that I was very much not in support of the bills. Clearly, no one else really was either. However, as I was reading through the article last night, I realized there were some very important points that were made regarding the bills. 

This attempt to stop piracy may not have been the best attempt or the most thought out, but I’ll give them credit for trying. I know that it’s easy for us, especially as college students, to brush off piracy - I mean, we’re poor… that’s the excuse, right? Stealing a $.99 song here and there doesn’t really matter. But it does… and we don’t realize it. 

I’ve had the opportunity to become the sports photographer for Eastern Athletics this year. As much as I’ve enjoyed my time, I’ve also found it to be extremely frustrating. I spend hours a week standing at games taking photos for the teams. It feels like I’m practically on every sports team. Unfortunately, this cuts into much of my free time - I don’t remember the last time I had a free weekend with nothing to do or the chance to go home for relaxation. My Saturdays usually consist of non-stop photography from 10-4 or 5. For the amount of work I put in, it’s nice to get some cash in return. Although I get paid hourly, my photos are also supposed to be sold online, for which, I get commission. Unfortunately, those students who decided to take the “I’m a poor college approach,” take away my current income. I guess it’s easy to think it’s not a big deal when it doesn’t happen to you on a daily basis. What’s most entertaining is that students know it’s wrong and regardless of whether or not they know I’ll see their stolen pictures as their profile pictures on facebook (with the EU watermark), they continue to steal them from the website. The funny thing is, in some cases, I would be more than willing to get the actual file for the player and give it to them if they were willing to ask for it… but they don’t. 

So why does this matter to anyone else? I know, this isn’t meant to be a sob story… I’m learning to get over it because I can’t change it. But it’s changed my view on what the government was attempting to do with the SOPA and PIPA acts. There were definitely things I didn’t agree with, such as the fact that the lawmakers said “the legislation would enable Internet regulation and censorship on par with the government regulation in China and Iran,” (Copyrights and Internet Piracy, NYtimes). But what I don’t think people realize is that “$58 billion is love to the U.S. economy annually due to content theft, including more than 373,000 lost American jobs, $16 billion in lost employees’ earnings, plus $3 billion in badly needed federal, state, and local governments’ tax revenue,” (Copyrights and Internet Piracy, NYtimes).

So maybe before someone steals a song or a movie or even just a picture, they could think about how much that $.99 is effecting the whole industry… and especially the individual who too the time to produce it.

Again, in Journalism, questions, thoughts and discussions came up about things involving mass media. We were asked to bring in the top three news stories of the semester. One classmate brought in an article on the death of Steve Jobs. As I sat there thinking about it, I was almost taken back as I realized why the news story was important. 

Five years ago, my family had a hardcopy newspaper delivered to our door, our music came from CDs and we would rent DVDs from BlockBuster. We played internet games on our home computer and watched tv at specific times to see a certain show (ie. American Idol and One Tree Hill). Over the course of the past few years, our lives have drastically changed… all because of one man, Steve Jobs, and his Apple products. Prior to our first Mac computer, life almost seemed more difficult. It was a challenge to share computer time between the five of us and even more difficult as our PC began to crash. Our newspaper started getting more expensive so we stopped the service and started reading everything online. Instead of watching tv or rented movies, online Netflix and Hulu became our prime source of entertainment. When my dad first got his Iphone, I realized the power it held. Surfing the web at anywhere, anytime, brought a bran new world of opportunities. As my sister and I later purchased Iphones, the world of apps and accessibility ruled over all other media forms. Instead of needing multiple forms of media, the time to access it, or the opportunity to sit down and search with a computer, our whole media world was now in our hands- just one click away.

Some people might not understand the importance of Steve Jobs. I think the new media and technology has hit us so abruptly and hard that it’s sometimes hard to take notice to the changes that have occurred. Some people might even say that media really doesn’t have much of an effect on them… and as much as I’d like to say that, I know it’s not true, because the fact of the matter is, if I lost my MacBook or Iphone, I would be devastated because this media has become a part of my life. If one man can have that much of an effect on so many thousands or millions of people, who wouldn’t agree that he’s an important figure in American history? Yeah, I think he’s newsworthy. 

Social networking and advertising:

No one likes to talk about using wet toilet wipes. Although these are designed for grown people, many times, it’s a hidden habit. Understanding that this way of thinking is inhibiting their sales and production, Cottonelle is making a change to improve the society’s understanding of this practice. By promoting humorous commercials involving the wet toilet wipes, along with conversations on social networking sites like Facebook, Cottonelle is attempting to remove the embarrassment in replacement with normality. They’re attempting to do this by creating a Facebook page where users of the wet wipes can add their own name for their wipes. For example, names such as “the freshy fresh” and “the clean getaway” have been suggested. Whatever the user refers to the wipes as, is what they’re supposed to express via Facebook. This unique advertising technique, the company is hoping, will change the way users interact with the product. Reverting from the traditional ads, this interactive advertisement will engage viewers and consumers to creating a more accepting usage of the wet toilet wipes. 

I think this is a really unique and interesting way to do advertisement. Traditionally, advertising can be overwhelming, repetitive and almost intrusive. Because Cottonelle has decided to take this approach, I think they’ll see more results than an average advertisement will. On top of that, the company is spending less money creating an ad by allowing users to create their own advertising on the Facebook page. It’s interesting to me that advertisements can take so many different forms and different kinds of media. Staying on top of media, like the Cottonelle company is doing, could end up possibly being a lifesaver in the end by generating more sales and diverting attention from other brands.

“Documentary”… connotation: boring, school, nap time. 

Let’s be honest, for anyone who has taken any kind of school class has experienced the classic old school documentary class session. And although there are those fun and entertaining documentaries like the Pom Wonderful documentary we watched in class, the overarching theme continues to loom with the boredom and film reel feel. Because these school sessions have imbedded this thought in our minds, the interest of researching and further examining these documentaries is lacking. I don’t like to think much about what goes into a movie or program… I guess my mind just doesn’t work that way. However, this past year I had the opportunity to see the makings of a documentary… even if it was a small, just for fun kind of thing. 

I spent February to the beginning of April in Cusco, Peru, working in an orphanage called “El Arca.” Our team of 12 was led by the daughter of the owner of the orphanage. Although we got to hear the inside scoop because of our leader, Hannah, we all were curious for more information about the organization. This wasn’t just like any other orphanage. This was run by a family. With nine biological kids, the family moved to Peru after feeling called from Texas. As they began bringing in children, they felt like it was important to instill in these children true family aspects. Rather than running the house like an orphanage, Bud and Laura Lenz house over 50 children along with 4 of their 9 and operate their home like a family- and that’s not to just sound nice. It’s the honest truth.

Our group was a very tech-savvy, photography and video-oriented collection of people from all over the world. From the Netherlands to America, Peru to England, Canada to Sweden, our team members had a vast amount of abilities and creative ideas. With cameras in hand, we began creating a documentary on the family and the decisions they made to create their home.

When the book was discussing the makings of documentaries, I began connecting the teachings to my experience with our Peruvian movie. Although it wasn’t high tech or super professional, some of the same aspects still applied. We had to make choices about what to tape, who to interview, what questions to ask. We took shot after shot until the stories and personalities were as close to a direct representation of who the family was. With well over 30 hours of film, the team narrowed it down to a short ten-minute clip. Although this seems drastic in cuts, our goal was still to produce the most accurate portrayal of El Arca. 

It never occurred to me that it took that much effort to provide a glimpse of what life behind the documentary is like. I guess I never really thought about how easy it would be to morph and change the way a certain group can be. With hours of film and hundreds of cut options, any organization or group could be so easily misrepresented. So how do we know who to trust?

Speaking of controversial Burger King ads, this one has gone to the courts because of its content. Mary J. Blige agreed to do a commercial for the company, unknowingly supporting its potential racism. Specifically choosing to have a black woman stand up on the counter and sing about fried chicken has created an outrage within the multi-media world. Banned from television, this commercial was put away while Burger King made a public apology and an apology to Mary J. Blige. It’s interesting how sometimes even the “greatest ideas” can turn out to be either misinterpreted or just straight up wrong. This, in collection with the rest of Burger King’s ads makes me wonder what’s really going through their minds when they think “advertising.”

Talking about controversial ads, this Burger King commercial has been listed as number 8 on the top ten most controversial ads. I think there’s something really fascinating about advertising and the way it can draw consumers in to a restaurant or store, however, I’m not sure I understand Burger King’s thought process on this one. As a fast food restaurant, I’d imagine that many of the customers are young families. I could be wrong, but I don’t know the last time I was in a fast food restaurant without seeing a parent with small children. If that’s really the case, who is Burger King trying to reach out to here? Seriously. Even as a young adult, I find this to be appalling… so what about the mother with three young kids seeing this advertisement. It’s hard for me to want to support a chain that uses sexual references to get their products out, let alone want to eat it. It appears as though Burger King has had a few rough patches with their advertisements lately… maybe this is just another one of their mistakes. Personally, I don’t understand how anyone could ethically be okay with hanging this poster up for everyone to see. 

I’ve been thinking a lot about advertising and the meanings and underlying messages that are left when commercials run on television. I don’t think I’ve ever really thought much about it but since we’ve been talking about advertising in class, I’ve been more aware of it. Before midterms, we talked a lot about representation on television and that’s something I found to be very interesting… so excuse my potentially mass amount of posts about the representation of different cultures, people and situations within advertising. In my justice class, we’ve been talking a lot recently about feminism, which I also find intriguing… so I thought I’d combine my newfound interests into something to post about. Instead of jumping right to this day in age, I thought it might be interesting and beneficial to look at the past and the way advertising was portrayed then. This sexist clip is from around 50 years ago. We’ve been talking about how advertising is supposed to interest the reader and use cultural references and ideas in order to relate to its viewers. I’d hope, from understanding that, that it was only men watching this because I’m not sure I’d know how women would interpret this. To men, this might just be a humorous clip, degrading women drivers; but what effect does this have on women? I’ll be the first to admit that I think women can be pretty lousy drivers, but it surprises me that something like this can be okay in a television commercial. Although, I suppose if the mass viewers during this time were men, this would be appealing to them. The comical undertone combined with the sexist remarks would probably interest many male viewers.

Cable: a la carte?

It took me some time to understand the meaning of this “a la carte” concept. From what I’ve come to understand, it’s a great concept. The writer of this article makes a lot of valid points. How will the cable industry continue to stay above water with the current system running? For the amount that a family or person pays for cable each month, it doesn’t seem worth it. A lot of times, what a person is paying for are dozens of unwanted and unnecessary channels. This new approach they’re attempting is to give the viewer options. With the opportunities that online television is offering, cable channels are the first to go in order to save money. Viewers would rather wait a week to see a show for free on Hulu than pay an overpriced amount for more shows than they even want to see. Again, with online television viewing opportunities, cable and other television sources are needing to find ways to pinch pennies or find ways to gain back what they’re losing from their disappearing customers.