Blog 11 – Music

In general my musical tastes are widely varied. There are some styles that I have a preference for over others, but in general I appreciate nearly all forms of music. One style that I typically gravitate towards is the so-called “alternative” style of rock. One band/artist that I particularly like is Nine Inch Nails and Trent Reznor. For that reason I chose to examine his song ‘Hurt’. Released in 1994, it came at a time in my life when I was going through some personal difficulty. Without going into too much detail I was suffering from depression and struggling with a fair amount of anger and frustration. The song and the mood of the song reflected my feelings at the time, and probably amplified them as well.
It’s a dark song, and comes at the end of an thematic album titled ‘The Downward Spiral’. The focus of the whole album is one of painful introspection and confrontation of personal demons. As performed by Nine Inch Nails, the edgy and electronic, crackling with noise and anxiety. When the song was covered by Johnny Cash in 2003, its atmosphere was principally acoustic, and took on the feeling of power sung from the perspective of a mature man at the end of his life, rather than the anger and frustration of a young man facing a seemingly hopeless future. This time around, helped along by director Mark Romaneks’ video, it seems to place the singer looking back at the folly of his life, reflecting on its vanities. The video brings this vision home, with Johnny Cash seated at a banquet table, declaring it to be an “empire of dirt”, intercut with documentary footage of Cash in performance, playing with his son, visiting what appears to be his own childhood home. Cash appears as the cocky and somewhat dramatic young man who could have easily sung the original Nine Inch Nails version, but now looks back on that with sadness, in what appears to be regret for the wastefulness of that self-absorption.

Blog 10 – Documentary

I’ve actually made several documentaries recording live performances of theater, dance and music productions. Most of these have been for fairly straightforward historical documentation – so that there is a record of the live performance that can be referenced later. The purpose of these basic documentations has been as a reference for recreating the work in the future and for presenting to funding organizations and producers. The emphasis has been on making it as “pure” as possible, with a minimal impact from the videographer, usually from a wide, establishing shot from the center rear of the audience or a similar vantage point.
While that had been the conventional wisdom of how to approach shooting for live performance documentation, particularly in the early days of video in the ‘80s and ‘90s, as cameras and equipment have become smaller, higher quality, and more affordable, and with the advent of ‘desktop video editing’, the approach has changed fairly dramatically. Those of us who have been somewhat schooled in shooting video and film have long advocated for a more ‘cinematic’ approach to documenting performance. In order to try and capture the experience of the audience at the performance, it’s important to create and edit shots of various framings and angles. While the straight, wide-angle, ‘documentation’ shot from the back of the house will record most of the movement and the stage picture as a whole, it fails to capture the experience of it. It’s a classic case of “reality”, in the form of what is essentially a surveillance camera recording what is happening in the room, not accurately translating the perceived reality of the experience of an audience with a selective eye. So in moving to an edited and composed documentary of the performance and away from an “objective” single camera shoot, we encounter questions of intent and interpretation.
Each performance has a unique character to it. Each work has a different intent. The atmosphere and audience experience that a performing artist seeks to create should be the paramount goal in the performance documentary filmmakers mind. That is of course, if the documentary maker is seeking to represent the artistic vision of the performance. If the goal is to comment on the social and cultural event, then a different approach becomes necessary. The documentarian must strive to place the performance in a context, for the audience, for the performers and creators, and for the society and culture surrounding it.
In a theatrical performance documentary of this type one would most likely start with the creators of the work: Director, Writer, Designer, Choreographer, Composer, etc., filming at work, interviewing them during the process of pre-production, production and performance. The views and opinions of others involved in the process is also crucial to the understanding of the experience: Producers and others with a financial stake in what is created, publicists and those directly involved with the public perception of the performance, and of course the performers and other artists involved in actually bringing the work to life on stage.
Other interview subjects are of course audience members, people who see the work at all stages: those brought in for a preview at various points in the development as well as the final audience for the performance itself, interviews both before and after the experience.
If the performance has greater social or political consequences, the context for those should be explored. For instance; if the play concerns the experience of dealing with autistic children, then an appropriate series of interviewees may include health and social workers, public policy makers, parents and children with autism.

Genre Presentation

Blog 7 -- October 19th

Follow this link to see a short power point on Fake News -- The Daily Show
http://teachingmedialiteracy.pbwiki.com/f/Fake%20News.ppt#256,1,Fake

Observing the viewer

Blog 6 , Oct. 12th -- Observation of viewing behavior:

I observed a convenient subject, my wife, watching two different shows sequentially on the same evening.
The first show was ‘Law and Order: CI’, an episode from a series in the ubiquitous ‘Law and Order’ franchise. Her general behavior while watching the show ranged from fairly detached, to distantly engaged. For the first 15-20 minutes of the episode she folded laundry. The television is equipped with TIVO, and she started watching the program about 5 minutes after its eight o’clock start time in order to enable fast forwarding through commercials. When the laundry was folded, she paused TIVO and put it away, then returned to the couch and started the program again. Her body language for the rest of the program was very relaxed, when we discussed it later she said it was something like a warm bath – she could watch it with just enough attention to follow the story, but had a minimal emotional and intellectual connection with it.
I asked why she enjoyed watching it, and she replied that it felt to her like a pretty good balance of interesting story and characters, and yet was predictable enough to follow without a lot of effort. She commented that the structure of the plot rarely changed, a major complication or shift from investigation to prosecution at the half-hour mark, and then a dramatic shift, usually in the form of a confession at the fifty to fifty-five minute mark. She said that it felt a little like a bedtime story – you know it’s all going to wrap up in the end, you just need to lie there and let it wash over you.
The second show that I observed her watching that night was ‘Project Runway’, a “reality” show about fashion designers competing for the opportunity to design a line of clothing. Her behavior during this program was significantly different; she sat upright, leaned forward and gave it her full attention. She was eager to watch it, and even unable to wait long enough for Tivo to store the commercial breaks, although she did mute them. When I asked her about the contrasting responses to the show, she replied that ‘Project Runway’ was a longer, developing series, and it typically wouldn’t be wrapped up at the end of the hour. This, however was the finale of the season, so it was the culmination of months of viewing “investment” for her. I asked why this program appealed to her. She said that first of all, she had a genuine interest in fashion design, and more significantly, the characters and the competition at once seemed so exaggerated and yet reminded her of the world she works in, (she is a choreographer, stage director and professor in the U of MN Dance dept.).

A scan of the GM ad from last week's Time magazine

Here's a scan of the ad I analyzed in the blog from last week. Hopefully it helps to make a little more sense out of my points.....

Also blog 8....


An Apple "parody" ad from Rob Bennett and I.

Blog 8 October 26th

GM “A New Level of Confidence” ad--

I've included a screen capture from the GM website. It's not the exact image I examined, but it's from the same campaign.
Here's the address:
http://www.gm.com/warranty/index.jsp?brandId=vs&lang=en&cmp=gm_com


General Motors current ad campaign for its’ “100,000-mile warranty” features a number of GM manufactured cars floating and driving above congested roads in major American cities. These ads suggest that by purchasing a GM auto you have ‘risen’ above the crowd, enabling you a certain privilege and ease of passage.
Taking as an example of this campaign I’ve selected a print ad from the Nov. 6, 2006 issue of Time magazine. In this ad we see a crowded city street, (New York?), filled with generic cars, busses, delivery trucks and taxis. Pedestrians also clog the sidewalks and crosswalks. The city is predominantly gray, brown and off-white, with the brightest colors coming from the red and blue awnings and the predominantly placed American flags. The GM cars, (predominantly high-end models; Cadillac, Hummer, Corvette), are featured floating along at about the seventh floor level above the street. They are noticeably cleaner, brighter, and more colorful than the surrounding scene and stand out dramatically from their background. The cars are flying in formation three abreast, and although there are only ten individual autos shown, the impression is that there is a legion of bright, shiny, new GM cars behind them. The autos are emanating from the vanishing point in the image, the only real spot of open sky and green in the entire picture, and seem to bring that “breath-of-fresh-air” feeling along with them, particularly as the buildings in the foreground become darker and the bright colors of the lead cars, (a red corvette and a yellow hummer flanking a dark blue Cadillac), contrast more strongly against them.
Through its use of prominently placed American flags and the use of the general red-white-and-blue color scheme, GM appears to be playing to the patriotism of its audience, those who we might guess would be strongly influenced by the American-made aspect of the company.
The most obvious metaphor of “rising above the rest” is floating separation of the cars from those on the street and sidewalks. It seems to be saying that by purchasing a GM car, you are not among the ordinary people who must struggle with congestion. You are unique, and privileged. This implication is furthered by the models of cars featured, especially those in the first two rows, high-end autos whose price tags place them firmly in the wealthiest, most economically successful tax bracket.
The ad speaks not only of a separation from “the ordinary”, but also of certain camaraderie among those who purchase similar autos. They are an elite group, a select few who are literally, “above the rest”, forming a virtual air force of GM auto buyers.
This ad also seems as though it’s primarily aimed at men. The first two rows of autos is dominated by cars that appeal to and are marketed for men, the previously mentioned ‘vette, Lincoln Navigator, and Hummer in the first row, a second sports car, large SUV and pickup in the second row. The surrounding background is composed mostly of more ‘masculine’ imagery; tall stone buildings, hard angled vehicles, flagpoles and erect streetlights. (At this point I could delve into a Freudian analysis of the ad, but would prefer to avoid going there, thanks.)
So we have an intended audience of wealthy, “patriotic”, probably white, middle to upper class men. The ad speaks to them in terms of success, freedom, and a certain amount implied community with those who share their economic status and taste. It implies security, potency, and, as its slogan states: “A new level of confidence”.
All from a car.

Blog 2 and 3 -- Movie Scene Analysis

I've actually decided to combine these two blog assignments -- taking a slightly different approach of a more thorough (I hope) analysis of a short animated film: Duck Amuck.


Chuck Jones’ 1953 cartoon “Duck Amuck”, produced and distributed by Warner Bros studios as part of their ‘Looney Tunes’ series, is a deconstruction of orthodox animated and cinematic narrative style as particularly epitomized by the work Disney Studios throughout the 1930s and ‘40s. In the early ‘50s this type of hyper-realist animation was being challenged by the post-war world in general, and specifically by the work of UPA studios, former Disney artists whose work moved more towards the world of modern, minimalist art, and away from classical oil figure and landscape painting.
This more traditional approach to animation was also based in mainstream Hollywood filmmaking techniques and formulas. These stylistic methodologies seemed to many at the time somewhat ineffectual in the rapidly changing post-WWII world. The more modern, limited animations of UPA studios, the burgeoning French New Wave, and the advent of television into popular culture all signaled a change in the tastes of audiences, and particularly adult and young adult viewers. These were the audiences that director Chuck Jones was addressing.
He was able to explore these new approaches, (at least for mainstream cartoon filmmaking), by lampooning the assumptions and presumptions of the actor in the film, Daffy Duck. Daffy, like many in the audience and in the film industry of the time, expect the conventions of a certain formula of film to be followed faithfully throughout. Thus, when we, and Daffy, are presented with a “swashbuckling adventure” style of title at the beginning of the film, (a heavily serifed, romantic type set against a castle wall or leather bound book cover), we assume that it is an appropriate action to enter brandishing a rapier and shouting “En Garde!” When that backdrop scrolls across to reveal another type of setting, we assume that the picture has now changed to another archetype; a farm picture, an arctic picture or a jungle picture, depending on the content depicted. Daffy, in good, workman-like fashion, accepts each of these changes in the context of the film, and defines his character by that setting.
Daffy acts first as the audiences’ surrogate, confused by the constantly changing scenery, and then as ‘the fool’, stubbornly refusing to acquiesce to the constant manipulation of the unseen hand of the cartoonist; in this context Jones allows the audience to feel as though they are “in on the joke”, and that Daffy, through his own foolish egotism, can’t understand.
As the cartoon progresses, the scenery becomes more and more simplified, eventually leading to a completely empty, white background. At this point, even the sound disappears, and Daffy, dressed as a “singing cowboy”, is forced to hold a sign asking for “Sound Please”. When the sound does return, it is not the sound that matches the costume, but a progression degenerating from machine gun to mule bray with each strum of the guitar, and from rooster crow to kitten mewl as Daffy attempts to speak.

“In Duck Amuck, Jones demonstrates the dimensions of the animated form and shows its capacity to support a number of meanings, particularly with regard to character construction, modes of narrative expectation and plausibility, and the conditions of comic events. It is a model which usefully reveals the range of possibilities within the animated cartoon and, as such, the readily identifiable conventions of orthodox animation.”
– Paul Wells, Understanding Animation, 1998,: 42


Jones is able to make such a strong work so successfully because he is using the form to comment on the form. He never truly breaks from the conventions of Hollywood filmmaking – his character, Daffy, is really always Daffy, the work proceeds in a fairly linear fashion, progressing according to standard narrative arcs from character and situation establishment to climax and denouement, but uses the accepted fantasy capability of animation to challenge our expectations. In that challenge he has been able to make us laugh and allow us an empathetic view of our own presumptions.

Blog 1 Reasons for Media Studies

Adults and especially children are constantly bombarded with media of all sorts in the world of Western Civilization in the 21st century. They see it and hear it nearly constantly from the moment they wake until fall asleep. With the growth of the internet and the web, the continued expansion of cable and satellite television, home theaters, technologically advanced video games, cell phones, iPods, satellite radio, podcasting, and the exponentially growing technological advances continually appearing in digital entertainment and communication, students desperately need skills to decipher this tidal wave of information. Traditional media such as books and newspapers, and even the broadcast networks hold little influence in this overwhelming flood of viewpoints. Our society, and each individual, is continually fed a steady stream of ever more convincing and oftentimes subtle pitches, aimed at marketing a point of view and philosophy ranging from the broad whetting of the appetite for consumables, to politics, education, personal behavior and, most notably, “values”.
These points of view are not always in the best interest of the students and the society they will lead in adulthood. The messages are crafted in many cases with a surprising amount of forethought to the effect and desired result on the “consumer”. It becomes not just the art of advertising and influence, but in many cases an exact science in which a campaign, (advertising or political), is honed to demographic perfection. These messages can be so effective that without the proper knowledge of how to read them, they penetrate to an unconscious level in the consumers’ mind, often leading to a decision about a product, (again, consumable, political, philosophical), based on a “feeling” rather than rational thought.
The effectiveness of the media at delivering its’ message, coupled with the overwhelming presence of media in our lives at the beginning of the 21st century, means that giving students the tools for media literacy is crucial to their success as adults. Ignoring media studies means leaving young people vulnerable to manipulation, at its worst, as an individual open to predation physically, psychologically, and economically, and as a culture socially, politically, and spiritually. At its’ best, media can fulfill its’ promise as the great communication tool for people across the globe, allowing access to pertinent and useful information to people regardless of geographical, political or class boundaries.
Electronic media, and that is principally what we are discussing here, can be viewed as the literature of the 21st century. It should be taught in addition to classical art and literature, not instead of. It is only through an understanding of the foundations of human civilization that students can understand the modern world and it only through understanding the media of today that they can shape its future.

Initial Test

a test of the new blog