II have been recently introduced to the global blog Guest of a Guest. It is a website that  website founded by Cameron Winklevoss and Rachelle Hruska that covers high society events, people, and places. It also has many pictures of people and events around the world. It is based in DC, NYC, LA, and the Hamptons.  It covers events from the Oscars to small parties to store openings to what to do for dinner. I think it is an appealing and interesting new take on media in these cities. You can click on a calendar of events in a city near you and find many exclusive or open events.It also keeps people updated on trends, celebrities, etc. It is similar to page six but unique and online and popular among many young people. I enjoy browsing through the articles, made by interns to editors and full time employees. They have told me about good restaurants, brands, music and other things. It is easy to use and appealing to me because I live near New York City. 

I wanted to post about this blog because I am interning there this summer in their Chelsea office. I will be working 3-4 days a week and am excited to work in PR and journalism. I will be blogging, going to special events at night and networking. It will be interesting to see what they will want me to do and if their is bias toward different things and how I should write about them.

Here is an article about the Tribeca Film Festival: http://guestofaguest.com/new-york/tribeca-film-festival/julian-schnabel-anja-rubik-public-school-celebrate-daniel-arshams-tff-debut-future-relic-01-04

This article is about Saturday at the Tribeca Cinemas, as Arsham debuted the first 4 parts of his 9 part film series Future Relic. It shows pictures the cocktail party  and screening of the film as well as tells about it in the article. I hope you guys enjoy poking through the blog!

One of the most interesting documentaries I’ve seen is The Act of Killing (Oppenheimer, 2012). The film is centered on the Indonesian killings of 1965-66, specifically on Anwar Congo, one of the perpetrators of the killings. Anwar is invited to recount his killings through film, however he would like to do so. The film follows him as he creates this retrospective look at his atrocities. It’s incredibly moving and disturbing in parts, but fascinating nonetheless.

It was interesting to meet Roger Ross Williams a few weeks ago. I thought what he had to say was very significant and influential to my view of independent Documentary filmmakers. I enjoyed watching previews of three of his films and listening to his own voice and journey in the making of them. He broke out of normal newscasting and being tied down by higher people and rules and went out into the world alone with a camera in his hand and not much money. I was amazed at the story of Music By Prudence. It was out of the norm and a hidden story that he told and got her unique voice out. The preview made me want to see the film. It shows the lives of disabled people in Zimbabwe. It seems like an intriguing story. I enjoyed hearing about his daily struggles and grind there. It must have been difficult but we need people like him to make film. He is unique, motivated, and has his own personal voice.  I am curious to see how his Disney film turns out about the boy with Autism. I told my friend about it who is obsessed with Disney- she has been 18 times and ran 2 half marathons there. She was surprised Disney is giving him the rights but is excited to see the film too. I like how he can show his films to audiences our age to adults and older people and get them moved.

I really enjoyed the talk with him and learning about him and his assistant who went here. I am interested in watching more independent documentaries and possibly a film minor. I think people like him who break racial barriers and bring unique thinks to cinema are a positive thing. I hope to share my voice somehow.

This is an article of the New York Times about the Tribeca Film Festival. I thought it would be a good article for our class to read because not only is it a very interesting film (about the cartoon artists of the New York Times and the creation process) but it was created by a female film maker, Leah Wolchok

http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/04/20/tribeca-film-festival-leah-wolchok-on-her-film-about-new-yorker-cartoonists-very-semi-serious/?_r=0

Unlike many documentaries we have seen, the director was not learning about an event or crisis but proving the dirty realities of an event. Ferguson is so knowledgeable about the 2008 financial crisis that in is film, “Inside Job” he was able to show the CEOs as the villains they really are and not take any of their bullshit answers. I found it very interesting how the camera would zoom on the face of a personal being interviewed whenever Ferguson asked a hard question. It seemed it was in anticipation of the person getting flustered and surprised by Ferguson’s hard questions and in depth knowledge on the subjects which he discussed.

Charles Ferguson’s documentary, “Inside Job” has several distinctions from the other documentaries we have seen in class. There was a Hollywood feel to the film, especially when the credits rolled by with popular music playing and moving clips of the New York City skyline fade in and out. Ferguson also had Matt Damon, a wildly famous actor, to narrate this film. For the first half of the film whenever Matt Damon would talk I was racking my brain trying to figure out why his voice sounded so familiar.

I also found it very interesting how strongly the class responded to this film. The discussion got very heated and a number of people I have never heard speak before were raising their hands multiple times. There was a wide  range of opinions on the film and people took some aspects very personally.

It was important for people to keep in mind that this film was not about Wall Street it was about the financial crisis of 2008 that occurred on Wall Street. Why would Ferguson interview businesses and CEOs that do not have any part in  the corruption that led to the crisis. People got very heated on the point that they felt the film was criticizing all of Wall Street when in fact it was not. It was bringing to light the reality of the corruption that lead to  the 2008 financial crisis.

http://fortune.com/2015/04/02/snapchat-transparency-report/

After watching Peter Vlemmix’s 2012 documentary Panopticon and reading Tad Friend’s article Hollywood and Vine, I came across this article from Fortune magazine that talks about the latest fad in the social media world, Snapchat. The article  talks about the privacy issues dealing with the well known app and also the reasons why every big name social media website wants to buy them.

Dealing with privacy issues, Snapchat is an app where people can send pictures to their friends for only a certain amount of seconds and then it disappears “forever.” People are starting to realize that this actually might not be the case due to hackers and possibly government intel. In agreeance with Panopticon, this validates how even though advancements in technology have their many pros, there are also some cons. Cons include how our personal privacy is slowly disappearing and people need to start becoming more aware of what they are doing on the internet and know when and when not to share certain things.

Based on the Hollywood and Vine article, in the year Snapchat has been around, it has changed tremendously. Snapchat has become one of the most used versions of social media. Now, companies like People Magazine, CNN, and ESPN use the app to sponsor themselves and when big events like the Final Four are going on, Snapchat is your app to get the latest updates. People are turning to Snapchat as a new source of communication and news outlet.

I found it very interesting how even though these companies lost tons of money, their CEOs were still walking away with a large salary. I also found it interesting the director decided to make the point how the poor were the ones that were affected more because they lost their houses, jobs, and income. At one part in the film, the director said “the poorest pay the most” which I find to be very accurate. I also found it interesting how the director made the point how Bush made tax cuts for the top 1% but they were not the ones being affect. It seemed that the poor were not helped during this situation and no one really did anything to help them.

Whether it be in journalism or film, when it comes to interviews there is no one more powerful than the interviewer. Many people assume that the subjects, or interviewees, are the key to an effective interview, and while in some cases this may be true, oftentimes a strong interviewer is required to manipulate a session in just the right ways, not only to get the best responses from interviewees, but to gain the most insight into the subject at hand.

That being said, this raises an interesting question: how active should an interviewer be during not only the interview process, but in the final cut of the interviews/film? Is it better for the interviewer to remain an invisible presence in the film, like in Miss Representation,  where the audience only hears the interviewee’s edited responses, rather than hearing the questions being asked? Or is it better for the interviewer to be an active character in the film, like in Inside Job, where they interrupt and directly interact with the interviewees, inserting their opinions into the film? Which feels more realistic, or relatable? Or does it depend on the medium or the topic/message that the film is trying to convey? I am sure that there is no concrete answer to these, but they’re pretty interesting to think about.

I thought that the coolest part of Roger William’s talk last week was when he was discussing his latest project Life, Animated, about the story of Owen Suskind, the young man with autism who found comfort and expression in Disney films. I could probably go on about how awesome his story is, and how cool the amount of access that Roger and Owen got into the Disney Animation archives is, but what I thought was really interesting was that, towards the end of this discussion, Roger mentioned how the film was actually based on a book written by Owen’s father, Ron Suskind.

I started researching the book after the discussion (I’m considering buying it actually, because the reviews are pretty positive and the story that Roger told us seemed awesome), and found that a whole website was created around it, and that many of the posts tell not only Owen’s story, but the stories of numerous other children with autism who found comfort in Disney. It made me realize how Owen’s story is a continually growing process, and how it has continued past the events of Suskind’s book, and will continue past the events filmed by Roger Williams. When I found that the documentary was using the same title as the book, I was afraid that Roger was going for an adaptation of sorts (which raises the question of whether or not documentaries can be adapted from source materials faithfully, the way that some films can be adapted from fiction novels), but I realized that instead of being an adaptation, it is more like a continuation of the book. It deals with the same character, and similar themes, but it shows a new side to Owen, an older side, and serves as an update and hopefully an expansion of what the book provides. It’s not a sequel, but rather a Part II to a story that I think is far from over.

The link to the website is posted below and I definitely think that it is worth checking out.

http://lifeanimated.net