I found this post that I thought was incredibly relevant to some of the conversations we’ve been having in class. It relates to the Baltimore riots and media’s portrayal as the people rioting as thugs, giving them an overall very negative image.
Basically, a Baltimore resident is confronting Geraldo Rivera, a reporter “covering the story” in Baltimore. The resident is trying to explain to Rivera that what the media is doing is not right. Representing the protestors as purely negative and destructive is completely wrong. The resident is highlighting the main issues with news coverage of everything that is going on in Baltimore currently, and also media coverage in general. The post ends with a gif where he says “I want the white media out of Baltimore city until y’all are here to report the real story”. I think that really spoke to the nature of media coverage and to what is and isn’t covered .
I thought this movie was the most powerful film we have watched this semester. The way the film was set up and the young women that were interviewed made the issue presented by this film heard by the audience.The way the film was set up was like 4 years of college. At the beginning, the director decided to show the acceptance videos and go right into orientation. From there he focused on 4 main stories of sexual assault. Each unique in its own way. One focused on fraternities, one focused on sports teams, etc. At the end of the documentary, We see the graduation ceremonies of the colleges that were featured in the the film . After, we see the two main women traveling in a car all over the country showing us that the fight to stop sexual assault is not over.
The thing that made the movie “CitizenFour” enjoyable to watch for me was how the movie was filmed and edited. It was not like every other documentary where the interviews were supporting the facts presented. Instead, The documentary was focused around one man and the facts supported his story. Another thing that made this film unique was how most of the screen time was filming way was going on instead of interviewing the people in the film and asking about their story. It made me feel as if I was in the room with them.
Laura Poitras’s documentary, Citizenfour, had such a strong effect on me. It made me anxious and really nervous. The story was so compelling and I really enjoyed watching this significant event unfold as Poitras continued with the film. I thought it was very interesting how the film maker was never shown in the film. It almost seemed as though Glenn Greenwald was running the documentary (which he was not). Poitras captured the story of Edward Snowden and the story of the reporter and how he unfolded this story and shared it with the public.
Media is a valuable resource that allows people to access information on a topic in an instant. It has created an entire new genre of research that I have been taught to use since I began elementary school.
With this new technology comes a lot of negative sideeffects including lack of activity amongst young children, loss of connection during in person interactions, rude behavior and many more social issues.
While media and the internet have many pros and cons, it is necessary that we continue to evolve with technology and learned how to use it to its full advantages whilst being aware of the negative social effects it has on people.
I enjoyed watching “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” directed by Morgan Spurlock. It showed me how much advertisement is around us in our world today. I started noticing advertisements on this campus that I never really gave to much attention to. Things like vitamin water and powerade being the official drinks on lafayette’s campus. That means similar drinks like gatorade or body armor are impossible to purchase on campus. Another advertisement is Nike. All our athletes’ uniforms are made by Nike. Nothing other then Nike is given to the players, but Lafayette gets all the gear it needs for its athletes.
I really enjoyed Morgan Spurlock’s documentary The Greatest Movie Ever Sold. What I loved most about the film was that the truth disclosed was presented in a humorous way. Since watching the film, I have paid close attention to advertisements and promotions written into films. As a Marvel comic fanatic, a constant advertisement in many of their movies deals with promoting Audi. Whether it’s Tony Stark zooming through the streets in his Audi or the Hulk smashing and throwing Audi cars, the camera makes sure to capture those famous four silver circles.
Below I attached the newest Audi commercial starring the Avengers for the new movie Age of Ultron.
This movie was extremely different from your average documentary. I really appreciated the way he showed how these advertisements effected both the companies and the movies. It caused ideas to be much more difficult because the director/creator of the movie has an image that they would like to portray. Then on the other hand the companies still have an image of their product that they must up hold. This was when conflicts come into play with how much of your creative idea do you really want to give up for money. In the end if you give up to much does it still feel the same for you?
I don’t know if anyone else has seen this already, but Buzzfeed made a pretty cool article about technology and media. It has a lot of stats about mobile usage, which is what my group is working on for our project so I found that pretty interesting. Here’s the link if you want to check it out:
