Lights

The phrase lights, camera, action is heavily associated with the all forms of the entertainment business.  Similarly to the chicken and the eggs relationship the light and camera partnership needs each other to survive.  Granted, advances in technology are making every effort to add specs to the camera to manipulate the light in the shot.  I believe there is a lot to be said about the old fashioned style of shooting the business successfully used before the spoils of technology.  The ability to place and manipulate lights can create the directors vision of what is captured and how the shot communicates with he audience.  The intensity or brightness of the light and the color of the light can create different effects.  

In a scene I am writing the main character is is going though a lot of pain and trepidation.  I would hope the lighting could capture the emotion through the characters face.  To capture a grimace or ache by the twitch in the corner of a persons mouth requires precision not only with the camera but with the lights as well.

  

#comm360

Greetings

The adage "it takes a village to raise a child" holds true in the television production arena.  A television show is similar to a child when it comes to how much support it requires. How a child's intricacies and nuances create endless possibilities a television show has limitless potential that is only capped by the capabilities of the production team.  Preproduction, Production, and Post production are the three phases of a television show. There is a hierarchy of all the various positions working on the show with two main groups, the nontechnical production personnel side and the technical personnel.  Similarly to an offense and defense on a football team that where the same jersey but have far different skill sets and responsibilities so is true with the two groups that work on the production.  The person in charge of the nontechnical production personnel is the executive producer and they are "in charge of one or several large productions or program series. Manages budget and coordinates with client, station management, advertising agencies, financial supporters, and talent and writers' agents." (quote from Television Production Handbook by Zettl) In charge of the technical personnel is the chief engineer who is "in charge of all technical personnel, budgets, and equipment. Designs system, including transmission facilities, and overseas installations and day-to-day operations."

 The technical production systems the production team uses are camera, audio, lighting and editing equipment to produce the show.  The basic television system is your every day news anchor broadcast that has a fixed camera and fixed lighting.  The camera systems have the ability to electronically transmit the clips directly to the station.  Multi camera systems are useful when replay is used a sporting event for example.  Movie director also use multi camera systems so they can film many shots with one take.  Audio is captured through microphones and helps the audience perceive an event. Different sizes and styles of microphones are used based on the logistics of the shot.  Lighting allows many illusions and can be manipulated fairly easily. The post production editing the clips can be done on location or in studio based on the equipment available.          

Out of the myriad of different jobs on the production team the writer position is where I plan to pursue a career.  To be able to capture an audiences emotion and to move them with words is my dream.  I love story telling and being told stories and will go to a theater alone just to see the production.  In high school I was a thespian for my work on stage and off stage, being a stage manager was one of my fondest memories and playing Will Parker in Oklahoma will always be one of my most treasured experiences.  All of that showed me how stories offer audiences an escape from reality and their only exception is entertainment and I want my words to entertain people forever.

The internet is used today for a myriad of tasks and everyday human life has exponentially grown to the point where syncs like I hope and pray for an event that cuts the worlds population so in theory the rest of the people here have more resources and can thrive and their kids and their kids kids can kill it.  In a good way. The way our data can be stored and sifted through for corporate gain and the one percent.  In 1994 when congress legalized commerce to be traded online for corporate gain what was once a free and natural entity became a money cycling enterprise that ultimately burst and the year 2000.

The internet is a controlled space by that I mean the characters on the keyboard always stay the same so what is entered into the internet is always from the same set of keys and anyone from any computer can type code and it has essentially leveled the playing field for everyone with access to the internet.  Since every key stroke is captured and saved the log of the computer is concrete but the users intent cant be determined but what they searched for in a internet search engine.  If a user typed in how long does it take to drown and someone close to them drowned after the link is made and it is possible that malicious intent was acted on or perhaps the her was watching a movie where a character drowned and it happened rather quickly and the user was curious if that was plausible.  Sounds like court room jargon where facts are debated and ultimately a persons future freedom or incarceration is at stake.  digital forensics is a needed and computer keys and logs are conducive towards analyzing and grouping the internet into like interest.  Advertising based on what a person searches for seems logical and is an excepted business model that can't be denied.  This is invasive without a doubt but doesn't that user give up that right by using the technology.  if the user ultimately objected to every key stroke documented and possibly analyzed wouldn't the user not us technology.

In 2009 elections in Iran were disputed and protestors took to the streets.  One was a woman named Neda, Neda in arabic means "the calling" a single shot to her chest took her life and a bystander with a cell phone captured her last moments.  Speculation and anger over who ordered that shot and why was this action perpetrated by those in power.  It sounds like a hollywood movie and sadly her story will probably be exploited buy the one percent for the masses entertainment and to increase their wealth. I was glued to aljazeera live stream of the protest around tahrir square when the people other through Hosni Mubarak.  I am still sad that the live stream is no longer available in this area.  My cynical nature likes to speculate that it the government censoring us but my economic nature takes over and its more likely they no longer wanted to be a free stream and wanted viewers to pay to watch.  Press tv is a live stream i find interesting at times.  It is ran by a news agency in Iran and their coverage of events in the middle east is often similar and quite different from the CNN/Fox news reports.

I thinks its safe to say that one the most watched news are sports related.  ESPN airs show sport center that caters to the twenty four hour seven days a week public craze for new informations with regards to their cherished teams and players.  The super bowl and world cup are two of the highest rated events of the year.  The oscars, golden globes, state of the union are all events that capture the public eye but I would bet the Kentucky Derby had a higher T.V. rating.  The internet and social media has provided the public a new way to share and experience news.

Recently I have paid more attention to the news that is being reported and the news that doesn't get reported.  Over memorial day weekend there was almost one hundred shooting incidents in Chicago.  The people who live there have asked for the national guard to patrol the streets and yet the main media story over the memorial day weekend was at a zoo and a four year old boy who fell in the gorilla pit and ultimately led to that gorilla being shot and the child being "rescued." I understand that the editors have a tough decision when they get so many news stories and they need to pick which ones to show.  I see the appeal of showing a gorilla and child and how it is news that would fall into the safe category, not controversial, almost all the audience will feel the same way towards the story, there will not be an outcry of injustice and fuel racial prejudices. So I see why the news is airing what it is but I do not agree with it.

the history of the internet

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eea61LpkCdg

The History of the Internet

Sir Tim Berners-Lee worked for the european equivalent to the Manhattan project in the early 1980's.  A dozen or so countries were working together to harness the power of the atom.  Tim needed a way for all dozen countries to link their computers in their own countries to each other to share information.  Since the countries used different operating systems linking them proved to be impossible the way the system was constructed.  The United States integrated their military and academic computers in the 1960s in attempt to share information but it was not until Sir Tim Berners-Lee  created the hypertext transfer protocol (http) their ideas became a reality.

Personally I never new the existence of the well before watching this documentary but as a kid of america online chat rooms I see the appeal.  No surprise that the government made the decision to merge business and the internet in the 1990s when the economy could always go for  boom.  Napster was my childhood and the amount of time I devoted during the day was a lot more then it is now.  My friends would take pride in their libraries and playlist and everyone was their own disk jockey for the cost of a computer and internet connection.

Wikipedia provides a perfect example of how the internet empowers the masses but ultimately a hierarchy makes decisions on what content is deemed acceptable.  At first wikipedia was a free flowing ideology where people could edit the information on pages with hopes that the correct information will rise up from the people instead of being forced with information from the powers that be.  As you can imagine this led to disagreements by editors who may have disagreed on what content should be included.  The site has 12 members at the top who make judgements on what content should be shared to the world.  An example of how the even the best pure hearted intentions need to be regulated.

The internet has provided a way for humanity to share a level playing field by providing the same readily available information to the masses.  Governments have tried to censor and control the information shared over the internet.  The elections in Kenya in 2008 was a prime example.  Ushahidi was established to allow citizens to report what they were witnessing first hand in their communities because the government chose not to report what was truly going on with the contested elections.  Middle east countries like, Tunisia and Egypt had similar occurrences during the Arab Spring when the people took to twitter, Facebook, youtube, etc to get the massages out of what the regimes were doing to its people.

The internet in its purest for is a way to level humanity and disperse the information to anyone who is looking.  Unfortunately, the internet has turned into a business that is being ruled and regulated by those in power and those people in power have the ability to censor and control what is decimated to the public.  As seen throughout history there is a group of people who will always check to see if what is being told by the government and news agency to be true but if the truth is hard to find and the information provided is readily available my concern is that people will be lazy and get their information but the easiest most accessible sources instead of trying to dig and find if that in fact is the truth of the report.

game day

Game On

The anticipation was immense, so much preparation and so many unknowns.  The last hours leading to 9 am felt like the last hours waiting for kick off or opening cue to a stage play.  Most children are unforgiving, cruel, and brutally honest.  Most children do not have a filter and will not hesitate to show the world how they feel.  Of course, part of my communications class final project is to let these children play a game designed by group of college classmates.

The road to designing the game was filled with twist and turns and was quite bumpy at the beginning.  Personalities were conflicting and panic was setting in, then one day as a group we decided to change approaches and focused on keeping things simple and fun.  A huge weight was taken of the groups shoulders.  We didn't need to create this brilliant game that was complicated.  we needed to make a fun simple game that involved strategy, chance, and most importantly, math.

This experience was extremely gratifying and I must say that I enjoyed Thanksgiving break a little more because of the hard work and the reward of seeing the kids understand and have fun playing I helped design.

Playing Madden for cash $$$

Gamers have recently found a way to compete online verse peers for cash wagers.  Website www.gamersaloon.com allows gamers to find opponents and and make cash wagers on the game.
In the pas players had to go to a live event and compete in person against fields of opponents to win cash prizes in tournaments.  The tournaments still take place and the annual madden tournament once paid out 140,000 dollars .  Much can be debated about the validity of these games as competitions due to the "glitches" that are with in the game.

Below is gameplay of an actual online game.

Below is a youtube review of the gamer saloon website.

Below is glitches in the game.