VALS and Values:

So I took the VALS survey. Apparently I am primarily an Achiever while secondarily an Experiencer.

Achievers are goal oriented. They are people who are deeply committed to their family and careers. To quote the site: "Their social lives reflect this focus and are structured around family, their place of worship, and work. Achievers live conventional lives, are politically conservative, and respect authority and the status quo. They value consensus, predictability, and stability over risk, intimacy, and self-discovery." Achievers are focused on buying products that show that they are accomplished.

Experiencers are, well, all about the experience. They love self expression, and being creative. The site has this to say about experiencers: "Young, enthusiastic, and impulsive consumers, Experiencers quickly become enthusiastic about new possibilities but are equally quick to cool. They seek variety and excitement, savoring the new, the offbeat, and the risky. Their energy finds an outlet in exercise, sports, outdoor recreation, and social activities." Experiencers like fashion and focus on buying things that make them feel good or that are new. Experiencers like having cool, new stuff


I'm not sure either of these really are a good representation of what kind of consumer I am.

First of all, for the most part, I don't like to shop. Both categories mentioned fashion, which I do not care about. I like looking good, but I primarily look for function when shopping.

I don't know how accurate this survey was. I'm not sure which category I think I should fit into, but I didn't think that the survey was particularly accurate; perhaps I just don't see myself as a consumer.

I almost like top think of myself as being outside the world of products and advertisement. Is this just ego? I don't think so, because I think of myself as someone who is hard to sell to. I don't go shopping for new gadgets, and I don't watch television (which means that I'm not bombarded by adds all the time).

Maybe I can't see my own consumerism... this survey has been useful as it made me question whether I fit into the system of capitalism in my culture. Interesting...

The internet and the idiom:

One year after I was born, (to the month) the internet was born.

Over the course of my life, the internet has gone from something nobody knew about, to something Filipino 12 year-old's are teaching their grandparents how to use.

Twenty years ago, Tim Berners-Lee saw the internet created "on his desk" in Geneva Switzerland.

He wrote this article about where the internet has come, and about where it needs to go. He had six basic premises about the internet, that: Universality is the foundation; Open standards drive innovation; Keep the web separate from the internet; Electronic human rights; No snooping; and Linking to the future.

Now, I'm not going to describe the entire article:you can go here if you wan to read it.

What I am going to do is describe the part of the article that I found most interesting: Electronic human rights.

To give a little perspective on how important this issue is, we should consider the influence of social networking in the recent protests and revolutions across the middle east. Sites like Facebook Twitter, and a host of others were used as communication channels for protesters to either publicly, or privately (and thus without fear of repercussion) publish their views.

The ability for people across the world to express themselves is a huge step for democracy. People are able to challenge their government to do better, and are able to connect with people who are running for office but are shut out of the state-run media. This is part of the reason Berners-Lee says that access to the internet has been deemed a fundamental human right by the UN.

That people should have access to the internet is vital. While we may not like everything that is on the internet, we sill must recognize the good that can come from it. Protecting access to the internet, and improving wireless internet infrastructure in developing nations will result in a better educated, and better informed populace.

The internet holds all kinds of untold possibilities.
It is so new that we still haven't seen all that can be done with it.

I'm excited to see what happens over the next twenty years.

Maxx-ing the use of frame

So, I read an interesting article recently.

Greg Smith's "Shaping THE MAXX: Adapting the Comic Book Frame to Television".

Interesting stuff right?

But could(should) it be done?

Well, that's what today is all about.

For those of you who haven't read it: In his article Smith argues that Television should experiment with new frame sizes; that TV shouldn't be limited to the 1:33-1 ratio of frame size. Smith also argues that TV should use more frames within the frame of the screen - and that producers should be aware of how effective this has proven in comics as well as in the animated adaptation of The Maxx.

These ideas are very interesting (to say the least); however... they are also risky. Financiers and investors (almost the same thing) do not want to bet their fortune on something unproven, they want something that has been done before. This is both positive and negative, as there is stability within the industry which this comes at the expense of artistic license on the part of the creator of the work.

What producers of content need to do is to show that using different frames is effective as a storytelling technique. Maybe if there were more people creating media that doesn't conform to the standard frame ratio, and more content that uses frames within frame, we would see more programming like "The Maxx".

Smith makes a good point: Creators need to be courageous with what kind of art they make, and audiences should be accepting of new art forms.

Final question: Would "The Cape" have been canceled if they had tried to use some of the techniques Smith writes about? Or would it have been a more interesting way to tell the story, leading to its success as a show?

Unless people start experimenting, we'll never know.

Reality, Fantasy, and 3D:

So I reviewed Tron:Legacy. I said I liked the movie, but didn't dig the use of 3D... so what?

Understanding 3D is important to being able to understand why it doesn't work, how it could work, how critics of media should approach 3D, and how producers of media can use 3D effectively.

The basic problem with 3D is that it feels unnatural. This may seem like a weird statement because we experience the world in 3D, and expect that 3D movies should feel more natural and lead to greater immersion than "regular" movies. Our expectation, and the expectation of investors in 3D technology is that 3D will just be better than normal movies. In my own experience, this is not the case. Basically, I have just rehashed what Alva Noë argued in her article The Myth Of 3-D Immersion.

The difference between Noë's article and mine?

I think I might be able to explain the failure of 3D:

The prevailing philosophy behind 3D is that because we actually experience the world in 3D, we will identify more with 3D stories. The astonishing thing about this assumption is that it is so close to being right, but yet misses the mark completely.

We live in a 3D world, this is true. We identify with stories told in 2D (with or without the illusion of depth). I argue that the failure of 3D is that it looks too real. In2D mediums, there is a natural amount of aesthetic distance that comes with knowing that the thing you are watching is not real.

3D technology as it stands is either too real, or very, very... fake. Either of these extremes pretty much spells out death for a storytelling technique. Having it look too fake is distracting, and makes us realize that we are seeing a special effect. Having it look too real turns us off because we lose that comfortable distance that allows us to experience the thrills of a movie without the consequences.

3D is striving for virtual reality, but would we like it if we had it? Wouldn't virtual reality be abhorrent to us? Does a virtual world that you couldn't distinguish from reality sound like fun? Think of any realistic war movie, and picture it in virtual reality. Not so fun.

What movie-goers want is an escape, not a trip down the rabbit hole.

Now in 3D:

After reading The Myth Of 3-D Immersion by Alva Noë, I started thinking about 3D movies and how whether they are an effective form of communication. A 3D movie I saw recently was TRON: Legacy.

Now, I'm not going to give a critique of the film itself because Legacy was my introduction to the world of Tron and I don't think I should critique the movie itself without having seen the original. However, I what I am going to talk about is the film's use of 3D.

In Tron: Legacy, 3D was used to help reinforce the digital feel of "the grid". 3D effects were used as in the movie to make the motorcycle ride at the beginning of the movie seem more exciting, and were used once Flynn gets on the grid so that the movie-goer would remember that the grid is a virtual reality(VR). Overall use of 3D made sense in the movie. It was a rather distracting to go from a scene without 3D to one with it, but again... overall it made sense (given that it was VR).

That being said, I was not thrilled with the experience. As Noë put it "3-D is thrilling, surprising, and slightly upsetting" what it does not deliver is what 3D movies promise: immersion into the world of the film. When 3D was used in Tron:Legacy, it was not subtle - You knew you were seeing something in 3D.

Where am I going with this? Here:

Looking back

Looking back at what I have learned this semester, I tried to decide what I had found most interesting and or exciting. This was a hard decision because I feel that overall, this has been a semester that has brought more new ideas to my attention than some of my previous semesters.

***

That being said... the one thing I have found most interesting about this class to date is Scot McCloud's lecture about comics, graphic novels, and where these forms of communication are headed in the future.

His argument: that comics no longer need to be made as if the creator were limited to the old model (that of the printing press) - is fascinating. It not only made me see comics and graphic novels differently, it makes me wonder what kinds of innovation in art and storytelling can be applied to video and film by viewing computers as a new kind of medium.

Since we are seeing television programming on the internet, why aren't we seeing content that is designed to make use of the internet as a need way of communicating? We no longer need to try and fit tv and video online, as producers of media we ned to start designing content that takees advantages of computers and the internet.

Could an online tv show contain hyperlinks? I don't see why not. Youtube videos already allow for comment boxes, and the ability to pause and investigate a link is almost never used. It is this kind of thing that hasn't been investigated enough.

Innovation will not come by adapting tv so that it can be seen online, it will come from adapting how we make video to make online. Once producers of media start looking at computers for what they can do instead of another way to show television, only then will we look at the internet as a new medium.

"Drive" review:

(Before I begin, all images contained in this post are the copyrighted material of Dave Kellett. You can find his site here.)

As a mass communications student, I aim to investigate all kinds of communication, not just film and video. The world of comics and graphic novels is an exciting one, full of storytelling devices. Through a process known as synesthesia, comics and graphic novels have to communicate things like sound and smell through text and pictures; which makes them a fascinating example of communication because they must communicate something that is experienced by another sense (sound through words, fro example). As always, to examine and review a work we need criteria. These criteria are: 1) Words; 2) Pictures; 3) Frames; and 4) the interaction of these three.

"Drive" by Dave Kellett, is an example of a comic that uses the aforementioned methods to tell a interesting story. It takes place far in the future, where one man accidentally finds a spaceship that "pinches" space enabling warp speed travel, and uses this to build an empire based upon his family's control of the transportation system. In this way it is somewhat reminiscent of "Dune" by Frank Herbert. However, "Drive" stands on its own feet as a believable and interesting universe.

Words:
In Drive, words are used both in and out of the picture-story continuum. Words are used as a device to introduce classified documents, private letters, and character dialogue. In the case of letters and documents, these are used to reveal necessary exposition for the story.

Looking a little closer, we see that the words are not all the same size. Words are made smaller and larger to emphasize how the words are supposed to sound. Pictures interact with the dialogue by giving the character an expression to match the text.

Pictures:
Throughout the story, Dave Kellett creates a fantastic world that fills the background of the comic. His characters go from being on board a spaceship, to being inside buildings, to vising other planets; the setting is vast and the pictures reinforce this throughout the work.

Even in the first few pictures in the introduction, we see a large universe. Pictures are used to set the mood, and to add depth to the story. In the example above, pictures interact with words to give the feeling of loneliness. Pictures interact with framing to show changing viewpoints: the "camera" (forgive the expression) goes from a close up to a wide shot, etc, to help tell the story.

Frames:
Framing is used to shift the perceptual distance from an something in the story. Framing allows the reader to be taken close to something one moment, and distant from it the next. In story telling this is an important tool as it allows the reader to experience more of the world, and it allows for an easier transition from scene to scene.

Framing is used to change perspective. In the above scene, the viewpoint shifts from one characters perspective to another. This establishes a relationship between the two characters, we are "told" that they look at one another. Framing works together with picture and text to establish power relationships within the story; for example: who (literally) looks up to a particular character?

Interaction:
In Drive, we see a comic where words, pictures, and framing work together to tell a compelling, interesting, character-driven story. Dave Kellett is an artist who understands the new methods of story telling, and how all the facets of a story can work together to tell a good story.

In the world of comics and graphic novels, "Drive" does a good job as an example of how to tell a story.