final blog part 1

a. For our class’ final video project we have been using some e-mails back and forth, but more recently we have created an extensive Facebook group that documents the activities we will be doing for that day and what we have already done. We also used search engines on the internet to do lots of research for our project; we wanted to see how the various stars of reality shows dressed and to see clips of the shows. For the posters that were put up, the more technologically saavy of us used Photoshop to fix up the images where we superimposed images of students on ‘reality show’ set backgrounds. For the video clips we took inspiration from most every show on TV, from the confessionals on America’s Next Top Model and even all the kitchen shows, to the lead-ins that are seen on the best soap operas and teaser clips of forthcoming episodes to create more drama and suspense. I think we had some trouble finding our main goal for the project, but now that we have created a theme that goes along with the video and our desire to demonstrate a commentary on the affects of reality TV shows and how prevalent they are in the media today, I think we have really found a good path to be working on. Although I have really liked and enjoyed working on this project and I do think it’s really fun to dress up, I think a lot of the costumes were only worn by a few members of the class, mostly the guy actors and a few girls. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether the whole class is working and I hope all of our projects are able to come together in the end to present how well we understood our theme.

I definitely see product placement everywhere, in the shows I watch, movies even books I read in middle school like The Clique, The A-List, and the Gossip Girl series’, so much to the point where I’ve started looking for it. In Friends, there was an episode where Chandler has a Yoohoo and after that episode I went out and bought my first chocolate drink (it’s mostly made of water) and nearly all the kinds of shows I watch have some sort of Burberry or Lacoste promotion. More recently cars have been highly advertised, from Gaby’s Maserati on Desperate Housewives to Audi’s continuous stream of Transporter films to their more obvious placement in The Joneses. The Joneses is a dark film that plays up product placement, it’s four people’s jobs to pretend to be a family and get their new friends to want and buy everything they have, from food to hair products, clothes, jewelry, and cars (specifically Audis). Even in music videos there is plenty of product placement. In the new version of Toxic Britney rides on the back of a Ducati sport bike. In Britney Spears’ video for Piece of Me there were a fleet of Mercedes G-series (they look like a boxy Jeep), and Womanizer uses a Mercedes sedan. Also in Womanizer is a Nokia phone, and the screen freezes momentarily on a calendar meeting titled “Product Placement”. In Cobra Starships Good Girls Go Bad Leighton Meester repeatedly texts on a Nokia Xpress Music phone. I know that much about it because it shows that much of the phone. Product placement is an excellent way for companies to make more money and to encourage the consumers to continue consuming and being shallow. I do think it’s pretty funny when fake companies are used to mock real corporations, like in Wall-E, although the BuynLarge is kind of haunting because it seems like a plausible future.

my crazy side project

So I've gone off on a little bit of a tangent with our project and am blogging about a experiment I'm trying on facebook this week. Here's the link to my blog-- I'll update with more news of the project as it progresses.
http://makepeacerantings.blogspot.com/
Tell me what you think!

Because of the nature of this project I'm having some problems making my way through facebook for a while, so might not be able to write on the group wall for a few days, so I'll try to update here or on my blog.

Nickelodeon Marketing

While I was eating dinner yesterday, I flipped through the television channels and stopped at a show on Nickelodeon. Although I grew up watching the Nickelodeon network, and think I realized, to some extent, the messages and advertising on some of these shows (for example, after Keenan & Kel, I loved orange soda partially because it was highly advertised on the show), I was surprised to see some of the more blatant advertising that many of the shows are currently exploiting. For example, one television show that is primarily based on a web show displays a mock Apple computer icon (in the shape of a pear) numerous times on every episode I've seen in the series. The symbol is on all of the computers and phones shown during the show, and are obviously directly marketing the Apple brand without making the support too blatant. Many of the shows also have drinks and food that could be directly associated with drinks and food that are found in everyday life. Another show uses a similar tactic of changing the name of the show props to make them seem more accessible to audiences that have some economic power (in this case, children have some power over their parents).

All of these examples made me think about the product the shows were promoting, and therefore, in essence, did their job. However, I feel that it's somewhat underhanded to feed kids these messages without being entirely explicit. As teenagers, most people have the knowledge to separate what one needs from what one is being told they need; however, I feel that children are more gullible to the messages that the media is sending. The "explicit" advertising is influencing their behavior.

Culture Jamming and the Uncanny

http://www.gorelets.com/uncanny/tag/culture-jamming/

Dream & Symbolism

Please blog about one of the following:

Have you ever had a dream featuring a character, actor, personlity or plotline that is from the media? Did the presence of the media element change or alter how you experienced the dream?


Can you identify instances in the media in which symbolic or dreamlike imagery is used to enhance the story? How did this imagery move the story forward?

Can you identify an instance in which well-placed logos, symbolism or subliminal imagery in the media is meant to influence your behavior? How did it make you feel about the media you were watching?

Art & Propganda

An interesting article by Milton Glaser, the most influential American graphic designer, on art and propganda

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080310/glaser