The Screening Room

After touring a movie studio it only seems right that I create another movie review.
Editor, director and photographer, Shawn Christensen produced a short film titled brink, which was a production of Fuzzy Logic Pictures. The film was one of the top movies on display at the Tribeca Film Festival. The short films portreys a man in his early to mid 20's who has fallen in love with his best friend. He writes her a note professing his love and drops it in her mail box. As he awaits her replay we realize that the earth is losing gravity and every one soon will perish. There are short clips of film one entails african american men playing basketball and the ball is simply hovering over the ground. I feel that this symbolizes their life hanging in the balance and the final loss of gravity will be their end. I also feel that there is another message intertwined in this short story, which symbolizes how love can defy gravity. At the very end, the man and his best friend meet on a roof and she professes her love back to him, they kiss for the first time. Then after they decide that they never want to leave each others side (all in non-verbal communication) they tie their legs together in hopes that it will eternally bond them, gravity or no gravity.

The Warner Brothers Studio Tour

Today I am taking another virtual field trip, the Warner Brothers Studio. I'm super excited! One of the first of many departments housed on the studio lot is the Property Department where over 10 million props are stored. another department includes their Warner brothers museum, which displays the Harry Potter sorting hat, any batmen mask every used, a few wax figurines and many many more items. A bright and shinny glass case houses all of Warner Brothers Oscars. The gigantic studio is located on 110 acres and houses over 29 different sound stages. The lot also includes Stage 16 on of the tallest sound stages in the world. This stages has been used to film movies like Jurassic Park and Ghostbusters, among many others. Warner brothers also has an entire museum dedicated to their picture cars. These cars include the Ghostbuster car, the bat mobile (the tumbler), which holds a Chevy 350 engine. Also the General Lee, made famous by the Dukes of Hazard, along with the Scooby Doo Mystery Mobile. Needless to say this studio is of epic proportions, considering the numerous amount of movies, television shows, and talk shows that have been produced and recorded there.

The Weather Channel

Today I am going to be taking a virtual tour of The Weather Channels new HD studio and work space. The new station is state of the art and environmentally friendly. This New Building includes at least four different rooms, the anchor room, the interview corner, a side room and the work desks. This new HD Weather Channel building is very functional with an open floor plan. A circular anchor desk located smack in the middle,  swivels 360 degrees, which allows numerous options for camera angles. The studio also includes a green screen that is lit internally and swivels 180 degrees and functions for both the interview corner and the side room. There several massive HD television displays and they are very impressive. The Weather Channels ability to purchase all of the building materials needed with in a 500 mile radius helped to support the local communities. It also includes a very nice set of work desks made out of all natural environmentally friendly products. All together I feel the The Weather Channel has made several good advancements and they can only go up from here. I feel that The Weather Channel building compared to the New York Times building is minuscule. I adore the New York Times building because of its architectural and artistic layout.

New York Times Tour

Today I am going to be taking a video tour of the New York Times recently opened building. The are a World ranked newspaper and they deserve a building to match. The building is quite large and archetypal. The lobby has three different entrance points and is has an atrium garden. The entire building is almost entirely transparent. the purpose of this is to break down the boundary between the restless world and the newsroom, creating and unspoken connection between the city and its paper. The newsroom and the cafeteria have a very very open floor plan connected by a series of steps.the newsroom is surrounded by buildings on both sides. The cafeteria was built to give the effect of a magic carpet that is flying across the city. The building also has  an amazing 360 panorama view of the entire city from the top, lobby, newsroom and cafeteria. This new building is beautifully constructed with much meaning hidden behind the architecture. It almost speaks to the public.

Record Studio Tours

Hola,

Today in my Mass Communications class we are taking online virtual tours of digital recording studios and comparing them with the current music industry. There are 4 studios on the tour list, the first being Blue Jay Recording Studios located in Carlisle, Massachusetts. It is a high class, high tech recording studio designed to be tranquil and placed out of the way regular foot traffic. Blue Jay Recording Studios is a mix of simplistic and modern design and has a very large floor plan. They have recorded artists like Yo-Yo Ma, Areosmith and Billy Joel. The next on the list is Soho Studio in London. They are an average sized studio located in England and they cater to comfort and quality. They have recorded artists like Akon, Kiley Minogue, and Cinematic Orchestra.
The third on our list for tours is Radio Ready Studio in Virginia Beach, VA. They are located on the beach and have great equipment to work with. Although it is not exactly a high class studio it has recorded for artists like, the Wu-Tang Clan, Universal Studios, and Def Jam. Last but not least on our tour is Pachyderm Recording Studio located in the woods of Cannon falls, Minnesota. The studio has many amenities which include a guest house, a pool, a sauna, over 5000 sq. ft. 5 bedrooms and a recording studio that has multi purpose rooms. They have recorded every one from Nirvana to Mudvayne. I would assume that I learned many new things about the recording industry including that not many studios are located in popular venues. most are of the beaten path.

Hope you found this helpful,


Brooke

State of Media

Hello again everyone,

Today I want to talk about the state of the media, and the subjects main reporting website http://www.stateofthemedia.org/. This website details all the main mediums for media. Each link takes you to a basic case study for; Special reports, Newspapers, Online Media, Network TV, Cable TV, Local TV, Magazines, Audio, and different ethnic media. This website details a case by case basis on the state of the media as it is today. It also shows various statistics and data from the different media groups. This website helps determine where the media is today and were it may end up in the future. I liked this website a  lot because it lets you see the differentiation within the media subgroups. I  feel that no matter what medium,   media will always be a major influence. I for one and proud to be able to say I am an advertising major, because I  feel that media has a very bright future.Check out the website for yourself.

Leave comments......

Brooke

Ethical Decisions

Today in my Mass Communications class we are talking about ethical decisoin making and what all entails good ethics. On the website NewsU.org there is a self taught course titled Introduction to Ethical Decision Making. There are many subcatagories in the course and it may take the average user about 3 hours to complete it. Some of the subcatagories that I learned about were; Accuracy and fairness, Cnflicts of interest, Deception, Diversity, Online ethics, Photojournalism, Plagerism, Privacy, and Source/reporter relationship. One of the catagories that I found interesting and learned a lot about was online ethics, becuase almost every thing that I do in my day to day life is online. This section of the course states:

"Online journalists face many of the same ethical challenges that their brethren in newspapers, TV and radio struggle with. But there are ethical issues unique to the online world that confront everyone from traditional mainstream journalists who have moved online to the thousands of independent bloggers who practice various forms of journalism."

On this section there are three articles pertaining to online ethics; On the Ethics of Linking: Indianaplois Story, The Begginging of the End of the Ad Hoc Era, Helter Skelter No More: A Revolving GuideBook for Online Ethics. I personally enjoyed the last article which states the different precautions that you should take when conductiong activity on the internet. I believe that individuals should pay more attention that good ethics. I feel that in todays fast paced world sometimes people can forget to hold a standard of ethics while conducting business or social networkign online.

See you soon,

Brooke