Blog #9: That's when I decided to break it.

I found myself sitting in Ferney's office. He was looking at me expectantly. I had to make a decision. Photography class or Media? I had had my heart set on photography since grade 9, but things had changed and I found myself seriously debating the issue. After talking it out and thinking it over I decided on the media course. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do in university, but I figured media might be a little more beneficial than photography.

So I changed my courses, not entirely sure how I felt about the whole thing. But I figured I would give the class a chance. Ms. Jeppesen was the teacher, I had had her in grade 9 art and had no problems with her, it was an open course so I wasn't expecting that big of a work load either.

Once the class began I was a little surprised at how much the course covered. There was also quite a bit of work. None of it was ever particularly difficult, some of it was even fun; especially the group projects. I enjoyed getting together with my group and getting things done.

Throughout the course we learned not only terms and the evolution of media, but also how to critically analyze things that we are exposed to every day. Even things such as commercials and biased in the news, things that I had never really taken much notice to before. It made me much more aware of the world around me and gave me the ability to create well-informed opinions on what I was looking at.

Using all of this information the class was told to write blogs, which I found myself enjoying. I liked being able to give my opinion and personalizing my blog was actually pretty fun.

There was rarely a class where I had nothing to do, and even though sometimes the discussions were a little slow they were normally pretty entertaining. They were even more fun when we got a little side tracked from the actual work that had to be done and we ended up talking about the Cancer Bats or watching Haley's games of hangman or Vince causing small explosions at the pencil sharpener or Rachael, Justine and I playing games on our iPods.

Time well spent, as far as I'm concerned.

Despite the fun stories I heard from the photography class, I was very pleased with taking media. It was a lot of fun, even the projects and trips were awesome. Despite the fact that I still have an exam to write and I'm not sure of my final mark, I'm not too worried about it and would definitely tell anyone considering it to take the class.

Blog #8: Write it, cut it, paste it, save it. Load it, check it, quick - re write it.

At first, creating a music video seemed like it would be a whole lot of fun, and it was. I just didn't realize all of the work that would have to go into it to make sure that everything looked the way it should. It took a lot of time and effort to make sure that the timing was correct and everything was synced to the music the way I wanted it to be.

I managed to get some really good video footage and finding pictures usually wasn't too difficult. My biggest issue came with putting everything to the correct timing of the music. I used movie maker to put it all together and I would do small sections at a time. When I was sure that portion was synced I would go to the next one. However, when I would go back to the beginning I found a lot of it was out of sync. When I went back to check it again it would be in sync, but every time I started it from the beginning it would change again. This caused some problems for me.

Just a few problems *insert sarcasm here*

Another problem was that in the live footage, the singer sang at a different pace than the recording of the song. The timing wasn't too far off though, so that wasn't as bad.

However, the pictures and the other video footage that I used ended up working out really well. I was really happy with the way it turned out overall, despite the small timing issue. Next time I might give myself a little more time to create the actual music video.

Here's a look at my finished project:




While at Much Music I got to see a lot of behind the scenes things that I didn't realized happened during a live show. I was surprise at how small the actual studio was, it looks so different on television than when you're actually there. It surprised me how they rehearsed things before they did them live on tv as opposed to just going on with it.

I was also surprised that the producers of the show were so heavily involved. They told us when to applaud and when to cheer and encouraged us to always look happy and excited. They also stood right behind the camera to direct how things should be going and when certain discussions should be wrapped up and what should be addressed next.

That fits right in with the idea that all media is a construction. It's all made to look a certain way to the audience viewing it. The producers of the media have a message that they want to convey and they do so all of the time, even when you don't realize it. The media is produced for an audience and that's something that's always kept in mind. That is why things have to look a certain way, they want it to look good to the audience.

Speaking of good looking...

This changes the way I view live tv. I didn't think so much would go into making sure it looked a certain way. Also, I didn't realize they would run through things first in order to make it look a certain way when the show is actually live. It sort of takes away from the whole idea of a live television show.

Blog #7: Come on, come on the camera's on.

I think the images used in used in Calvin Klein’s campaign for jeans definitely pushed the boundaries of child pornography. The ads picture young looking models in a very suspicious looking room. In the commercials there is a man behind the camera asking them a variety of questions, at some points you feel almost awkward watching.

These images do qualify as pornography because they show boys and girls under the age of 16 portraying sexual characteristics. You could also say there is an essence of male dominance because in a few of the ads there are young women in front of the camera and the man you cannot see is giving them directions on what he wants them to do.

In my opinion, these commercials remind me of videos you would see in the news because they were confiscated from some child molester’s basement. Just watching them makes me uncomfortable, it feels like they were not filmed for people to see. Even the models themselves seem a little awkward in them and it gives that feeling to the whole commercial.

The ads were meant to draw attention to the product being sold and they definitely accomplished that. Whether good or bad, attention is still attention. There is no doubt that the ads and the controversy surrounding them made the jeans more popular than they would have been otherwise.

Klein does claim that the ads were intended to “convey the idea that glamour is an inner quality that can be found in regular people in the most ordinary setting; it is not something exclusive to movie stars and models” however, I think that message was lost in the way that it was presented. The way that that ad could be viewed was left way too open for negative interpretation. There were so many ways that this message could be conveyed in a way which would not be viewed as pornography.

I think it was a good thing that the ads were pulled. They sent across the wrong image to young people viewing the ads. The commercials crossed a line that isn’t meant to be crossed, especially when selling a simple pair of jeans.

Blog #6: Why don't you stand up? Be a man about it.

1. Attitude is Everything
-this ad suggests that power is what matters most.
2. The Caveman Mentality
-pirates have a reputation for being aggressive and masculine, and that is used to help sell the product in the ad.
3. The New Warriors
-this ad uses athletes to portray toughness and masculinity by saying that athletes "battle".
4. Muscles and the Ideal Man
-this ad suggests how every man should look or aspire to look like, even though it's an unrealistic body image.
5. Heroic Masculinity
-this ad portays the hero as someone who doesn't show a lot of emotion and uses violence to solve problems.

Blog #5:Campaign for Real Beauty

This was one of the commercials launched by Dove in their campaign for real beauty which began in 2004. These ads all featured real women, not models, to sell Dove's products. The whole goal of the campaign was to make real women feel beautiful by seeing people like themselves on tv instead of the thin, photoshopped images they are exposed to every day.

I think so much focussed is placed on body image because our culture has become so depedent on the media. We've all become addicted to the internet, tv and movies. We're also so focussed on what's popular and what isn't. We want everything to "look good". Everyone just wants to fit in and if the media says being stick thin is "good" then that is what the rest of society is going to believe because there really isn't anyone to tell them otherwise.

The media definitely tells us what is ideal and what isn't. We're exposed to almost all of the time and if the majority of what you're shown are these model-like girls then that is what you are going to think is normal, even though you rarely see a girl like that walking down the street. Because this is normal, we are led to believe that we should strive to look this way no matter how impossible that is in reality.

Women's bodies tend to become more like objects in our society. Even in the past women were put into big, fancy dresses with corsets to give them the ideal tiny waist. In other cultures women aren't even allowed to show off their body. I also remember reading an article on one culture where they actually find the female body more attractive as they age naturally. Of course, in a society like ours that seems so far fetched. Every day were are shown advertisements for products that will make us appear younger.

I think men are put under the same pressures, even though more attention is focussed on women and how they are portrayed in the media. They are supposed to be thin and muscular in order to be considered attractive. This is the ideal image and it is an image that some just cannot achieve no matter how badly they try.

Advertisers and other media outlets control the images that we see. One of the ways that advertisers sell their products is to get the buyer into thinking that "if I use this product, I'll look as good as they do". They are in complete control and even go as far as editting their already beautiful models into looking a certain way.

I think teenage girls and boys are at equal risk to feel this pressure. There are ideal female and male images in the media and there is no reason that both genders shouldn't feel pressured to look a certain way. Teens these days have so much access to so many images of what the rest of society deems "ideal" and they are faced with the pressure to fit in on a daily basis.

The reason I think that Dove chose to air their commercial during the Super Bowl is because those ads become seen by so many people. The Super Bowl is one of the most watched events on television and by playing their ad in front of so many people, it gives their message a chance to reach a larger audience than they would at any other time.

Some people may be critical of the Dove campaign because not all people are capable of dealing with change. The people who are in charge of advertising for other companies might worry about the competition from Dove. Also, the people who have spent time and money trying to achieve this ideal image might protest because they have put so much effort into trying to look the way that society has told them they should look.

I think it's wrong for advertisers to try to sell this idea of "ideal beauty" to people, especially teens and younger children. People deal with enough struggles in life, the least they should be able to do is be comfortable in their own skin without worrying whether or not they'll fit in with everyone else.

Blog #4: She's too preoccupied with 1985.

Our documentary covered the decade of the 80s. Everything about that decade was over the top and bright and crazy and we wanted to capture all of that in our documentary. The first thing we needed to do was brainstorm what we were going to talk about under each category. I was away the first day of planning but Rachael and Justine came up with some great ideas. After talking and browsing the internet we got some pretty good ideas and started to think about how we could make it all work.

Once we decided what we were going to talk about in each part we basically just went to the internet to see what information we could get about a bunch of different things. Some things were harder to find information for than others, but we managed to get what we needed. We also decided what videos we were going to use along with what we filmed ourselves. We decided that Rachael and I would speak from the present and Justine would act like she was a host on MTV in the 80s.

Filming wasn't too difficult. Once we decided where we were going to film and Justine got her outfit together we were ready to go. Because we already knew what we were going to talk about for each part we simply wrote out a quick script so we could memorize what we wanted to say and then we filmed. We filmed small bits at a time so there wasn't a whole lot to remember at once.

We didn't encounter many problems filming, the main thing was getting the backdrop for Justine to stay up on the wall, I was afraid it was going to fall on her head while she was talking. Then we also had to figure out which order we were going to do each section in. We didn't want to have some of the less interesting topics at the end, we wanted to keep people entertained.

And who could possibly resist the awesomeness that is jazzercise?
Of course we messed up our lines a few times (which can be seen in the blooper reel) but other than that everything went relatively smoothly.

Once we had all the footage that we were filming ourselves we took the photos and videos we had compiled already and Justine began putting most of it together on movie maker. While she put our footage together along with some of the other videos, Rachael and I worked with pictures and put them all together with subtitles and narration.

When that was finished we put everything onto Justine's computer and added narration where it was needed along with music. Downloading the videos we needed took a bit of time because the program we used only let us do so many per day, and we needed to decide what clip of the video we wanted to use because we really only needed a couple minutes at the most.

After we cut the videos down and organized everything it was all put to music. Then Rachael did the intro and Justine was left to finish it off. I revised the story board so it matched up with what we did and did the works cited page.

We were pretty much finished and at school Justine surprised us with some awesome footage of her little sister. With just a little fine tuning we were all finished and I was really happy with how it turned out.

I would have put the finished product here, but after 4 hours of Blogger uploading it it told me that there was an error and to try again later. I doubt I'll be trying again. It was kind of an epic failure.
However, I feel like I shouldn't leave you with nothing, and therefore I'll let you enjoy this video right here...



Don't even lie. You laughed. I know you did.

After watching the rest of the class's documentaries I was pretty impressed with what people did. Most were very well done as far as what they covered and how they put everything together. I think that people should have taken into consideration the distance from which they filmed people speaking. Sometimes it was hard to hear someone because they were so far away, but that never happened throughout anyone's documentary.

I liked a lot of the music that people used, as well as the video clips. Most of those were really well done. The only thing was that some people, when showing pictures, didn't have any music or narration and I think that they should have so it wasn't just dead silence. I also think what people chose to film was done well, there was a lot of creativity.

There were also no documentaries that were too long. I didn't feel like any of them were dragging on and on and on. They were all very interesting, even when it came to topics that aren't necessarily as interesting such as architecture.

Overall I thought they were all really well done. I didn't have any major complaints about them. They all looked like some planning and thought had gone into them, which is important. It was really cool watching all of them.

Blog #3: Hey! Hey! You! You!

After listening to the songs “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” by the Rubinoos and “Girlfriend” by Avril Lavigne I will say that the songs are not exactly the same, however, there are some striking similarities. I listened to both songs from beginning to end at first nothing really jumped out at me. I didn’t think there was much that was the same.

However, when the chorus rolled around one can’t help but notice that they sound very, very similar. While listening to the chorus of “I Wanna Be YourBoyfriend” you can practically sing along with the lyrics for “Girlfriend”. You can easily listen to the Rubinoos’ song by clicking here and skip ahead about 40 seconds into the song for the chorus.

Hey, You,
I wanna be your boyfriend.
Trying to say I wanna be your number one.
Hey, You, I wanna be your boyfriend.
Gonna make you love me before I’m done.

Compared to Avril’s:

Hey! Hey! You! You!
I don’t like your girlfriend.
No way, no way, I think you need a new one.
Hey! Hey! You! You!
I could be your girlfriend.

In response to the law suit Avril says that it’s ridiculous that the claim is based on five words from the chorus, however, that isn’t the case. As most can tell from listening, it isn’t just the words that are similar. The rhythm and tempo are practically identical. You can easily sing either chorus with the other song and it would fit without a problem. There’s a lot more to Tommy Dubar’s case than just five similar words.

I do think copyright has been broken. The chorus to “Girlfriend” is the hook, it’s the most memorable part of the song and what makes it so catchy. Even if the rest of the song doesn’t sound all too similar, at least to me, that’s the most important part of the song and it sounds like it’s been taken straight from the Rubinoos’ song.


Just think about it.

I don’t think this will greatly affect Avril’s career. Some people might stop listening to her music but overall people who like her music will continue to buy it and make her songs popular. It’s like the instance with the Huey Lewis song “I Want a New Drug” and the Ghostbusters theme. Even though they are practically the same song it didn’t stop people from watching Ghostbusters and making the movie, along with its theme song, so very popular.

This may, however, play a part in Avril’s image. People might view her as dishonest and now the word “plagiarism” is associated with her name whether she is proven guilty or innocent. It also inspires videos such as this one:


Videos like this one certainly don’t help Avril Lavigne’s case and it doesn’t help her image either. It questions how much talent she actually possesses. It’s one thing to be inspired by songs; it’s another thing to rip off another artist’s work. It seems only time will tell whether or not this claim of plagiarism will greatly affect her career.