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Mass Media documentary 2

So this afternoon I watched the second documentary, called The Cutting Edge, and this one was about the art of montage (cutting and editing film).  This too covered the history of montage in western cinema, with emphasis on Edwin S. Porter, D.W. Griffith, Lev Kuleshov, Dziga Vertov, Sergei Eisenstein, Leni Riefenstahl, ... continuing almost up to the present time (whereas yesterday's documentary on cinematography stopped at approx. 1990).

Prominent omission:  It ignores anything east of Europe.  Yesterday's documentary did the same, but I think it's a more serious omission if you're discussing cutting, because, in Japanese aesthetics, cutting is a highly developed concept that has been studied for centuries and has been applied across all art.  You'd expect a documentary on montage to at least mention the name of Yasujiro Ozu  :)

As long as we're discussing omissions, I should like to add that I wondered what yesterday's documentary, had it not ended around 1990, would have said about Lars von Trier's Dogme 95  :)

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Mass Media Documentary 1

So I just finished watching the first of the two documentaries we heard about last week.  It's called Visions of Light, and the link we got in class had a Russian(?) voice-over, and I don't speak Russian  :(  but fortunately I also found it here on YouTube.

It's a history of cinematography (as a craft and an art) from the very beginning up to the late eighties/early nineties.  Lovely visuals, of course  :)  Tomorrow I shall watch (and write about) the other documentary

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Finally, Film :)

Yesterday, at long last, we came to film  :)  chapter six in the book.  Keywords:  zoopraxiscope, persistence of vision, cinematographe, montage, nickelodeons, vertical integration, corporate independent studio, blockbuster mentality, theatrical films, and microcinema.  But here's the bigger deal:  We got two documentaries, one on lighting and one on cutting/editing, that we could watch.  There goes my weekend  :)  I'll write about each after I watch it.

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Mass Media, weekend update

So we got a list of keywords that we can use in our analyses of our music videos.

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Mass Media yesterday: Our stash of music videos :)

So we got a list of music videos that were significant in history, and the history of music videos covers 1920 to now, so I'm happy  :)  Plus I heard that we could use foreign language music videos!  This last thing, of course, sounded too good to be true, and, sure enough, there was a catch:  The small print says that, if we use a foreign language music video, then we must bring English translations of the lyrics  -_-  so, sure, I'll stay with Shia LaBeouf.

Oh, and one more thing:  We're allowed to quote YouTube comments in our paper  :)  so if anyone has yet to express their opinion on the Shia LaBeouf video, now would be a really good time  :)

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Mass Media yesterday

So we did chapter 15, hitting the following keywords: clandestine station, pirate broadcasters, indigenous stations, exogenous stations cultural imperialism; the "five concepts" of William Hatchens; programming, global village, and new world information order (these last three are outside the book's list of keywords).  Hatchens' five concepts are:  Western concept, development concept, revolutionary concept, authoritarian system, and communist system (this last on is, again, outside the book's list of keywords).

That was a mouthful of notes

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"Formation"

We watched Beyonce's "Formation" in Mass Media class yesterday and talked about what a paper on it might look like.   The discussion made me realize the paper might be easier if I picked a music video intended for little kids or something.  I'm staying with the Shia Labeouf song for now  :)  but I might change my mind in a couple of days.

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Mass Media yesterday (T Feb. 9)

So we had to read this, and we still have to read this.  Keywords yesterday:  kybernetikes (Plato), cibernetique (Ampere), cybernetics (Wiener), cybersyn (Beer), computation.

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Mass Media music video

So it's time to pick a music video for analysis  :)  the analysis is due the week before spring break, and there will be a second music video analysis after spring break.

For now, each of us needs to pick a music video (and bring it to class next Friday).  I think I'm going with this one  :)

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Mass Media blog entry 6

We did chapter 10 in class yesterday.  We hit the following keywords: internet, VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), World Wide Web, dataveillance, augmented reality (AR), cloud computing, network neutrality, and digital divide.

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