This project evolves from the initial brainstorming group sessions held during class time on how to promote a viral message aimed to entice audiences to feel in a predetermined way. Those sessions turned out posters and Facebook groups. More importantly they allowed you the opportunity to experience the frustrations -and joys--of dealing with creative development within a group. All your projects were well thought out and quite interesting. They prove that to develop an idea for a advertising campaign does not require fine arts skills but a good pair of hemispheres on top of your shoulders. What is most interesting is that the exercises provided the space to explore -and wonder-- our conceptions on how messages are delivered effectively -or not-. The posters were also designed in such a way that no product or brand were focalized. They were about capturing emotion. The following project’s main goal is to promote an awareness of a condition that is undeniably yours already and that will remain a crucial part of your identity for all the years to come: to be an Ole
What to do: Based on the radio campaigns of “Dos Equis” brand of beer, and particularly the commercials develop under the concept of "The most interesting man in the world" produce an audio commercial -AS A GROUP-- to promote the concept of “being an OLE” following the same conceptual framework and copy style of said brand.
Each group MUST turn in a number of individual commercials equal to the members in the group. Each commercial must be produced individually but with the assistance of all the members AND IT MUST BE RELATED TO YOUR ORIGINAL CONCEPT from the previous design/advertising exercise.
How to present it: MP3 FILE (ONLY) or PODCAST produced on campus delivered via the student shared folder for this course or via email if the product is the link to a podcast.
Here are the audio commercials produced by the students of Media160 [ Mass Media Foundation] students during Fall 2010 (alphabetical order)
During class time the concept of “seamless advertising” was introduced as a very effective way of promoting brands or products by association with the character of a given movie, TV series, book, etc. To cancel the possibility of having the viewer dismiss the ad is not the ultimate goal but to have him or her think about the product -through association- in a very particular and controlled way.
What to do: Using your assigned chapters from HBO’s “Sex and the City: The Movie”(Gross revenue $415,253,641) construct an audio file -could be a podcast-- that identifies and analyzes not only what could be defined as seamless advertisements but the cultural codes around said announcements. What is the movie telling the audience about the cultural values, ethics, morals, etc. For your analysis reference at least TWO texts that had been used during the semester.
How to present it: MP3 FILE (ONLY) or PODCAST produced on campus delivered via the student shared folder for this course or via email if the product is the link to a podcast.
Lots of discussions and equal number of subjects had been flying around the room during Media Studies 160 this Fall 2010. You have heard lectures ranging from virtual reality to techniques to create a mass mediated reality. It is now your turn to define, as a final examination for this class, what your position is about the contents you have been exposed to as well as those you have explored.
What to do? What you have to do now is to produce a podcast (or what call an aural-essay) describing your position about the role of Mass Media Technology, the Cyberspace, Advertising, and Branding in the construction of Reality and the Sense of Trust as presented during class time.
You may use as many references to the texts analyzed during class time. You have to keep in mind that by "text" I mean any "intellectual fabric" constructed with one or many codes and expressed through any media such as: video, audio, print, interactive, etc
How to present it MP3 FILE (ONLY) or PODCAST produced on campus delivered via the student shared folder for this course or via email if the product is the link to a podcast.
ORAL PRESENTATION. DRESS UP FOR A PUBLIC PRESENTATION.
When? Thursday, Dec. 16, 9:00-12:00 pm
(please notice the extra hour and schedule your activities accordingly)
Final Step:
Listen to A MINUMUM OF TWO aural essays from your classmates and provide a brief critical response [IN THIS BLOG] to each one of the chosen ones making a reference to the name of the author.
On Friday October 22nd we watched Mark Neale's documentary called: William Gibson, No Maps for these Territories. It is now on reserve at the Saint Olaf library. In this documentary Gibson talks about the observations that influenced him to write his novel Neuromancer. Neuromancer is important to Mass Media because --among many other things-it presented the coined term "cyberspace" and a description of a futuristic society where electronic technology had dismantled reality...
Our debate will take on Wednesday, November the third. This date will provide of ample time to cover the necessary materials. You will have to either listen to or read William Gibson's Neuromancer and to become familiar with it in terms of research and scholarly commentary as much as possible. Here is a link to a site that offers both the audio book version of the novel read by the author and an on line full text of it. The referred site is not an official --or formal-source of information so it may not be available in a near future.
Please start by reading the following article (available through the moodle server)
by Claire Sponsler Contemporary Literature Vol. 33, No. 4 (Winter, 1992), pp. 625-644. Published by: University of Wisconsin Press.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1208645
Then read/listen to the book, and finally make sure you DO watch the video which I made available at the Rolvaag Library. It is under course reserve for Media160a and you may check it out for up to four hours to watch it.
Once you have covered the material in its entirety you are expected to provide a question for debate using the "comment" section on this blog. Your question is due on the midnight of Monday November first. The debate/conversation/discussion will revolve around those questions plus others that may derive from them.
Any other question regarding this task please send it via email to [email protected]
As of today, 17 million people had looked at one face change over time.
Why? What do we learn from watching this viral video? What does he?
80 million people watch an electric guitar solo. Does he still play? Who is he?
116 million people watch a Japanese girl use a pop as shower and call it "an experiment." What is she doing nowadays? Is she married, famous, or even alive?
238 million people watched Jolly bite her brother's finger and honestly laugh about it. How old is he now? Are they aware of having been part of a public consciousness lured by modern news?
What is the point? One could argue that there is at least one when a piece of information is added to the soup: YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and now operates as a subsidiary of Google. It could be argued that we do serve the function of content providers for the google electronic platform however we do not perceive ourselves as such. Working for free is not such a good thing in today's Westeren society. Therefore, there must be some persuassion involved. Are we then the mere carrier of the message -a medium--or are we the generator of the messages that feed the information flow? Are we luring or being lured? Both practices are necessary for a healthy society development.
Luring, enticing, promoting, persuading. All these related terms connote the passing of messages from point A to point B. A message carries one or many meanings that activate a system of events designed to fulfill a goal. There cannot be a message without meaning in the same fashion that there cannot be a medium without message. The goal of the following exercise is to provide you with the tools and the space for you to create a viral video message as a learning experience conducive to a better understanding of Mass Media and the flow that keeps the gargantuan contraption we call society today.
Learning by experience is not only essential for the development of your critical thinking skills but you'll accumulate stories to tell. You experience will turn into a primary source for the construction of a solid knowledge-base. According to psychologist and educational theorist Jean Piaget “Every acquisition of accommodation becomes material for assimilation, but assimilation always resists new accommodations.” The material he refers to is not found only through the reading of textual constructs but through the implementation of practical exercises. I would like you then to exercise your abstract thinking prowess both individually and as a group to design and implement an advertising campaign that will aim to become a viral message. Is that possible? Certainly so. Is it difficult? Very much so that is why I think it will be enticing to all of you. Here is a more elaborated brief that what I introduced during class-time.
BRIEF:
Design a campaign to promote an emotion, an idea, a concept, or an action that helps invigorate students's perception of space, time, and their status of Saint Olaf students across campus. The idea, designed as a team, must have no endorsement with any type of commercial product, brand, institution, political party, religious view, or social issue. The campaign you will design and implement as a team must be conceived, analyzed, crafted and implemented inside our campus -it may expand to include the city of Northfield and Carleton College campus if need be--and its ultimate goal is to attract people towards a viral video uploaded to the YouTube social platform. Said video will be produced in-house (in-class really) by each group using basic digital production and post-production tools available in DC100.
There are five groups and their "constituents" are as follows:
G1 Abby, Alice, Julie, Kaiya, Juan Fernando.
G2 Erik, Chris, Greta.
G3 Claire, Tex, Kabao, Katie.
G4 Steepeh, Wesley, Ben, Alora.
G5 Adam, Max, Amy, Konomi, MIchelle.
FIRST TASK: Find out the skills of each group member, talk about a concept/draft for your video piece. Decide who is going to be the team's spokesperson. First initial concept/idea and spokesperson definition due by midnight, Thursday October 21st posted as a comment in this blog's entry. More tasks to follow, stay tuned.
thanks again for a good -very busy--weekend. I think the flow of information is becoming smoother as we move along the semester. The number of issues I'd like to cover is always too high in comparison to the number of assigned hours for this class. I will continue to streamline the class to make the best time out of each session. I am open to suggestions and criticism about the teaching approach. Please feel free to contact me via email if you have any idea that you think will improve the way the contents of this class are delivered. Please send your suggestions to [email protected]. Your reading of these lines is being recorded via your computer video camera for training and quality purposes, please do nothing, it is too late already.
This is your task. Due date: Friday, October 21st midnight.
TASK:
Please watch the following video. This is the work of contemporary artist Alison Jackson and her way of constructing reality based on perception of reality in media.
Based on the last discussions on the construction of reality in media and through media please answer the following questions by posting a comment with them.
According to your perspective, and based on the video embedded above, write a comment with your thoughts/observations about the role of contemporary Art practices and the use of Contemporary Art as a form of Advertising distributed via Mass Media.
If you have to select a medium to construct a non-truth -as opposed to a lie--which one would it be? Why?
Please notice that there will be another blog entry introducing the practical exercise you'll engage in as a group to answer question 3 included in the printed sheet distributed in class.
Thank you very much for a short-lived discussion. I think the bingo worked somehow but it must be perfected along the way. It has potential though, don't you think.
To wrap this introductory weeks and move on please REFLECT on the following thought expressed by Pope Pius XII who was, according to Marshal McLuhan, deeply concerned about the progress and expansion of contemporary media. On February 17, 1950, he said:
"It is not an exaggeration to say that the future of modern society and the stability of its inner life depend in large part on the maintenance of an equilibrium between the strength of the techniques of communication and the capacity of the individual's own reaction."
Based on Pope Puis XII's quote and of YOUR understanding/interpretation of the seminal McLuhan quote of "The Medium is the Message" provide a closing comment on the materials we have walked through so far.
Thanks to Columbia Pictures promotion and advertising team we had a chance to attend a pre-screening of The Social Network, a film directed by David Fincher. The plot tells the story of how Facebook came to be. Facebook is currently the most popular social network avaible in cyberspace with more than half a billion registered users by October 2010 according to its site's statistics. The movie focuses on the controversy surrounding the creation of Facebook with special emphasis on who came with the original idea while it presents an interpretation of the spychological profile of its co-founder Mark Zuckerberg who is -according to the movie--the youngest billionarie in history. Here is a trailer:
Here is an article you would like to read along with a couple of videos and references that are relevant to the discussion.
In addition to reviewing all the material related to Facebook our first discussion will use other theoretical sources for critical analysis and commentary. These sources are meant to provide a theoretical framework where to center the questions that will follow.
The first text -and its derived text--is authored by a key name in Media Studies, one that will be hovering your scholarship througout the development of your major. The name is Marshall McLuhan who was a Canadian educator, philosopher and scholar who coined what could be arguably defined as the obscure aphorism: "The medium is the Message" which debuted in his book published in 1964 and available via moodle and later on published as a co-joint project with designer Quentin Fiore under the name of Understanding Media, the Extension of ManThe Medium is the Message: An Inventory of Effects [1968] also available to all of you via moodle or upon direct request to -alvarezg [at] stolaf [dot] edu-
The second text deal with the concept of copyright and the evolution of this principle and its legal implication based on technology progress. The name of the text is Free Culture: The Nature and Future of Creativityand the author is professor Lawrence Lessig who is co-founder of Creative Commons, a site devoted to help artist and culture producers stand for their rights in terms of legal ownership of -to a certain extent- intangible products such as Facebook, Napster, Twitter, digital photos, etcetera. For this particular discussion please cover only CHAPTER 2: MERE COPYISTS.
SIDE NOTE: Interestingly enough the official site of the Creative Commons is currently down. I may venture to especulate a possible hack-attack on it. We'll see later on. Here is the official link to download the book for free:
http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf
For those runners, dreamers, and other forms of learning creatures who have managed to break free from printed text you may download the free audio version of the book here:
Finally, the last two other sources that all of you must complete before our fist discussion are these:
Here is a clip of the documentary we are watching in class called The Persuaders published by PBS. Take in consideration that you may find more clips in YouTube.
1. After intellectually walking through all the information, lectures, and all AV supporting materials about Facebook and basic communication principles how has your position changed in respect to Facebook and how would you explain it to your 92 year old grandma who owns an iPod touch HD when she asks you for advice about signing up for an account?
[keep in mind that you will have to reply with a commentary/question to at least one of the responses]
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