The Final Piece of Art!

After Annette found a new song for our video we were finally ready to release this beauty to the general public!

Enjoy!


BTW: When I win an Academy Award for 'outstanding supporting actor' I will mention you in my speech, Lauren :)

Week 9 - Response to content

What opportunities can you find for political participation via the internet. How many of the following can you achieve while sticking to your political beliefs?

    * Sign an e-petition.
    *  Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.
    *  What is Barak Obama up to today? Can you send him a message about the importance of freedom on the internet?
    * What are the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")?
    * What place does censorship have in a democracy?
    * When will the NBN get to your place? What are the benefits?
    *  Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are. Send one a message.
    *  Look up the Queensland or Australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament.
    * Let your local member know what you think about their last speech.


1. Sign an e-petition:

This could either be sent by printing out a copy  and scanning
it in with a signature or by just clicking on a e-petition. 

Whenever I'm back home in Norway I snowboard! So I tried to find a Snowboard petition that I could sign on to which included a topic that I believed in. I found the WAS petition against the IOC for how they are handling the qualifications for the 2014 Winter Olympics. Instead of letting the official TTR pro-tour decide who gets to qualify they are letting FIS controll and create their own qualification for halfpipe and other events. Wich basically means that the riders have to endure an even tighter schedule and would also have to sacrifice future TTR events (where you win the big $) for an extra FIS event.  
( http://www.tacky.no/skateboard/article/?id=113968)


2. Respond to a professional blogger at major news site.
http://news.blogs.cnn.com/2011/09/30/airstrike-killed-al-awlaki-yemeni-official-says/comment-page-1/#comment-870573 signed: AndreLindegaard


3.  What is Barak Obama up to today? Can you send him a message about the importance of freedom on the internet? 
Today he just delivered his annual "back to school" address. I found that out on his official twitter page and I could send him a message if I wanted to create a (free) twitter account, but I did not want to do that. (http://twitter.com/#!/BARACKOBAMA)


4. What are the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")?
The Australian Federal Labor Government has a ‘plan’ (since late 2007) to mandate that ISPs block adults' access to Internet content on a secret blacklist, compiled by a government agency, that the Government deems unsuitable for adults.”
http://libertus.net/censor/isp-blocking/au-govplan.html


5. When will the NBN get to your place? What are the benefits?
It's not expected on the Gold Coast any time soon. Though, it should be ready in 8 years at the maximum.
Benefits are: Have everyone connected to the same broadline like schools, workplaces and as well as families. Plus much faster speed, 100 times faster then normal households.
http://www.nbnco.com.au/


Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are. Send one a message.
    *  Look up the Queensland or Australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament.
    * Let your local member know what you think about their last speech.
Had NO idea how to do this! 

Week 9 - Tutorial Task: My Essay

I chose to do my essay on this question "Does the extensive use of computer/video games have an adverse impact on the health of young people. What are the most recent papers? Clarify what both sides of the argument claim and only then offer your reasoned opinion based on facts.


Since this is only a 1000 word essay I will to narrow down the amount of elements that I want to include:


1. Define modern society's youth as of the last couple of years


2. Define gaming and it's share/value it has to the general public


3. Then I will research facts that states in favor of that gaming do NOT have an impact on the health of young people.


4. Then I will research facts that states in favor of that gaming DO have an impact on the health of young people


5. To finish my essay I will search through my finds and then offer my reasoned opinion based on the facts I have discovered.

Gaming stereotype

Since I'm already doing a campaign on Australia and obesity in my PR class I figured it would be perfect to find out if online gaming does have a big impact on that exact problem. I also want to find out if online gaming has an impact on mental health as well. Several news sites have stated that 'the mass-murderer in the Norway massacre stated that he got an interest for shooting after playing Call of Duty' (one of the highest selling video game-franchises in the world). 


I love playing video games myself so I can't wait to start this essay! 

Week 8 - Response to content: Free Software

Free software, which to many is also known as open source software emerged in tandem with the Internet both in a technical and social form. The best way to understand free software in detail is to think about everything you use while on the computer. Like for example e-mail, MSN, Skype or Facebook. You could also look at it with a different perspective like identity thieves and privacy issues towards those free softwares. (Kelty, 2008) 

To much information...

What is free software? Free software is a software that can be used, studied, and edited without restriction, and which can be copied and redistributed in modified or unmodified form either without restriction, or with restrictions that only ensure that other people who receives can also do these things and that manufacturers of consumer-facing hardware allow user modifications to their hardware. Free software is generally available without charge, but can have a fee, such as in the form of charging for CDs or other distribution medium among other ways.


What is the difference between free software and open source software? The main difference is that by choosing one term over the other ("open source" or "free software") one lets others know about what one's goals are. "Open source is a development methodology; free software is a social movement." (Stallmann, 2002)










References: 
Christopher M. Kelty, "Two Bits: The Significance of Free Software", 2008
Richard M. Stallmann, "Free Software Free Society", 2nd edition, 2002.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software

Week 8 - Tutorial Task: Shooting with a Bad-Ass and some complications!

He looks Crazy!

After a hectic week of assignments and other s%@# I finally found a man worthy enough for the job as the "Bad-Ass" in our film. His name is Steve and he lives at my student facilities in Labrador. Steve is the nicest guy you can meet but he looks terrifying! The combination of complete baldness and tattoos everywhere can make the nicest guy look mad. We walked up to uni and shot our scenes and I bought him a beer for his efforts. It was a good deal for both of us. 

I met up with Annette and gave her the final scenes so she could include them in our final draft. She showed me what she had done so far and it looked great. She had really done an excellent job considering this was her first time ever editing a movie. 

What to do?

Our whole group met up in the tutorial to get some feedback on our current material and the news was not as good as we had hoped. It turned out that we could not use a song that Annette had used for the film and we could not use the official logos for Facebook, Twitter, Myspace etc. So what were we to do? Lauren said that we could e-mail the different companies and ask for their permission to use their logos. But since we are on a tight schedule we went for the easier route by removing the official logos and make our own, which turned out to be just as good. The last complication was the song; the song we had used was perfect for this movie but we couldn't use it. We tried to check out creative commons but couldn't find anything special so we all got homework to find a song that we could use without breaching any copyrights! 

Week 7 - Tutorial Task: More Movie Time!

It was a beautiful day for filming. I met up with Shae and Astrid outside the library, with my HD-camera in hand. We walked over to the bus stops and started to pick out the exact locations of where the filming would take place. We found a stairway where Shae and I were to have our extremely academic discussion about "how the game went last night". We shot that conversation from 100 different angles before we started focusing on the rest of the film which included Astrid's sexy entrance. Since our film is about communication gone wrong we needed a "bad guy" to include in the movie. Since none of us looks particularly scary I took on the task to find a person perfect for the part and have his scenes filmed until next week.

I had the perfect guy in mind!

We met up in the tutorial and showed Annette what we had so far, she liked it and had already figured out how to use iVideo so she was extremely enthusiastic about starting the editing process. Now I just have to find that bad-ass!

Week 7 - Response to content: Wikipedia is great!

Is Wikipedia useful? As a 100% reliable source the answer is no. But as a guiding tool and to get you basic information about certain things the answer is 100% yes!

Wiki will be the real deal in the future

Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.(link1) During the start of Wikipedia in the early 2000s a lot of false information was posted. But as Wikipedia grew bigger and stronger, as a part of the system, so did the security. Providing false information on well known people, famous occasions or happenings is much more difficult to do now than it used to be. This factors in that the bigger a company or an idea gets the more difficult it is to destroy or manipulate.
If you want to edit something on Wikipedia you have to go through their staff and almost 90% of the time they will reject your edit, (link2) unless it's helpful for the subject that you want to change. Because of the new restrictions it helps to build up more credibility for Wikipedia. Also on Wikipedia is a grade system for how reliable the information, about a certain incident or character, really is. There are also a grade system for the amount of indept information that is provided.

Wikipedia will always get you started but the bigger and stronger it gets it won't be long until Wikipedia will be all you need when looking for journal articles and reliable resources.


References listed first-last:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia (of COURSE)
http://www.melvinblog.com/2008/11/thought-hard-edit-wikipedia/

Week 6 - Tutorial Task: Movie time!

As a part of our assessment, or 8% of our total marks (according to Lauren), we were to form groups of four for an audio-visual project. The key of this assessment is that some of us, who don't have any experience with making short films, gets an opportunity to discover how easy it actually is to make a movie using computer software.

Ehhhhh... NO! 

I joined forces with two other Norwegians (Astrid & Annette) and the Australian king, known as Shae. The first thing we did was to pitch different ideas. I first wanted to make a trailer for a horror movie which involved facebook-hacking and murder... After calming down a bit Astrid came up with a great idea about a guy who saw a hot girl at school and wanted to contact her "the old fashioned way". We all pitched in different incidents that were to occur in the film and made a quick basic script, which included how and where we wanted to shoot the scenes and who was doing what.

Annette is editing the film since she has a Macbook Pro with iVideo (iVideo is one of the easiest editing software's to use according to our tutor). She had never used iVideo before but seemed very optimistic and enthusiastic about the assigned task. Astrid, Shay and yours truly were to meet up at uni the following week two hours before our New Com Tec tutorial to start shooting.

Week 6 - Response to Content: Cinema vs Torrents

Agree

After indirectly causing the death of CD-sales (Easley, 2005), piracy and peer-to-peer file sharing have started to seriously get on Hollywood and the film industry's nerves as well. Movies are no longer only available at the cinemas, on the TV-screens or on VHS/DVD/Blu-Ray. The Internet communities have created a way for us at home to download almost every movie within a week of its release at the theatres for no cost at all. The only price we have to pay is that the quality of the video and audio usually is abysmal. (But it's free so who cares, right??)

So is Hollywood affected by this the same way as the music industry was? The answer is yes and no.

Great attitude, Bart.

For the big Hollywood blockbusters (The Dark Knight, Harry Potter, Avatar, etc...) the Internet have more of a positive effect because since they are already highly anticipated movies the additional leaked information such as set pictures/videos and heavy discussion about the plot and so on, the hype for these movies gets even bigger than they were beforehand. Therefore people still want to see those movies on the premiere or during the first week of its release on the big screen. The yearly increase in ticket sales up until 2009 proves that there is still a lot of money to be made (link1) but the recent figures have shown that there is a slight decrease in 2011 which could possibly cause even more drama in the piracy debate. But so far the cinema operators and studio chiefs agreed on at least one cause: The movies haven't been very good this year. (Verrier & Fritz, 2011)

The negative aspect of movie piracy deflects on the smaller and less hyped/critically acclaimed movies. Movies with a smaller budget, less hype and negative reviews are easy victims for movie pirates. Instead of paying money to go see a movie people will rather wait until the movie is available online so it can be downloaded for free. Since there are no hype for that particular movie and the reviews have been average at best there are no reason for people to go see it when they can get it for free and in good quality a couple of months later.
This is a very negative effect that piracy has on the movie industry but it also forces the companies to throw away crappy movie ideas and focus more on the quality of the movie. If the quality is good people will pay to see it.

Look at "The King's Speech" for example. With a budget of 12 million dollar it made over 414 million dollars in theatres worldwide. It also won an academy award for best direction and best picture. (link2)

An opposite example of this is Walt Disney's "Mars Needs Moms" which made 39 million dollars worldwide on a budget of 150 million. A movie which yours truly (who is a huge Disney fan) haven't even heard of before this day. (link3)

                                                              It could use some hype...

Now maybe I should start looking for it online...




Reference list:


Robert F. Easley, Journal of Business Ethics, 2005, pg. 163-168, Springer.
Richard Verrier & Ben Fritz, Los Angeles Times, March 30th, 2011 (link) 


Websites in order of first-last:
http://www.the-numbers.com/market/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_King's_Speech
http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/gallery/movie-report-card-10-biggest-205951#1