Long Live

It's been awhile

2012-01-15T11:32:00.001-08:00

It's been awhile since I've updated this blog; I guess I'm going to use it from now on for school-related things. At the Ann Arbor campus last year, I had to create this blog for a different communications class and that is what the header, layout, and other posts are from.

Learning about anything in the field of communication so far has been extremely interesting for me. And all of the classes I've taken seem to be forming a good base for whatever my future career will be in the media industry. I didn't know when I signed up for this News Writing class that it would relate so much to my current job as an editor of an online blog (AnythingDisney). "Citizen journalism"-- a new media in which citizens gather & report the news--- is finally putting a name on something that I've been doing as a hobby for years. Who knew that I was already involved in the next generation of news reporting?

And citizen journalism is highly profitable, many companies are more than willing to advertise on your page regardless of whether you have a degree or an affiliation with any news organization or company. It's drawn in my generation especially, who mostly look at television news as something their parents only watch, and newspapers as something that our grandparents read. Most of us don't trust the mainstream media, it makes much more sense to us to look to peers for our news. On Facebook people post links to interesting news stories and blogs, I have friends who regularly update news blogs, and let's face it, blogs do much more extensive coverage on issues than what the mainstream media sometimes focuses on.

For example, I couldn't go anywhere online last fall without hearing about the Occupy Wall Street movement, but whenever I turned on CNN, they were just blathering about Herman Cain or Michelle Bachman. I saw the video above posted and reposted online days before I saw it appear on TV. Citizen journalism puts the news in our hands, and we report and respond with what is relevant to us, especially when something is being neglected in the MSM.

The internet is obviously where the future of journalism lies, and blogging is only the beginning. Social media is rapidly evolving, and in the past year we witnessed multiple revolutions organize on Twitter and Facebook, and then succeed against all odds. Trending Topics on twitter are updated much faster than the news; earthquakes and other national disasters trend sometimes hours before the TV channels and days before newspapers.

(image: technorati.com)

We are taking the news into our own hands and connecting instantly, internationally with each other. Will TV news be able to keep up? I'd have to say the chances are bleak, especially with how much television in general is changing because of the internet, Netflix, and streaming. But that's a subject for a another post...

Product Placement in Movies

2010-11-11T07:39:00.000-08:00

Product placement and advertising in movies is abundant in today's movie industry. Advertising companies work with movie producers to insert certain products subtly (or sometimes not-so-subtly) into many motion pictures. The protagonist drinking a can of Coke; a Macintosh computer with the Apple logo prominently displayed directly in the frame; teenaged Bella using her Nokia phone to text: all of these are examples of product placement in movies. Making sure that the company logos are displayed is a huge responsibility of set designers and producers, because if the product is not displayed where the audience can see the brand of the product, then advertising companies are not happy and the movie studio loses money.

Here's a link to a video montage of various product placements in movies: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDsqySu0vMA

Long Live

2010-11-11T07:36:00.000-08:00

I said remember this moment
In the back of my mind
The time we stood with our shaking hands
The crowds in stands went wild
We were the kings and the queens
And they read off our names
The night you danced like you knew our lives would never be the same
You held your head like a hero on a history book page
It was the end of a decade
But the start of an age
Long live the walls we crashed through
How the kingdom lights shined just for me and you
I was screaming long live all the magic we made
And bring on all the pretenders
One day we will be remembered

I said remember this feeling
I pass the pictures around
Of all the years that we stood there on the sidelines
Wishing for right now
We are the kings and the queens
You traded your baseball cap for a crown
When they gave us our trophies
And we held them up for our town
And the cynics were outraged
Screaming this is absurd
Cause for a moment a band of thieves in ripped up jeans got to rule the world

Long live the walls we crashed through
How the kingdom lights shined just for me and you
I was screaming long live all the magic we made
And bring on all the pretenders
I'm not afraid
Long live all the mountains we moved
I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you
I was screaming long live that look on your face
And bring on all the pretenders
One day we will be remembered

Hold on to spinning around
Confetti falls to the ground
May these memories break our fall

Will you take a moment, promise me this
That you'll stand by me forever
But if God forbid fate should step in
And force us into a goodbye
If you have children someday
When they point to the pictures
Please tell them my name
Tell them how the crowds went wild
Tell them how I hope they shine

Long live the walls we crashed through
I had the time of my life with you

Long long live the walls we crashed through
How the kingdom lights shined just for me and you
And I was screaming long live
All the magic we made
And bring on all the pretenders, I'm not afraid
Singing long live all the mountains we moved
I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you
And long long live the look on your face
And bring on all the pretenders
One day we will be remembered