G Crystal Media

Aha Moments

gcrystalmedia — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 04:14:38 +0000

A lot of things only work out because of economies of scale. For example, some things, such as movies, need mass production in order to make profit. If movies weren’t mass produced, they wouldn’t be able to make enough money to continue making more movies. Weird how we need large quantities of things in order to have them work out for profit.

Maybe it really is “fear” that makes us more violent (as suggested my Michael Moore.) I always watch Michael Moore with a critical point of view, otherwise i’ll be doomed to far left manipulation, but, i actually agreed with him on this. I think i agree that American media often imposes FEAR to their audience (too often!). Personally, i’ve developed a phobia of watching the news.. i know that if i watch i’ll end up seeing murders, kidnappings, etc… and it started making me quite paranoid… so, in order to solve this problem, i stopped watching altogether.

I didn’t realize that the print press also affected the loss of face-to-face communication. I’ve always just assumed that more modern things, such as texting, iming, emailing, online social networks, etc. contributed to our lack of communication skills (specifically face-to-face)… but really.. the printing press also had an effect on that. By printing things on paper rather than distributing the story/news/concept/etc., verbally, we lost a bit of face-to-face communication.

Media Ethics/Media Law

gcrystalmedia — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:15:09 +0000

Sky Development tried to file a suit on Vistaview Development for “misrepresenting the number of units in a condo tower Sky purchased from Vistaview last year.” The suit was dismissed after the judge claimed that the text messagining between two Sky development officials during court was “completely… absolutely outrageous.” One of the Sky officials happened to be on the witness stand while texting. This case goes to show that it’s very important to allows follow procedural rules.

http://socialmedialawstudent.com/social-media/texting-to-the-witness-stand-is-an-egregious-and-deliberate-attempt-to-subvert-our-justice-system/

Propaganda in Advertising

gcrystalmedia — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 02:14:31 +0000

Proposition for PR campaign for a positive value.

Make ads that promote the use of condoms by displaying a euphoric setting/background and then using either a slogan or over simplified phrase.

Ex. and ad with a young man and a young woman smiling and standing in front of a new house with a realty sign that says “SOLD.” The guy’s putting his arm around the girl and they look really happy and energetic. Down in the bottom right hand corner there’s bold white font that says “Be Ready First.” and then below that, in smaller letters, place the condom brand.

The ad is suppose to imply that in order to have a happy (euphoric) life, you should first be ready for a child before you have one, and you can try and do so by using this type of condom.

Electronic News

gcrystalmedia — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 07:21:38 +0000

The half-hour news show i watched proceeded as follows:

-an news report about a 15 yr old boy who was shot and killed after opening the front door to his house
-a news report on health care reform and how a few members of the community feel about it
-a Duraflame commercial
- a commercial in which a family fights over the TV (i forgot what it was for)
-a Kohls commercial
- a very short news report on a protest outside a church in SF
-a news report about the proposition of cutting down the number of pap smears women should recieve to once every 2 years rather than the current yearly test (on the basis that current research finds less caner screening to be better)
-a Mancinis Sleep World commercial
-a KTVU news commercial
- a Toyota commercial
- a Men’s Warehouse commercial
- a River Rock Casino commercial
- the weather report
-a news report on UC Berkeley students protesting againt the proposed 32% inc. in fees, and the violence that went on when Berkeley police hit Berekely students in front of Wheeler Hall
-a news report on a car crash that injured a mother and killed a daughter
-a short news report on an old car crash that killed 3 UC Berk grad students because of street racing
- a news report on bike racing at the Velodrome at Hellyer Park
- a news report on food banks and charities
- a Seinfield commercial
- a Bay Alarm commercial
- a Target commercial

most of the anchors had a straight face on while speaking, except for the weather man (who seemed to smile a lot), and one of the anchor women who smiled a little while the male anchor was speaking next to her.

i noticed that not much time was put on the news itself, and a lot more time went into commercials and “happy talk.”

i think the lead story was the story about the 15 year old High School student who got shot in Oakland. I think it was chosen because it was a really touching story being that he got shot right at his front door, and he used to be really involved in the community by giving a lot of community service and participating in a local environmental program. The fact that the story was touching probably means better audience approval, and so that’s probably why they chose it as the lead story

Internet

gcrystalmedia — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 09:02:43 +0000

-I came up with 400 different social networking sites.
-I’ve only heard of about 8-10 of them. (Facebook, Myspace, Imeem, Yelp, Blogger, etc.)
-THESIXTYONE “democratizes music culture: artists submit their work, but rather than allowing a stuffy suit to decide what’s cool, the listeners do.”
-I use social networking sites such as Yelp, Imeem, Blogger, and to a minimal degree, Facebook. I use them to communicate everynow and then with friends/aquaintances (mainly ones who have moved away).. and to look up music.
-One incident in which a social networking site helped me out was when i posted up some of my old photography, and one of my friends found out that i like photography (he didn’t know before he saw my post) and so, after that, we were able to talk about photography and such in person.

Television

gcrystalmedia — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:53:01 +0000

Length: 1:59
Description: The video discusses the development of technology (especially in the means of social networking) and how it’s contributing to helping us become less physically interactive with our fellow human beings… helping us grow further apart rather than closer together.
Chapter 2: Media Impact
Question: In what ways are social networking sites, such as Facebook, considered a converging communication type of media?
Answer: Facebook combines “traditional yearbooks with community websites, email, blogs, bulletin boards, audio, and video.”

Movies/Recordings

gcrystalmedia — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 00:11:40 +0000

I hate picking favorites, because, i always have more than one to choose from.. but.. One of my favorite movies this year was “The Hangover.” I saw it at the movies through projection format. I didn’t want to see it because i thought the preview was kind of stupid, but i actually ended up enjoying it. I thought it was really funny and entertaining; my favorite part was when the guy with a beard and shaggy hair cut his hand because he thought it would be cool to become blood brothers with the guys. (the wolfpack part).

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1119646/

Magazines

gcrystalmedia — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 06:20:30 +0000

Name of Magazine: She Can.
Concept: this magazine will cover stories on successful women (success defined as, for the most part, happy, and in control of her own life). A section of the magazine will be dedicated to women who are still on their journey to becoming successful, including hardships and tips on how to over come them (i.e. college students, single mothers, women making a positive change in their lives).
Readers: 20-40 year old women, mainly minorites, middle-class, interested in education and bettering-oneself, independent, hard-workers.
Competition: many women’s magazines
5 advertisers: local colleges, Express women’s clothing, bookstores, local community organizations, any tech merchandise company (such as HP)
5 articles: “Can You Really Define Success?”, “How She Made It”, “Where She Was, and Where’s She’s Headed”, “How to Tell If You’re Cutting Yourself Short”, “Curves and Clevage are not the only things that radiate with beauty”
Cover: Fully clothed women, with one of their sleeves rolled up, flexing their arms in the Rosie the Rivetor position (parody style, so they’re smiling and enjoying themselves while they’re doing it). Navy Blue-Metallic background, White Block Lettered Title with Black shadow reading “She Can” with smaller lettering below reading “there’s no stopping her now.”

Books

gcrystalmedia — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 01:41:32 +0000

3 of my most personally influential books are:

1) Tom Robbin’s “Jitterbug Perfume”: it taught me that reality is what we make it to be.. if something’s imaginable why not make it possible? In the words of poet Wallace Stevens, “Let be be the finale of seem.”

2) J.D. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye”: it taught me that writing can be fun, that writing can be a self-revealing form of communication.. writing doesn’t have to be formal, or ethically sound.. it doesn’t have to make complete grammatical sense.. the pen is a vehicle for the imagination & you can let it run wild.

3) Jhumpha Lahiri’s “Interpreter of Maladies”: it reminded me to think of life as a series of growth and development phases.. it’s okay to make mistakes because we’ll someday come to learn from them.

Media Impact

gcrystalmedia — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 05:06:54 +0000

I would like to propose a media research project that helps to determine whether early exposure to sex in the media encourages earlier sexual activity. In order to determine this, I propose conducting a questionaire in which we randomly select American adults from the ages of 25-35, and ask them questions such as “how old do you think you were when you first were exposed to sex through the media (i.e. sex scenes, sex appeal, raunchy pictures, etc.), and actually knew what sex meant?” “how old where u when you think seeing sex in the media began to become a sort of regular-basis occurance?” and “how old were you when you first engaged in sexual activity?” … We might then conduct the same sort of questionaire, except this time, give it to randomly selected American college students from the ages of 18-25 and see if there’s any difference due to the time period in which the adults vs. the college students experienced their childhood. My hypothesis for this would be that the more sex the person was exposed to, and the younger the person was when he/she first became exposed to sex in the media, the more likely that person will be/would be to begin engaging in sexual activity at a younger age.