From the random thoughts department:
I remember being told at Iowa State that there was a theory floating around out there that humans evolved from what could best be described as "water apes". Basically, although we share traits with apes, we have features that they don't that would make us more suited for aquatic life. For example, we have streamlined hair that goes in one direction (particularly when wet). We also have a system that allows us to hold our breath without drowning. Apparently normal apes don't have this system.
Of course, this leads me to a scene from pre-history where our water ape ancestors were harassing the land apes by pushing their heads into a pool of water and then monkey-laughing as the land apes flailed and drowned.
Bad monkeys.
8.30.2005
8.26.2005
What age is this again?
So, I'm taking a class that basically tries to define the warrior myth in Japan. Hey, it counts as a Cinema (and Comparative Literature) class and it's something about the far East, which I'm always interested in. Regardless, we were discussing the history of Japan (specifically the pre-history) and the fact that the ages were basically delineated by the pottery produced by the people. So, it got me thinking. When historians look back on this time in history, are we going to be known as the Tupperware age?
8.23.2005
Journey in a distant land. Day 2
So, this being Tuesday, I have now attended all my classes for the semester. Fortunately all my professors either seem really cool or insane, which is what I like. No boring professor types here. Amusingly, the girl next to me in my Interpretation of Literature (see also, crappy requirement course) had the course packet for Cultural Historical Foundations of Communication. A course which I took last semester (and is taught by the father of one of the kids in Kim's class, small world). So I told this girl that the class wasn't that bad. She was relieved to have an easy class. Now I feel obliged to point out, loyal reader(s), that I never said the class was easy. It just wasn't that bad. And not that bad to a 9th-year senior might feel totally different to a freshman (or sophmore).
Well, two days later and two hundred dollars poorer (damn you books!) classes are underway. It does look like I'll get to do play with a really fun camera in my Nonfiction class (but not the shiny new computers with shiny new monitors). Ah well, win some, lose some.
On a side note, if you'd like to know more about a game that I enjoy playing (when I get the chance), check out this link.
http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/dorktower/images/comics/dorktower471.gif
Well, two days later and two hundred dollars poorer (damn you books!) classes are underway. It does look like I'll get to do play with a really fun camera in my Nonfiction class (but not the shiny new computers with shiny new monitors). Ah well, win some, lose some.
On a side note, if you'd like to know more about a game that I enjoy playing (when I get the chance), check out this link.
http://archive.gamespy.com/comics/dorktower/images/comics/dorktower471.gif
8.19.2005
The beginning of the end
So, Monday it starts. I'll finally be a senior in my last year of college. Okay, so I was a senior in the spring (I only needed three credits upon arrival to UI to classify as a senior), and this might not be my last year in college if I ever decide to come back and get my master's. Regardless, I'm starting to finally (9 years later) see the light at the end of the tunnel. I'm excited to finally be able to get done, but it's more than a bit daunting to realize that I have nothing but cinema classes for the next 9 months. I'm also slightly bummed by the information that I can only take one production class a semester, which means I'll only have had 9 hours of technical stuff surrounded by tons of hours of critical analysis and theory. Zat sucks. Ah well, a (relatively) quiet weekend before a not so quiet semester.
Random fact of the day: My gigabyte keychain drive can only handle 4.5 minutes of DV video. (Theoretically. I haven't actually tried this...yet)
Random fact of the day: My gigabyte keychain drive can only handle 4.5 minutes of DV video. (Theoretically. I haven't actually tried this...yet)
8.17.2005
Let's go offense!
Been a while since a political rant, but I figured with the craziness in Crawford I could sneak in a few dives. Right now the thing that sticks in my head is the big fight in 2000 when G.W. was elected and the republican mantra was, "We'll restore dignity to the White House." Has that promise been fulfilled? I mean, the international community seems to have fostered an extreme dislike for the guy. Amusingly the oft heard reference is that they don't hate Americans, just the administration. Kinda rings along with the old saying, when all your friends tell you you're drunk - you're drunk. Okay, so G.W. hasn't gotten a blow job in the Oval Office (that we know of), yet there seems to be a large increase in shady dealings within the government and even more shadiness going on outside in the form of government favors to big business.
Want to restore dignity to the White House? Here's a suggestion, remind the government that it was founded to be by the people, of the people, and most importantly for the people. That means all the people not the "haves and have mores"
Want to restore dignity to the White House? Here's a suggestion, remind the government that it was founded to be by the people, of the people, and most importantly for the people. That means all the people not the "haves and have mores"
8.08.2005
I'm such a genius.
This was (shamelessly) posted outside the (U Iowa) Cinema department door. It's a long article from the New York Times (March 6th, 05.. cite your sources!), but it's an intriguing concept.
Is a Cinema Studies Degree the New M.B.A.?
Rick Herbst, now attending Yale Law School, may yet turn out to be the current decade's archetypal film major. Twenty-three years old, he graduated last year from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied filmmaking with no intention of becoming a filmmaker. Rather, he saw his major as a way to learn about power structures and how individuals influence each other.
"People endowed with social power and prestige are able to use film and media images to reinforce their power - we need to look to film to grant power to those who are marginalized or currently not represented," said Mr. Herbst, who envisions a future in the public policy arena. The communal nature of film, he said, has a distinct power to affect large groups, and he expects to use his cinematic skills to do exactly that.
At a time when street gangs warn informers with DVD productions about the fate of "snitches" and both terrorists and their adversaries routinely communicate in elaborately staged videos, it is not altogether surprising that film school - promoted as a shot at an entertainment industry job - is beginning to attract those who believe that cinema isn't so much a profession as the professional language of the future.
Some 600 colleges and universities in the United States offer programs in film studies or related subjects, a number that has grown steadily over the years, even while professional employment opportunities in the film business remain minuscule. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are only about 15,050 jobs for film producers or directors, which means just a few hundred openings, at best, each year.
Given the gap between aspiration and opportunity, film education has often turned out to be little more than an expensive detour on the road to doing something else. Thus, Aaron Bell, who graduated as a film major from the University of Wisconsin in 1988, struggled through years of uninspiring nonunion work managing crews on commercials, television pilots and the occasional feature before landing his noncinematic job designing advertising for Modern Luxury Media LLC, a Chicago-based magazine publisher.
"You sort of have this illusion coming out of film school that you'll work into this small circle of creatives, but you're actually more pigeonholed as a technician," said Mr. Bell, who is now 39.
For some next-generation students, however, the shot at a Hollywood job is no longer the goal. They'd rather make cinematic technique - newly democratized by digital equipment that reduces the cost of a picture to a few thousand dollars and renders the very word "film" an anachronism - the bedrock of careers as far afield as law and the military.
At the University of Southern California, whose School of Cinema-Television is the nation's oldest film school (established in 1929), fully half of the university's 16,500 undergraduate students take at least one cinema/television class. That is possible because Elizabeth Daley, the school's dean, opened its classes to the university at large in 1998, in keeping with a new philosophy that says, in effect, filmic skills are too valuable to be confined to movie world professionals. "The greatest digital divide is between those who can read and write with media, and those who can't," Ms. Daley said. "Our core knowledge needs to belong to everybody."
In fact, even some who first enrolled in U.S.C.'s film school to take advantage of its widely acknowledged position as a prime portal to Hollywood have begun to view their cinematic skills as a new form of literacy. One such is David Hendrie, who came to U.S.C. in 1996 after a stint in the military intending to become a filmmaker, but - even after having had the producer/director Robert Zemeckis as a mentor - found himself drawn to the school's Institute for Creative Technologies, where he creates military training applications in a variety of virtual reality, gaming and filmic formats. One film he developed was privately screened for the directors John Milius and Steven Spielberg, who wanted to understand the military's vision of the future.
"That was like a film student's dream," said Mr. Hendrie, who nonetheless believes he has already outgrown anything he was likely to accomplish on the studio circuit. "I found myself increasingly demoralized by my experiences trying to pitch myself as a director for films like 'Dude, Where's My Car?' " Mr. Hendrie said. "What I'm doing here at I.C.T. speaks to the other interests I've always had, and in the end excited my passion more."
In recent weeks, members of a Baltimore street gang circulated a DVD that warned against betrayal, packaged in a cover that appeared to show three dead bodies. That and the series of gruesome execution videos that have surfaced in the Middle East are perhaps only the most extreme face of a complex sort of post-literacy in which cinematic visuals and filmic narrative have become commonplace.
Melding easily with the growing digital folk culture, some film majors have simply taken to creating art forms outside the boundaries of the established film business. In one such instance, Wes Pentz, a k a DJ Diplo - a 2003 graduate of Temple University, where film majors are encouraged to invent new career paths in museums, leisure businesses and elsewhere - broke through with his trademark Hollertronix, a style modeled on cinematic soundtracks. "I think of my songs as having a movement, like I would watch in a film, and there's a narrative feel to them," said Mr. Pentz, who said he had learned to frame music differently because of his film school experience.
In the public policy arena, meanwhile, students like Yale's Mr. Herbst hope to heighten political debate with productions far more pointed than the most political feature film. Even a picture like "Hotel Rwanda," with its unblinking look at African genocide, is "a soup kitchen approach," Mr. Herbst said: "You're offered something to eat, but there are no vitamins." Bringing film directly into politics, he expects to throw objectivity out the window and change minds - perhaps not an unrealistic aim at a time when, in a bit of what a headline in The Wall Street Journal characterized as "film noir," the Edward D. Jones & Company brokerage has entered the fray over the proposed Social Security overhaul with a highly produced video.
To some extent, such broadening vision is already helping to make economic sense of film education, which in the past was often a long path to nowhere. "Most find their way, and the skills they learn from us are applicable to other careers and pursuits," Dale Pollock, dean of the School of Filmmaking at the North Carolina School of the Arts, said of his students. "So we're not wasting their time or money."
Still more, Ms. Daley, the U.S.C. Cinema-Television dean, argues that to generalize such skills has become integral to the film school's mission. More than 60 academic courses at U.S.C. now require students to create term papers and projects that use video, sound and Internet components - and for Ms. Daley, it's not enough. "If I had my way, our multimedia literacy honors program would be required of every student in the university," she said.
(A shout-out to Elizabeth Van Ness, the original author of this article)
Is a Cinema Studies Degree the New M.B.A.?
Rick Herbst, now attending Yale Law School, may yet turn out to be the current decade's archetypal film major. Twenty-three years old, he graduated last year from the University of Notre Dame, where he studied filmmaking with no intention of becoming a filmmaker. Rather, he saw his major as a way to learn about power structures and how individuals influence each other.
"People endowed with social power and prestige are able to use film and media images to reinforce their power - we need to look to film to grant power to those who are marginalized or currently not represented," said Mr. Herbst, who envisions a future in the public policy arena. The communal nature of film, he said, has a distinct power to affect large groups, and he expects to use his cinematic skills to do exactly that.
At a time when street gangs warn informers with DVD productions about the fate of "snitches" and both terrorists and their adversaries routinely communicate in elaborately staged videos, it is not altogether surprising that film school - promoted as a shot at an entertainment industry job - is beginning to attract those who believe that cinema isn't so much a profession as the professional language of the future.
Some 600 colleges and universities in the United States offer programs in film studies or related subjects, a number that has grown steadily over the years, even while professional employment opportunities in the film business remain minuscule. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are only about 15,050 jobs for film producers or directors, which means just a few hundred openings, at best, each year.
Given the gap between aspiration and opportunity, film education has often turned out to be little more than an expensive detour on the road to doing something else. Thus, Aaron Bell, who graduated as a film major from the University of Wisconsin in 1988, struggled through years of uninspiring nonunion work managing crews on commercials, television pilots and the occasional feature before landing his noncinematic job designing advertising for Modern Luxury Media LLC, a Chicago-based magazine publisher.
"You sort of have this illusion coming out of film school that you'll work into this small circle of creatives, but you're actually more pigeonholed as a technician," said Mr. Bell, who is now 39.
For some next-generation students, however, the shot at a Hollywood job is no longer the goal. They'd rather make cinematic technique - newly democratized by digital equipment that reduces the cost of a picture to a few thousand dollars and renders the very word "film" an anachronism - the bedrock of careers as far afield as law and the military.
At the University of Southern California, whose School of Cinema-Television is the nation's oldest film school (established in 1929), fully half of the university's 16,500 undergraduate students take at least one cinema/television class. That is possible because Elizabeth Daley, the school's dean, opened its classes to the university at large in 1998, in keeping with a new philosophy that says, in effect, filmic skills are too valuable to be confined to movie world professionals. "The greatest digital divide is between those who can read and write with media, and those who can't," Ms. Daley said. "Our core knowledge needs to belong to everybody."
In fact, even some who first enrolled in U.S.C.'s film school to take advantage of its widely acknowledged position as a prime portal to Hollywood have begun to view their cinematic skills as a new form of literacy. One such is David Hendrie, who came to U.S.C. in 1996 after a stint in the military intending to become a filmmaker, but - even after having had the producer/director Robert Zemeckis as a mentor - found himself drawn to the school's Institute for Creative Technologies, where he creates military training applications in a variety of virtual reality, gaming and filmic formats. One film he developed was privately screened for the directors John Milius and Steven Spielberg, who wanted to understand the military's vision of the future.
"That was like a film student's dream," said Mr. Hendrie, who nonetheless believes he has already outgrown anything he was likely to accomplish on the studio circuit. "I found myself increasingly demoralized by my experiences trying to pitch myself as a director for films like 'Dude, Where's My Car?' " Mr. Hendrie said. "What I'm doing here at I.C.T. speaks to the other interests I've always had, and in the end excited my passion more."
In recent weeks, members of a Baltimore street gang circulated a DVD that warned against betrayal, packaged in a cover that appeared to show three dead bodies. That and the series of gruesome execution videos that have surfaced in the Middle East are perhaps only the most extreme face of a complex sort of post-literacy in which cinematic visuals and filmic narrative have become commonplace.
Melding easily with the growing digital folk culture, some film majors have simply taken to creating art forms outside the boundaries of the established film business. In one such instance, Wes Pentz, a k a DJ Diplo - a 2003 graduate of Temple University, where film majors are encouraged to invent new career paths in museums, leisure businesses and elsewhere - broke through with his trademark Hollertronix, a style modeled on cinematic soundtracks. "I think of my songs as having a movement, like I would watch in a film, and there's a narrative feel to them," said Mr. Pentz, who said he had learned to frame music differently because of his film school experience.
In the public policy arena, meanwhile, students like Yale's Mr. Herbst hope to heighten political debate with productions far more pointed than the most political feature film. Even a picture like "Hotel Rwanda," with its unblinking look at African genocide, is "a soup kitchen approach," Mr. Herbst said: "You're offered something to eat, but there are no vitamins." Bringing film directly into politics, he expects to throw objectivity out the window and change minds - perhaps not an unrealistic aim at a time when, in a bit of what a headline in The Wall Street Journal characterized as "film noir," the Edward D. Jones & Company brokerage has entered the fray over the proposed Social Security overhaul with a highly produced video.
To some extent, such broadening vision is already helping to make economic sense of film education, which in the past was often a long path to nowhere. "Most find their way, and the skills they learn from us are applicable to other careers and pursuits," Dale Pollock, dean of the School of Filmmaking at the North Carolina School of the Arts, said of his students. "So we're not wasting their time or money."
Still more, Ms. Daley, the U.S.C. Cinema-Television dean, argues that to generalize such skills has become integral to the film school's mission. More than 60 academic courses at U.S.C. now require students to create term papers and projects that use video, sound and Internet components - and for Ms. Daley, it's not enough. "If I had my way, our multimedia literacy honors program would be required of every student in the university," she said.
(A shout-out to Elizabeth Van Ness, the original author of this article)
