December 10

Owe these: 

- Blog        - done
- Slide show    - done
Musician Presentation   - done 
- Remix    - done as a group (Cassidy, Vic, Dom, Amanda)
Music Test
Viral Video Report   
Viral Video
- Movie History Presentation   -done as a group (cass, Vic amanda)
- Character Creation Sheet
- Character Arc Poster - handed in
Plot Outline Poster  - handed in 
10 Crucial Scenes from your movie (index cards)
In-Depth Movie Review -handed in 
Your Movie Poster https://docs.google.com/document/m/?id=11ifScyrEiGHqwH0fqq7c5Aubs04MmvUNIL-q8IreCgs&login=1&pli=1
Your Movie Soundtrack
Your Movie Treatment
Your Movie Casting Sheet (handed in) 
Your Movie Opening Scene (or trailer)
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=55WERekgmsQ

December 3, 2012

Act 2

The Midpoint - the Point of No Return

That point in the movie when the protagonist is facing the realization that, “hey, I am really in this!”

Sometimes that can be an Oh no!

Sometimes that can be a confrontation with the enemy

Sometimes that can be a moment of intensity that makes the audience go “GASP!”

After the Midpoint, the movie usually gets darker

Things aren’t going so well for the hero.

There is a racheting up of the tension as it looks like the negative elements are winning.

Remember Taken? He finds the wrong girl? He realizes it goes deeper? He thought he had her?

The second half of Act 2 will build DOWN to something called The Low. The Loss. Or the Touch of Death. Or the Separation.

This is about 77-83 minutes (pages) in and it is the moment where we feel the hero’s lost it all. The darkest moment for the hero.

Remember that the idea of a movie is to take the audience for a ride - an emotional ride. Even in comedies there is an attempt to get some feelings out of us. The Proposal -

In Act III, we get a whole new flava!

Act III is about the hero pulling up his/her bootstraps, digging down deep and coming out of the low and saying, YES! I can do it!

Then, there is some kind of chase or forward action or roller coaster or acceleration or storming the castle or final battle or final test or you get the picture.

This is often the weakest part of a movie because it feels like there are no surprises left - it is all inevitable.

You can imagine that there is often a feeling by the filmmaker that he/she HAS to give the audience what they want - that is - good guys win, girl gets guy, fish finds dad, dad finds daughter, team wins, or team loses and learns to love, etc

HOWEVA!

They will often try to “surprise” us by the false ending - Jason wasn’t really dead yet! and so on - this is just another kind of expectation we have

Another thing you’ll see if many movies is a kind of “timer” at work

ie - girl going to airport - guy better hurry!
detonator - 10 minutes!
truck - heading for the bridge!
spaceships - invasion imminent!
etc...

This is a bad stereotype that is ALWAYS there and is hard to avoid.

This is also called ratcheting up tension and raising stakes.

Movies end with one of two things:

We are satisfied and satisfied OR we are satisfied and crushed.

Either way, the HERO MUST HAVE FIXED HIS/HER PROBLEM FROM ACT 1!

The character arc must be fully developed and fulfilled.

We must leave the theatre having seen growth that most of us will never experience. How sad are we to watch other peoples’ positive change and yet we remain pathetic wretches, passively observing, working for the weekend and not really living at all... waiting to die. pointlessly. contributing nothing. just. watching.

November 26, 2012

We are building a character - rich, developed sense of identity - developed arc of change (transformational arc)

The plot line of a movie - what happens? Why? What makes it good? What makes it bad? What makes it more exciting than Movie B over at the other cineplex?

Setting and scenes and times and places

Techniques of making movies - lights, camera, action

Sound, music and noise

Editing and Special Effects

The First Ten Pages or Less

this is how you make somebody care
within the first couple of minutes, you have to HOOK the audience, the reader, the producer, the person who makes decisions
you have to find a way to make somebody HAVE to read in and read on
it’s like a question that we NEED to see answered
open with a murder, a terrible moment, a bizarre thing that we can’t believe, a strange sighting, a scary thing, an end point that makes us say, how the hell did they get here?

The First 15 or so Pages

there is a lot of work to be done here
who? where? when?
problem? what is the character’s broken state?
What needs to get fixed in this character?
who is the enemy? (or what?)
why do we love to follow this character?

The Movie Takes Off!
around 15 - 23 minutes (or pages) there is an event that changes the main character’s path - there is a NTB moment
something has altered the path so that character A goes out into an area of newness and potential discomfort

Once the character begins the new path, we are in Act II

Act II is ALL ABOUT OBSTACLES
the audience feels the wheels lock down and the movie actually starts
that opening was showing Life A for the character
the second act is about the unexpected Life B that we get to watch
Life B is a series of escalating problems that take the character through unimaginable problems and crises
eg - Spiderman - Peter Parker’s Life A = being bullied and no girls, no fun, no good
Life B = SPIDERMAN!
the bigger the difference between Life A and Life B, it could be that the movie is better.

 

 November 21, 2012

Character Arc

movies begin with the character in a broken state
the movie ends with the character in “fixed” state
That fix may be negative or positive

In Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks’ character dies in the end.
He is dead, and we are sad, HOWEVER, he is fixed because - he fulfilled his mission, BUT there is an even more powerful change that has occurred -

He was in war, he was in struggle, he was damaged by war, he reminisced about his wife and his life as an English teacher, he was a man of words and learning, and war made him a killer and a tormented soldier who suffered the deaths of the men beneath him.

What change and “fix” did he get at the end? THINK about opposites - characters go from X to the opposite of X

This is character arc and this is what makes movies particularly satisfying.

This is the key to movies being good.

In the sample (The Equalizer), the lead character doesn’t undergo enough struggle for the H’wood readers - he is never trouble, never in danger, never stressed and never has to overcome something horrible or terrifying - this is a problem

Here’s why - the thing about movies and character arc (and our stupid little lives) is that we only move forward by struggle - we only change by force or opposition, we only get anywhere by going against something

This is the dialectic of plot and character development.

Think of a baby - babies love to drink milk from their mothers’ breasts and poop their pants.

They do not want to stop! You have to force these hideous little creatures into stopping, or they will do this FOREVER.

Movies are a little microcosm of the opposite of this.

We want to WATCH other people (represented by little Denzels and hobbits and cute guys with abs with superpowers) struggle and deal with change and then change.

We want to watch them suffer and win and adapt and survive.

We want to do this as we sit on our lazy asses and eat popcorn and giggle and poke the people in front of us that we know. Or maybe at home, eating other stuff.

Character is the process of all that misery and suffering and struggling forcing change into a character’s development.

This little 110 minute journey of forced change is what movies are all about.

A microcosm of our stupid little lives. It’s nice!

What gives out lives meaning is that change. That struggle and success.

Hey, that actually IS your life!

Character Arc as a model.

November 19, 2012

Movies - What are they?

Made up of FIVE parts (kind of)

Development

Pre-Production

Production

Post-Production

Marketing and Distribution

You are going to be responsible for doing work in all FIVE areas until the end of the semester.

Development -
screenwriting - WRITER
rewriting
getting a team together - key job - PRODUCER
DIRECTOR needs to come on board
financing
in Canada, financing has a weird twist - the government is involved - Telefilm
in the US it is much more about big business - you try to get money from production companies (here too)
for our needs we will look at a few things:

Writer writes a script
Tries to get a producer to want to make it
Producer tries to package the film up and get some studio interest
Producer OWNS the film - the writer is basically done

Screenwriting
writing a screenplay starts with an idea
some writers start with a character that is awesome and then say, “What kind of trouble can this character get into?”
maybe with a defined character - superhero, sequels, etc.
come up with a great character type or for an actor, and then choose what kind of problems that character will have - Adam Sandler (ps, he is terrible)

more commonly, the writer has a concept about a story - this is the most likely way to write
a story is not necessarily what you think it is.

what is at the root of a movie? What does a writer start with?
the pattern at the root of almost every movie is called The Hero’s Quest
this pattern was discovered by looking at legends and stories and myths and religions and so on, and saying, hey, these are all similar!
Joseph Campbell said that this pattern was in our heads, and we do it, use it, watch it, love it and feel it without necessarily realizing it


The Screenplay Structure Map

Movies begin with Act 1

Act 1 is Setup

What has to get set up?

Character - lead and otherwise
Place - where are we? when are we? what are the rules? what kind of movie are we in? (tone and genre)
Problem - what is wrong with the lead character’s current life? what is the character’s problem? The movie is better if the lead character’s problem at the start is worse.
Why do we want to start movies with a problem for a protagonist?
we need a relatable character
we need to be grabbed and pulled into a story and a problem demands to be solved - we want to resolve (or see the resolution of) the problem
stimulates empathy in the viewer - (empathy is feeling someone else’s feelings)
movies NEED conflict to drive action forward

This setting up of a problem IS the movie, in all reality.

The nature of the problem is based on a real thing we all have - We need to change in order to live. If we don’t change, we die.
Movies are ALWAYS about a character who HAS to change or die. (the death might be metaphorical)

The start of a movie is often the best part because we are just learning all this new stuff - there is a sense of discovery -

Most Hollywood producers, agents, readers, and people who are looking for scripts only read the first few pages to decide whether it’s good or not.

Hollywood movies almost always start with a particular kind of pattern.

Meet Guy/Girl. See problem life. Feel for Guy/Girl. See Guy/Girl’s awesome real personality. We love Guy/Girl.


Prepare to Write an Opening to a Movie that You Want to See!

A character (the lead) that we can love:
-Who has a problem.
-Who has something awesome about him/her
-Who is in a place that is interesting or realistic and feels relatable.
-And who has a problem that we can see

Show the character in a way that introduces as much as you can in ACTION.

Have something happen that makes me want to see your movie and follow this character for 2 hours. (OR 95-115 MINUTES/PAGES)

November 15, 2012

1890s - 1990s

Find something to profile in detail and present in some form

Bios
Overviews
Timelines
Examples
Analyses
References
Influences and influenced bys
Why
How
Explain
Show where it went

Francis Ford Coppola
Hollywood
Video camera
Film noir
Science Fiction
Comic Movies
Robert DeNiro
Comparative Look at early movies on a theme and later movies on a theme

Requirements:

You must watch 2 movies. At least one must be from before you were born. Maybe both.

You must include material that is analytic in nature.

You must work on some kind of visual presentation.

You must do some editing, music, sound, voice over and incorporate information.

You must be able to keep LOBB’s interest in a subject for at least 5 minutes.

Group Mark - Solo Mark - How it was done - Content - Application

How do I define a role for me? Defend your place!

The 1980s

Mr. Lobb’s Playground

VCR - this was an invention that really changed the industry just like TV in the 50s
you can “own” Hollywood movies
you can make your movies with cheap cameras
you can watch movies a hundred times for one price
there is a whole new market for “movie catalogues” - Warner Bros has a giant storehouse of old movies - the home video market = free money

the studios realized that they could make new money on old movies

the studios realized that people watching movies at home had different expectations - the movies didn’t have to be big and awesome and amazing -
all new B movies that were “straight to video”

however, Hollywood also saw that movies could make money like they’d never imagined - Star Wars, Jaws, Close Encounters, ET, Raiders of the Lost Ark.

LA saw that movies were MUCH bigger and much easier to make and the more flash in the movie, the bigger the sales -

High Concept - the idea for the movie is obvious and HUGE and a clear sell

Die Hard - bad guys trapped in a building with hostages and a pissed off Bruce Willis
Speed - bad guy traps hostages on a bus that can’t go under 50 mph or it blows up
Under Siege - Die Hard on a train
Air Force One - Die Hard on the president’s plane
X meets Y movies - Commando - Terminator meets Rambo
Predator - Commando meets Alien

1990s - BIG BUSINESS in Hollywood - spec script sales

November 14, 2012

1950s and TV

Movies had to compete

Different ways of competing - aiming at the new target audience - teenagers

Baby Boomers! - the biggest bump in history (population-wise)

This is the first generation that had everything aimed at them.

Their media world (and more) was designed to appeal to them.

Movies - TV - Driving around (gas was almost free) - music - dances - dating -

Drive Ins were one way of competing for that new market

this new trend coincided with the opening of that whole free market for movies - new kinds of movies came up to fill this new market - cheap, easy to make, crappy, fun, silly, B movies -

These B movies allow for a whole new population of movie makers to break in. These new people aren’t the studio type.

This is the rise of independent cinema.

New genres - horror changes and becomes more violent and more grotesque
science fiction comes out (thanks to science advances)
new kinds of romance movies (teenager romance)
new kinds of movie stars - teenagers

Adults were also not going to movies, so Hollywood had to change their movies too.

Epics - big, loud, amazing, giant casts, huge screens (Cinerama, 70mm, Cinemascope), special effects, big ideas, period pieces, crazy new stunts, etc.

These were the opposite of little black and white TVs

Ben Hur, Spartacus, El Cid? These are epics

Even the way movies were made was changing to fit these new ideas

The Method - a new style of acting that was really unusual compared to old acting

Old Style - pretend to cry, pretend to laugh, pretend to be angry, PRETEND

The Method - actually cry, actually laugh, actually be angry, BE
Marlon Brando -

James Dean -

Sense memory - Research - Active listening -

The old bosses and old styles and old studios and all that starts to look pretty goofy

As we get into the 60s there’s a feeling that Hollywood is for old folks - it is ridiculous and the movies are out of touch.

1960s.

Vietnam
Drugs
Hippies
Music Revolution
TV news
Black/white politics
female/male politics
The Pill
Influence of foreign movies
Relax of the Hays Code
Independent movies

Bonnie and Clyde told the old bosses that they didn’t get it.

And they actually learned from this.

They started making deals with a that new generation of young, crazy, independent people and the entire industry went totally different.

For 10 years after this (so, the 1970s) movies are incredible.

The Second Golden Age of Hollywood.

This is the era of:

Steven Spielberg - Jaws
George Lucas - Star Wars
Francis Ford Coppola - The Godfather
Martin Scorsese - Taxi Driver
William Friedkin - The Exorcist

November 13, 2012

Montage - Sergei Eisenstein - Soviet filmmaker
these guys back then were making propaganda movies, BUT, this guy had hit on some incredible new ideas that totally influenced Hollywood and reinvented movies forever

The Kuleshov Effect
this was discovered as a way of manipulating viewers and it works like crazy thanks to our brains
that experiment showed that we relate imagery that we see in succession and we create a linkage and a story and an explanation for the linkage even if there is nothing
this became a foundation for a new kind of editing

Old Editing -
in the teens and 20s, editors simply put the pieces of film in story order, maybe inserting a few close ups that worked in sequence
the shots went in logical patterns - outside to inside - far to close - now to then

THEN Eisenstein used the Kuleshov effect to produce a new kind of editing that he called MONTAGE
the relationship between the shots would be in your head as an audience member

A bunch of European directors and writers and actors and producers were flooding to Hollywood in the 20s - 40s (maybe to escape Nazi stuff?) and they brought a LOT of new European ideas to the American style

AFTER WWII

Movies changed again - even more

The Hays Code - the production code - Will Hays (postmaster general) was hired by the studio bosses to create a code for what was allowed to be in the movies
the studio bosses did this themselves in order to stop somebody else from doing it
this guy lived with his sister, never got married, never had a drink, never swore and never did anything ever that normal people do. Religious fanatic.
AND WHAT DO YOU SUPPOSE WAS IN THE CODE?

After the war, things began to change

What would young men who had to been to war, and an unknown number of people traumatized by war, think about the Hays Code and the movies that came from it?

What about real life?

What about real themes and ideas?

A split in movies - the ridiculous fake, awful world of Hollywood movies and the post-war, interesting, “cool” movies
New Problem!

TV!

Free!

In the 1950s TV was out and it was free and awesome and at home and it was stealing viewers from movies

TVs were expensive, but once you paid for it, you had all that free content.

Movies immediately lost millions and millions

PLUS, the US government divested the theatres from the studios.

The studios were suffering!

At the exact same time, there was a NEW kind of creature alive in the world!

It was called TEENAGER

And it was terrifying!

It liked crazy things.

Cars, girls, boys, black people stuff!, weird music, naughty business, monsters, creepy things, comic books, all kinds of horrible, dangerous, evil, dark, bizarre stuff

November 12, 2012

D.W. Griffith

Jewish Connection?

L.A.? - Hollywood?

Why is L.A. the center of the movie world?

terrain - ocean, beach, desert, foothills, scrub, forest, mountains, snow
sun = light and it almost NEVER rains
expansion - the community was small and there was a TON of land to buy (and Jewish men could seem to buy it without too much hassle)
this was as far as they could get AWAY from the “trust” - the white, WASPy rich old guys who owned all the patents for movie making technology
Patterning - the first people that went there established a pattern and their friends and fellow moviemakers just jumped in

The Big Studios

Paramount
Universal
20th Century Fox (or Fox)
MGM
Warner Brothers

The movies that they made back in those early days, reflected a very specific POV.
This POV is the immigrant experience and it is STILL in the movies.

There is an outsider, he/she is special, he/she is misunderstood, he/she doesn’t fit, and then he/she does something awesome and shows everybody that he/she DESERVES to be accepted and then he/she is accepted by society.

This is also the story of Hollywood.

Hollywood is NOT a place. There is a place called Hollywood - it is a street - it used to be a road leading to a farm where the first studio was set up in a barn

Hollywood is a concept about dreams and about becoming something special
It is literally like a wish fulfillment for people who feel outside and sad.

What is the Hollywood sign?

In the late 19-teens there started to be an INCREDIBLE amount of money generated.

Charlie Chaplin was a comedy star in live shows, he came to movies for 500 a week, then 5000 a week, and then 10,000 a week and then he angrily quit to start his own studio because he wasn’t making enough money.

What did he realize? The studio bosses were making WAY MORE.

He realized that the audience loved him, not the bosses. HE was bigger than the movies.

That is the pattern of movies today. The star rules.

As the 20s start, there is a new development in movies and it is sound.

SOUND - 1925 - the first music videos were made
Warner Bros - experiments - 1 brother liked it, the others HATED it
No other studio boss wanted to use sound.
Movies are silent, they said.

This seems crazy. It is not.

The industry was built and running and AWESOME and why change it?

However, there was a tester done. The Jazz Singer 1927 was a MONSTER hit.

The audiences couldn’t get enough of MUSIC.

OVERNIGHT the other bosses said “Oh crap. We have to follow suit.”

The entire industry had to change on every single level. 

SO MANY actors lost their jobs, some because they had bad voices, but most because they were “old-fashioned” so people thought

All new filmmaking
All new writing
All new directing
All new acting
All new everything
Including, all new kinds of movies.

1930s - The Golden Age of Movies

New technology came in and everything went BUMP.
First thing - sound = music
But then, the geniuses showed up - Hollywood went to Broadway and got the really talented dance/song/acting/writing/etc people
There was also a strange influx of book writers coming in - sound = dialogue, which means new kinds of comedy and new kinds of action

That was called a “screwball comedy”

Gangster movies - dialogue rich, based on novels, tough guy writers, cool style

1939 - the best year for movies, ever (so many people have said).

The height of a system of movie making called The Studio System (somebody should do a presentation on this)

There is a little thing called World War 2 that kind of affects the movies.

Hey, who are the studio bosses again?

Hey, what was Hitler doing again?

Hey, isn’t there some kind of Jewish thing?

Hey, is this all connected?




Hollywood put all that they could of that stuff in movies, because TV surely could not

Film History

Friday, November 9, 2012

D.W. Griffith - a GREAT choice for your presentation
the first modern director
creator of the “star system”
one of the first to use close ups for real
made the first epic
instrumental in shot variation

Star System -
when Griffith used actors, he chose the same ones over and over
this was different from just using friends and family
the director started using a particular group - in that group was Mary Pickford - she attracted attention and they started using her to build interest
eventually, they would show her more clearly in close up
SHE became an attraction over the movie itself
you don’t see the director, or the producer - you see the Girl with the Curls
the movie makers realized that they could keep doing this and it became the standard in Hollywood - actors are kings and queens and even more - gods
the studios used press and stories to build them up, and the stars were the inducement for audiences to see movies

D.W. Griffith made one movie that blew Hollywood away and changed everything

Why Hollywood?

 

Film History - November 8, 2012

Narrative Film

There are two kinds of movies (actually, there are lots more, but we are categorizing two).

Non-narrative - no story line - narrative is a story

Some docs, experimental films and shorts can be non-narratives.

You can look for Michael Snow movies, Kenneth Anger, Andy Warhol, etc.

These movies are more about the form than the entertainment - it’s art

Narrative movies are about stories - we are going to focus on these.

Viral videos that work are often in the non-narrative category, but the best ones tend to have stories.

History of Film

You are going to have a project on the history of film.

A film or slide show on a particular movement, artist, style, genre, technological advance or something else you pull from film history that is PRIOR to 1980.

Pre-1900

There were people working on technological advances that were interesting in art.

Film - celluloid - allowed strips to be used

Prior to this, it was metal plates and chemicals and time and effort and crazy.

Once film appears, it allows a whole bunch of new stuff to happen.

Cameras change, the times change - no more hours, it’s faster, it’s more shots at a time.

Eadweard Muybridge - photos of the running horse in sequence (for the bet)
unintended consequence - discover the flipbook thing works perfectly!

Persistence of Vision - your brain builds the images you see
if you have a lot pictures and if the motions match, it’s a movie!

Scientists start messing with this fun stuff - the brain, photos and technology


Thomas Edison - in the US
Kinetoscope - big black box with strip film inside that collected images in sequence
he recorded images in a big studio called The Black Maria
he recorded strange little scenes that he thought people might pay a penny to watch as an amusement -
he was a greedy bastard who loved making money with inventions
he immediately saw business

Paradigm Shift

This cool science thing is based on a THEATRE MODEL.

Lumiere Brothers - in France
completely different model
these guys already had a factory making photo plates
they transitioned in messing around with the idea of recording movement
Cinematographe
they had a total shift in concept - HEY! get the camera OUTSIDE!
they began to document the world around them
based on reality

Another Paradigm Shift
train leaving a station - train comes toward camera - audience freaks
Lumiere DON’T realize what they’ve got
somebody else in the room TOTALLY clued in

George Melies - the most important person in cinema history
had an interesting job that made him PERFECT for changing the Lumiere idea
he was at the first exhibition in a theatre
he was a magician
he KNEW that he could use this technology to impact an audience
he literally invented the language of movies - first of SO MANY techniques and ideas and those ideas came from the needs of MAGIC

These movies were changing constantly with tech.

Lots of inventions were coming all the time and changing how the movies were made and WHY they were made.

The Jewish Connection
there was a strange thing going on in New York, which was close to New Jersey, which is where Edison lived and worked
Jewish immigrants were showing early films in their shops at night
why? there was a rule that Jews couldn’t own property and be involved in certain kinds of business
etc - Carl Laemmle - German Jew who owned a fur shop
he started showing movies in the back of his shop in the evening
he was NOT ALONE in doing this
this side of his business soon overtook his furrier business
he soon ran out of silly little Edison movies
what did he have to do?
he licensed the tech from Edison (who, remember, is a bastard) and he hired his friends to start making movies
this is in the invention of Hollywood

There begins a movie industry - that is run by Jewish shopkeepers and their friends, or THOMAS FRICKING EDISON

A couple of early geniuses appear - they have a huge impact on these early pictures

Edwin S. Porter - the first story-based (narrative) movies in America
Life of an American Fireman - (1903) - invention of parallel action - cross-cutting, close up
Great Train Robbery - action, gunfights, aiming at the audience, pans, coloured frame

 

 

November 6, 2012

What Stops Some Videos from Going Viral?

Copyright issues will shut you down - Google will do a takedown

Generic - it doesn’t have anything to separate it from the 72 hours of video uploaded every minute!

Commercial linkage - people don’t like to be sold things, it seems - the Internet is free?

Naked business can get you shut down (however, some nudity is an advantage)

Lacks that element or combination that we discussed -

Meme - what is a meme?

You need to do your viral video within a WEEK!

Hand in - a report that covers this whole area

Hand in - a video that takes the report findings into consideration

Groups - single contributors get single marks - what? yes. You also need to give in a report on each person’s contribution

Viral Video

October 30, 2012

Viral Video Attempt

Viral Video Report - Observations and Conclusions

Group - Amanda, Cassidy, Vic, Dom.

List the titles of a few that you watched - the TOP of the TOP

Record the characteristics that you can identify that the best ones have in common.

Compile a list of attributes/characteristics/qualities and whatever that you can see contributed to the success.

HINT - famous people = hits, right? What happened to my GSP video?

What can you incorporate into your own video to catch as many of these elements as possible?

Part 1 - report on the virals you chose
Part 2 - put this report into a form that is appealing to a viewer (me and the class)
Part 3 - make a video that might generate hits - see what happens
Part 4 - after action report - how did it work? what went wrong? what happened?


Viral Video Report

We watches many top viral videos, such as "Gangnam Style", "Call me Maybe", "Kony 2012". All these videos have gone viral. They all have some characteristics in the videos that are the same such as the music, or what kind of video it is. What us being told or spoken in the video. Or even if its just a music video with lyrics. Music videos are considered viral videos because how much they are viewed. Viral videos are ranked based on how many shares they got, rather than their number of views. Another reason these videos have gone viral are because of their triggers, the videos grab the audiences attention, and aren't boring. If you hae a boring video, chances are it will not become viral, unless it grabs the audiences attention. Some characteristics that the best viral videos  have in common are the trigger , opening 'scene or trailer', ending, and just the meaning. Most viral videos have these characteristics in common. Whether the video is about music, food, people, all viral videos will become viral because of these reasons.

October 23, 2012

Shorts, Shorts and Morts

How does a video go viral?

According to the trend manager at Youtube.

1. Tastemakers - people who swing an audience to a video have a HUGE impact - TV show hosts, comedians, heavy Twitter users with big followings, etc can all make some explode in popularity.

Communities - this is where we hook in
the idea is that people can now participate in the ecosystem around a video - remixing, rejigging and creating something that refers to a video and becomes something new - this generates more interest
we can incorporate communities that exist outside of the video - you email a video link to friends, etc
or the common “response to” videos
subs, favourites, etc
some website sprunk up to do this work around a video
there is a lot of creativity around these videos and the memes that they spawn
THIS is why a video goes viral

The unexpected
surprise is not common anymore (although it is)
you see stuff that fits a pattern, but stuff that doesn’t stands out

What can we do?

We can try to take existing things and use their popularity to build our own videos that might attract attention.

Music review

October 10, 2012

 

Breakdown of Your Music Review

For this, let’s think about a report in sections.

The sections can correspond to obvious parts of the song:

Lyrics - what’s happening here? don’t retell - look for meaning! think like an English student

Instrumentation

list the instruments used
talk about the parts of the song - verse, chorus, intro, etc
talk about the quality of the instruments and the “parts”
riffs, beats, grooves, etc
stand out moments
weak moments
“lost me”s
Don’t say “this is awesome because it’s awesome”

The singer - the voice - the “character” of the singer

Your response - emotional and mental and so on - experience you had listening

5. The mood/tone/the less obvious qualities of the song

October 5, 2012

How Do You Know If A Band Has Some Value on The History of Rock and/or Roll?

(or Why You Shouldn’t Do One Direction Just Yet)

What are their genre elements?

there are genres of music and these genres have markers or signifiers
good bands that define genre often are the ones who started these signifiers
Led Zepplin
What are the genre markers that they were early on in developing?
Robert Plant in many ways defined what a metal singer is/was

the powerful drumming - BIG, FAT sound and a very heavy stick

guitars - crunch, power chords, blues influenced -

Different band, different genre - Ohio Players and Disco

Bob Dylan and Folk

Neil Young and Folk

Who are they influencing who is around after them? What did they build?

the pattern tends to go alt -> cool kids -> catch on -> mainstream -> over

Fashion and Image around the band

some bands really have something figured out this way - KISS, Alice Cooper, Gwar, Motley Crue, N’Sync, Madonna, Lady Gaga

Particularly amazing skills

The Beatles - their cutting edge studio, songwriting
Pink Floyd - guitar player was amazing
Tool - drummer is particularly awesome
Rush - all three virtuoso talents
The Career Arc - think of the journey that the band has been on

- has the band changed? how? why? what are they at the present compared to what they were?
The Career Arc - think of the journey that the band