Part1

Semester Final essay

This world always changes and it forces people to follow that change. In 21st century, there are many different things compared to the previous era such as technology, transportation, and peoples lives. As we know it times change all the time for better or for worse whether we like it or not. Things evolve  and are different in time every aspect of life can change in a instance or over  a long period of time. Over this last semester we looked at ten different lessons and all of these lessons have some sort of Dramatic change in them.

Change is frequent especially with people in the movie 7 pounds you see this.  God created the world in 7 days and I destroyed mine in 7 days( 7 Pounds) . Ben Thomas was in a serious car crash that killed his fiancé and 7 other people.  After this crash he was done. his life was over,  had nothing left, his insides were dead. From this he decided to change everything in his life dramatically to help others, because he had so much guilt for killing his wife and those other people. Ben decides to give his own body to show his remorse , he gives his own life for others, like a Christ figure. but you see the change he made in his life . it was a change for the worse for himself in a way . but also he found happiness in it. The change he made in his life led him to love again, but also led him to his death. In this picture you see that the sky is cloudy and the light is dim. This is just showing Ben inner turmoil that he is destroyed inside but it’s also a little light showing there’s a little hope for him .

Press pause play the change is frequent. Music changes every day some people feel for the worse some feel like it’s for the best. People say that it is getting easier to make music just because the technology is so advanced. Some artists feel like the artists are less talented just because the technology is so great. The Music will always be changing always getting more advanced there is nothing anybody can do music will just keep evolving till were dead and even after . the tag shows that it’s a new day . The bright sun shows that our future is bright like our  technology advances. Every day is a  new day for more technology to be built and more music to be made  .

So the image of the broken glass shows that Tayo has gotten through everything he has finally broken the glass of his past he can finally move on and change for the better. Tayo struggles with PTS(D) this picture of the glass broken around the floor shows him letting go of everything letting his brothers death go as well as letting go of all the racism hes had to deal with . Ceremony shows us that while there are many powerful evils in the world, adherence to traditional conventions can be used as a guide to return safely to one's roots. While Tayo doesn't use the ceremony that was used in the past, he is able to find one that works for him. This is able to solve the problems that the Native American culture had never experienced.

The biggest change in the way that we interact due to social media is the sheer number of people that we can interact with. In the past you were limited largely to people that you knew in person, today you can interact with people from all around the world. This is why you see people who have thousands of Facebook friends. They would never have that many friends if they had to interact with them in person. This gives you the opportunity to share opinions with a far wider range of people. Over the  years, we've seen social media 

shock thousands over politics, create as many industries as it has destroyed, and offer an abundance of visual 

and audio entertainment. This has changed everything in our world. the tag of the the unfinished roof shows that we are still building, still expanding on media its an unfinished thing.  

   This movie Smoke Signals isn't just supposed to be a mockery of Native American life and culture, but it is supposed to be a deeper look into Native American spirituality and ways of living. In the interview he stated, “the two women and their car provide a sense of time in the movie, when the past, present, and future are all the same, that circular sense of time which plays itself out in the seamless transitions from past to present.  It is the age old adage, that sometimes to go forward you have to go in reverse.  We as people can learn a thing or two from this story.  By reinvesting ourselves into our past, we can come to new realizations that could just change who we are and what we’re all about. The symbol from this is the reflection in the water sometimes to go forward you have to go back words to get rid of the pain and to find answers that have tormented you for a long time you have look in the past . The tag of the water its reflecting the sky . this just shows us that sometimes to go forward you have to go backwards.

7 Pounds

Life is an ongoing maze always changing, always mixing things up. Life is beautiful but yet can  be destructive. It can go from great to worse in seconds. Death i always right behind life there is no way to run from death. life and death are intertwined without death there is no life, death is like a shadow always hovering there. For  Ben Thomas. His life changed in a instance. "God created the world in 7 days I shattered mine in 7 seconds." While sending a text message, Ben accidentally swerves into oncoming traffic and causes a car accident that takes the lives of his beautiful fiance and seven other people. After the Car accident Ben decides to change everything about his life.

there is so much meaning and symbolize in 7 pounds  at the beginning of the movie there's a scene of an ocean and it shows him getting out of it.The water is a source of life but is deadly . The water has the power to give life but can also take it away in a instant .When reaching the beach Ben walks into the house. it is dark and cluttered, Every time he is inside the house there's boxes and papers and Ben's fiances clothes in the background .These remind Ben of Sarah his fiance and Ben just cant get himself to take the items out.  the inside of the house represents what is going on inside of him. But there is a tiny bit of dim light from the sun that is seen shinning into Ben's house shows how there is just a little bit of hope in him to make things right.  When Ben's outside of the house there is so much beauty its very colorful and full of life.  with the flowers and plants the outside of the house symbolizes what is going on the exterior of Ben.    A shot from the movie Ben can be seen clearly as well as all of the flowers and plants surrounding him .  This is a very important scene because it shows us that on the outside Ben seems happy.  All of the color in this image conveys that Ben is lively loving person it seems on the outside. Ben has a beautiful majestic ." I never forget when he said that it was the most deadly creature on earth.  But to me it was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen" (Seven Pounds) . there is life and death in the Jelly fish because all it does is kill an is also telling us their is beauty in death. this is relevant to the mission that Ben has because he is doing something amazing sacrificing his life, making his death beautiful. Ben meets Emily  she is slowly dying. Sometimes she is in the hospital, a place of illness and death. However, she and her surroundings are mostly full of life and brightness. Her home is filled with flowers, light colors and wonderful things. She is always wearing bright colorful clothing with many flowers and beauty . These wonderful colors depict who Emily is as a person, loving  caring, and beautiful.  the death-like look her face carries. This suggests that God isn't letting Emily a good person live. Surrounding Emily with such beautiful scenery shows how cruel life can be, not allowing her to live in such beauty. Life is confusing its an ongoing puzzle.

Through the film 7 pounds there is connection between life and death both can be beautiful in their own ways. Life is mysterious never know the ways it works, things can change at any moment for better or for worse .

  

Cinematography

Shallow Focus is a photographic technique incorporating a small depth of field. In shallow focus one plane of the image is in focus while the rest is out of focus. in this picture you see that it is a closeup of Ragnar Lathbroke leader of the tribe. You see the fierceness just in his face that hes not scared of anything. Looks like hes just looking straight through everything with those bright blue eyes prepared for anything.
 

In this picture Color is present the priest Athelstan is being crucified nailed to a cross like Jesus Christ for living with the vikings (the heathens ) worshiping their Gods rather than worshiping the true God, The Lord Jesus Christ that he was accustomed to before his temple was destroyed and he was taken hostage.The term color is put in this shot to give it more realism and portray the pain




   

This photo shows the costumes that Scofield, and Sucre, and the people in the background are wearing . From looking at their clothing/costumes you can clearly tell that they are in prison. The costumes are important just because the whole first season and some of the second they are in prison.

                                                          

This shot taken in the show Vikings is for depth of field. You can see this because you notice all the warriors behind Ragnar walking toward the beach. From this shot The Viking warriors look like they are coming right at us with fierceness ready to fight .




Scofield and Sucre in the show Prison Break are looking in to the distant at something pressed up to the fence just waiting. From this shot we can see that there is deep focus in it just because both Scofield and Sucre are in focus but Sucre is just lower or next to him as it appears in the photo.





 You can see deep focus is being used here because the men with shields closest to the camera are protecting themselves from all the archers shooting arrows at them . Then you notice ocean and a boat in the distant farthest object form the camera anchored.




  This shot of Ragnar Lothbroke just shows the Offscreen space. You notice that hes not looking at the camera at all, but is looking down the hill in to the distant at the loss they suffered. Blood running down his face,There is almost like a shadow over his face showing the anger he has for the defeat they just had .



This table in Sons Of Anarchy Symbolizes power and dominance. if your in the club and seated at the table means that you are in a high command in the club. At the head of the table Jackson Teller the president/leader of the club, to Jacks  left is Chibs telford VP (vice president ) and to the right of Jack is Bobby Munson Sgt of Arms. This is a meeting for only the top men, and you can tell their dominance of these three men by looking at their arms their in dominant position.




Shows rear Projection because you can see a couple of Jack Tellers club members right behind him riding their bikes on the highway to get some where quickly. and also they are there to protect him in case any one comes up behind them at trys to run him over they can get in the way.






From this shot you can tell that Jack Teller is in distress and has much on his mind and is in deep thought just by observing his face.  You notice Most of his face and body is in the shadow meaning that he has much anger and feels lost and evil. But then you see a little bit of the sun is shining on his face meaning that there is hope and good in him still.

Analyzing Music Videos #2

Learning to study and analyze music videos have opened my eyes tremendously. It is very interesting and  different to me in every way. Its really intriguing  to actually learn how to catch the hidden meanings  and to be able to dissect all these music videos, just by watching them.So far from this analyzing chapter we learned about the auteur ,the diegesis, the focus , the mise -en- scene , the flashback/flash forward , genres and the editing of videos.

 All of us were taught how to spot these terms in all different kinds of videos. The song and video that I picked and enjoyed doing was Mockingbird by Eminem. This video had many great flashbacks because it told /showed videos and pictures of him and his kids from his past life. The song Adams by Blink 182 the Diegesis of the video seemed to be is that someone died and most likely committed suicide because he was very depressed and angry. The Auteur of the video 100 Years by Five For Fighting is Trey Fanjoy. He is a very successful director ,Directing music videos for names such as Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, and many more. The genre for the music video Sail by Awolnation is narrative. The music video tells the story of a man being chased by something. An example of where a focus shot or an editing scene can be seen, is in the Music video Swimming Pools by Kendrick Lamar. Its when Kendrick Lamar is falling through space with a bottle in his hand.The presentation that was presented showed the mise-en-scene very well was Fragile by Tech N9ne ft Kendick Lamar. This video you could tell that is was just telling the story of a student at a new school, and of course a lot of the time the new kid seems to get picked on so hes fragile.

Being taught all these terms and being able to depict them in music videos is really awesome and is exciting to me, because I have always loved music. And I know all these things that I have learned definitely will help me in the future.

Analyzing Music Videos

over the last week we started to analyze music videos and I really thought it was going to be kind of boring and a waste of time to be honest. But after looking at a bunch of music videos and analyzing them it actually became quite enjoyable. All of us had to pick a music video to really study and analyze.We looked at the Auteur of the music videos, which really refers to the director of the video. We also looked at the Diegesis which means basically the hidden meaning behind the video. With all these we looked at other aspects of the videos the sequence, focus and the mise-en-scene. These things deal with more of the filming of the video and how the scenes are really set up.The music video I enjoyed and actually remember being presented was Words I never Said by Lupe fiasco from this video I liked how Lupe in his video is really saying be yourself don't be afraid to stand up  what you believe in don't shy away, don't go with the crowd. Another video that I enjoyed was Fragile by tech N9ne ft Kendrick Lamar I liked this video because the video tells the story of someone going to a new school and being picked on or bullied just because he's new and maybe different. But at the end of the music video is shows someone being very kind and generous to him. After going through these videos I can actually analyze music videos pretty easily now and is interesting to me .

Technology

Technology has been changing drastically overtime.It has impacted us and has changed our world in so many different ways. With social media , it has connected new people and things every single day.It has created the popular culture we know and follow to day . Many people out there believe that it is helping our society in many different ways. But also many others believe that it is destroying our society. Technology has changed/evolved significantly even within the last ten to twenty years . When computers first came out they were huge and stationary you couldn't move them basically at all. and now you can travel with them in your backpacks. technology has allowed us to understand the world more. When disasters happen like the earth quake in Haiti without the use of technology we would of not known about this terrible event for sometime, and wouldn't of  been able to send aid to them as quick as we did. The way we communicate has evolved and is still evolving . Communication has always been present we are just finding new ways of communicating through technology. An example of this is twitter, Facebook, and even Craigslist. Like the movie we watched (Craigslist Joe)  where a young man Garner for 30 days uses only Craigslist to find a meal, a place to sleep, or a ride. We can communicate to people all across the world without even talking face to face or calling them, you can just send them a message instantly. even though communication and culture go together because culture is what we communicate so much  about our clothes, morals etc ,but culture has been different in ways. an example of this is the elite culture and the folk culture. A system was set in place to separate the rich from the poor. The Elite Culture, consisted of the classical music, fine arts, and literature. From this you see that not everyone is not able to access everything in that culture. Hundreds of years ago the rich and famous could only enjoy the fine arts. The Coming of the industrial Revolution changed everything about our culture. everyone had a better chance to be educated and to find better work and many new machines and inventions were made. With the Industrial Revolution the Elite Culture was forgotten and lost and the popular culture came in to place. The definition of popular culture" is the arts, artifacts ,entertainment, fads ,beliefs, and values that are shared by a large segment of our society." Popular Culture can change in a week, a day, even really an hour. It is the main thing that most people follow. Like I said communication and culture are right there together because without communication culture just does not work Because without communication  a culture couldn't really flourish because know ones talking about it and passing it on to one another. It would be started but then it would slowly die off.

technology is never going to stop growing ,our culture will always be changing no matter what, and the communication we have with each other, will never go anywhere. these things are just part of our world and are helping it grow. 

Reflection 5

Reflecting on the past week will be harder just because I was gone a couple days from being sick. But one of the days I was there ,we went through the book by annotating it I forget the pages we went over. But every time we annotate the book my understanding of the book increases dramatically. It really helps me out in every way because this book still confuses me so much a lot of the time when i'm reading. while annotating we started to talk about  Tayo's kindness. How he is kind to everyone even though most of the time he's treated harshly just because of his race. I think its cool how he can be still so kind even though he has been through so much going through WW2 and seeing everything he's seen having his brother killed and all the friends he's lost. He still at the end has a loving attitude towards everybody and really everything. Another one of the days we got to read for pretty much the whole class time. That really helped me out just so I could catch up. Because for most of the year I have been trying to catch up with everybody. and finally I'm pretty much caught up with everyone in the class.

Reflection 4

This past week has been probably the best week for me of the year in this class. We got to see the Navy Seal Clay and got to see him tell his story. I thought what was very interesting is how he gave up his D1 baseball offers to go to the army and serve his country. That has so be one of the biggest sacrifices ever and I thank men and woman like that every single day and have the ever most respect to people like that decide to go fight for their country.  The story Clay told us about how he had to shoot a little girl who had a bomb strapped to her chest really got my attention, really made me see what some of these people have to live with. I felt terrible that Clay had to be the one to make the decision on whether to let her come across the highway and blow him and his companies and everybody in the restaurant up, or shoot her .  During 7th period he told us that he could see the little girl in the back of the room, taste the blood, and hear gun fire. He said pretty much every morning or late at night he sees that little girl. He wishes instead of shooting her he would of ran out there and held her and they would of both just blown up. Through all of his missions he said that eight of his men died . He said that he would change positions with any one of them that he would rather be dead and have them alive. That really shows the brotherly love these men have with each other that he would switch positions with them. He also talked about how to be successful. you have to want it as much as you want to breathe and that really hit me and motivated me in everyway.

Reflection post 3

Through  all of last week we went through the book Ceremony and annotated it. Before going through all the annotating of.the book. It really confused me in every way possible.but as we were going over the book.My understanding of it is increased steadily and is still increasing. The book at times still confuses me and I have to go back and read over and over again. But its becoming a little easier to read day by day. Why its so confusing is just because it switches keeps switching to before WW2,  during World War 2 ,and after so at times you forget what your reading. And also its hard to read because Tayo develops P.T.S.D after the war and sometimes your reading and you don't know whether it happened or not. A thing that was interesting about the book is that Tayo is a a half breed. Half White half Indian so he's not always welcome in each of the colors or hes looked down on by some. I just think how its funny how you have to be a full breed back then to be really welcome in some areas. You have absolutely no control over whether your half breed full or whatever.