Medium Talent

The pixar story

The pixar story is on cnbc again tonight. As a pixar fanatic, I end up watching everytime. It would be interesting to see how audiences interact with animation and whether it is different than watching live action films.

This is part two of an hour long review of Star Wars: Episode I. While a much more overt form of criticism than we have seen in vids, it is also much more critical.  The narrator, a demented alter ego of the filmmaker,  eviscerates George Lucas and the prequels.  I would recommend them to anyone who is interested in Star Wars, or even just interested in creating films or television, because the Star Wars prequels provide an excellent example of how poor narrative, lazy character development, and an over-reliance on CGI colluded to create an absolutely awful film.

A comment from a Classmate

Tumblr doesn’t have a good comment system for people outside of Tumblr, so I thought I would post a message from a classmate.  This comment concerns my post about online communities making their own subtitles for US shows, therefore expanding the audience organically. By taking the translation into their own hands, they bypass traditional means of distribution.

When I was abroad and bored, I would go to seriesyonkis.com and watch episodes of the Simpsons and other shows in Spanish. I still do on occasion and I’ve talked to Spanish friends abroad and friends here at home and many people seem to use online video sites (legal or illegal) for language-learning purposes. That, along with online translating sites, make the internet a cool way of taking a platform and making its accessibility universal lingually.

Thanks Josh.

Audience of the day. Crowd watching the Macy’s Christmas tree lighting in downtown Boston on friday, November 26th, 2010.

Audience of the day.

Crowd watching the Macy’s Christmas tree lighting in downtown Boston on friday, November 26th, 2010.

This past summer I had the opportunity to see Jesse Schell give a presentation on “The Gamepocalypse” as a part of the Long Now Foundation.  It was a fascinating look at a possible future, one that, as a non-gamer, I am uncomfortable with.  The entire transcript and mp3 can be found here, and the presentation can be seen on fora.tv as well.  The fora.tv player is great, and I recommend if you don’t have time for the whole presentation, I recommend looking at Ch. 29, Whole Life Tracking. Games have audiences, as we have seen, and if our whole life becomes a game, then the populace becomes an unwilling, (and often unknowing) audience. Here is a quick Summary: Gaming the World In a glee-filled evening, Schell declared that games and real life are reaching out to each other with such force that we might come to a condition of “gamepocalypse—-where every second of your life you’re playing a game in some way. He expects smart toothbrushes and buses that give us good-behavior points, and eye-tracking sensors that reward us for noticing ads, and subtle tests that confirm whether product placement in our dreams has worked. The reason games are so inviting is that they offer: clear feedback, a sense of progress, the possibility of success, mental and physical exercise, a chance to satisfy curiosity, a chance to solve problems, and a great feeling of freedom. Accelerating technology has made some people give up on predicting the future, Schell said, but in fact it should make us much better predictors, because we get so much practice in finding out so quickly whether our predictions are right or wrong. He feels confident in predicting a number of driving forces that will make games subsume all other media and occupy ever more of real life. They are: Nooks & crannies—-new niches for games in people’s time, in specialty groups, in various world cultures. Microtransactions—-which will really take off when they blend with social networking. New sensors—-tilty smart phones are a glimpse of what disposable sensors everywhere might bring. New screens—-live displays on everything. REM-tainment—-lucid dreams as a play field. AdverGaming—-commercialization money drives powerful innovation. Beauty—-everything is getting gorgeous. Customization—-you can already get personalized M&Ms. Eye and face tracking—-universal face recognition is coming, and so is having your avatar reflect your real-face expressions. The curious will win—-games so reward curiosity and fast learning that the incurious will be left behind. Authenticity—-“real” constantly pushes toward real. Social networking—-Facebook! Transmedia worlds—-Pokémon showed the way, embracing a game, TV, cards, and toys. Speech recognition—-soon you will have to persuade a computer character to do something. Geotracking—-the real world becomes the screen. Sharing—-Wikipedia showed its power. Quantitative design—-detailed real-time analysis of what works in games drives exquisite adaptation. Extrinsic rewards—-gold stars everywhere, but Schell recommends the book Punished by Rewards and believes that intrinsic rewards are better to promote because they last. Whole life tracking—-the endpoint is immersion. Hopefully in what James Carse calls “the infinite game”—-where the point is not in winning but in always improving the game. Asked in the Q&A about short versus long games, Schell noted that massive multiplayer games have such scale and scope and offer such endless new goals and progress along with their social intensity that World of Warcraft now has 10 million players. We may well be passing our avatars on to our children and grandchildren.

This past summer I had the opportunity to see Jesse Schell give a presentation on “The Gamepocalypse” as a part of the Long Now Foundation.  It was a fascinating look at a possible future, one that, as a non-gamer, I am uncomfortable with.  The entire transcript and mp3 can be found here, and the presentation can be seen on fora.tv as well.  The fora.tv player is great, and I recommend if you don’t have time for the whole presentation, I recommend looking at Ch. 29, Whole Life Tracking. Games have audiences, as we have seen, and if our whole life becomes a game, then the populace becomes an unwilling, (and often unknowing) audience.

Here is a quick Summary:

Gaming the World

In a glee-filled evening, Schell declared that games and real life are reaching out to each other with such force that we might come to a condition of “gamepocalypse—-where every second of your life you’re playing a game in some way. He expects smart toothbrushes and buses that give us good-behavior points, and eye-tracking sensors that reward us for noticing ads, and subtle tests that confirm whether product placement in our dreams has worked.

The reason games are so inviting is that they offer: clear feedback, a sense of progress, the possibility of success, mental and physical exercise, a chance to satisfy curiosity, a chance to solve problems, and a great feeling of freedom.

Accelerating technology has made some people give up on predicting the future, Schell said, but in fact it should make us much better predictors, because we get so much practice in finding out so quickly whether our predictions are right or wrong. He feels confident in predicting a number of driving forces that will make games subsume all other media and occupy ever more of real life. They are:

  • Nooks & crannies—-new niches for games in people’s time, in specialty groups, in various world cultures.
  • Microtransactions—-which will really take off when they blend with social networking.
  • New sensors—-tilty smart phones are a glimpse of what disposable sensors everywhere might bring.
  • New screens—-live displays on everything.
  • REM-tainment—-lucid dreams as a play field.
  • AdverGaming—-commercialization money drives powerful innovation.
  • Beauty—-everything is getting gorgeous.
  • Customization—-you can already get personalized M&Ms.
  • Eye and face tracking—-universal face recognition is coming, and so is having your avatar reflect your real-face expressions.
  • The curious will win—-games so reward curiosity and fast learning that the incurious will be left behind.
  • Authenticity—-“real” constantly pushes toward real.
  • Social networking—-Facebook!
  • Transmedia worlds—-Pokémon showed the way, embracing a game, TV, cards, and toys.
  • Speech recognition—-soon you will have to persuade a computer character to do something.
  • Geotracking—-the real world becomes the screen.
  • Sharing—-Wikipedia showed its power.
  • Quantitative design—-detailed real-time analysis of what works in games drives exquisite adaptation.
  • Extrinsic rewards—-gold stars everywhere, but Schell recommends the book Punished by Rewards and believes that intrinsic rewards are better to promote because they last.
  • Whole life tracking—-the endpoint is immersion. Hopefully in what James Carse calls “the infinite game”—-where the point is not in winning but in always improving the game.

Asked in the Q&A about short versus long games, Schell noted that massive multiplayer games have such scale and scope and offer such endless new goals and progress along with their social intensity that World of Warcraft now has 10 million players. We may well be passing our avatars on to our children and grandchildren.

The International Audience of US Television

While producers may be dismayed by the prevalence of pirated material online, the practice can actually be seen as heartwarming if one looks at it from the right angle.  In recent years, subtitling has become a part of participatory online culture.  Online communities have greatly improved the transmission of US television programs, especially to non-English speaking countries.  Bilingual viewers use video editors to subtitle programs that are currently airing in the US, before they are translated and exported by commercial means.  Torrents and sites like Megavideo have made it incredibly easy for people to share tv.

This is not to say that the transmission is one-way.  A recent example of this is the BBC’s newest show, Sherlock.  Before it even aired on television

Water cooler has moved online and it is now multilingual. 

To be updated later.

If you have never heard of Jack White’s new project The Dead Weather, please take the time to enjoy this live version of “Will There Be Enough Water.”  I had the chance to see them live this past summer and it was incredible.  I had never heard of Allison Mosshart but she had this sultry, dangerous stage presence; almost like she was possessed.  The concert was at the Warfield and had a messy, psychadelic blues-rock feeling that you don’t often find in today’s music (I’m looking at you, Justin Beiber).

However, the reason I am posting this is because of the Youtube comment below. 


logen99999 1 week ago

jack white if your reading this maybe next time crank the amp more and dial in the gain from your pedals. then use the volume knob on the guitar to control how much gain is sent into the amp. this way you dont have to kneel down and dime that big muff everytime you’re going for that big solo.

then again your jack white you probably already know this.


I couldn’t believe someone would actually post this, but on the otherhand this probably isn’t the weirdest or most deluded comment on Youtube.  I’m scared to look at what kids are trying to tell Justin Beiber through Youtube comments.  I don’t play guitar well enough to understand what logen99999 is talking about, but I doubt that this type of artist-audience interaction was possible six years ago.   Websites like Youtube, facebook, and especially Twitter have deluded many people into thinking that they are much closer to celebrities than they actually are.  For some people, virtual interaction is as good as the real thing, and if they can interact with a certain celebrity online, it’s as if they are friends in real life.  While I find it sad and a little pathetic, it is probably not good or bad, just the next evolution of the creator-consumer relationship.

Blogging, Television, and Gossip Girl

Blogging has become an integral part of my television experience.  Almost right after I watch an episode of something, I read recaps on The Onion’s AV Club.  I’ve found that readding the recap helps me catch things I missed, here another person’s perspective, and occasionally get some insider details like future guest stars and storylines. 

I know I am not alone in this either.  It seems like most people have their favorite outlets, whether it be Television Without Pity, AV Club, Warming Glow, Entertainment Weekly, etc.  They all have their particular style and slant. 

While blogging about television is popular, it doesn’t hold a candle to another kind of blogging genre: gossip, epitomized by the indefatigable Perez Hilton.  It seems that gossip blogs have taken over journalism, in so much that gossip is often treated as news by more traditional media outlets.  A scary development, but unsurprising, as gossip is addictive and the ability to consume it online is much less embarrassing than actually buying a gossip magazine in line for the grocery checkout.

All of this leads to Gossip Girl.  While Jason Mittell dislikes using the word “reflect” to describe television’s relationship to our culture, in many ways Gossip Girl reflects our TMZ saturated society.  Gossip Girl’s reflection is not always accurate (funhouse mirror perhaps, thank you Prof. Mittell) but it does represent a significant cultural shift that all of the characters in the show understand.  In today’s world, privacy is a thing of the past; scrutiny and rapidly shared information are the new norm.  Penn Badgely remarked that “the psychology of celebrity is such a weird and new thing, I think the last time people treated anybody else like this was demigods like in the time of ancient Greece.”  While celebrity is not a new concept, the ability to “track” a celebrity, almost in real-time on blogs, certainly is. 

When I talk about television shows with my friends, I love to talk about the meta-ness of Community, 30 Rock, Arrested Development, etc, but it seems that Gossip Girl is most committed to the metafictional trope.  The characters are featured on a teenage gossip site, while the actors that play the characters are frequently featured on gossip sites al over the internet.  And while the characters/actors may publicly express loathing for the attention, the characters/actors know that this attention is crucial to their/the show’s popularity.  

How do you FFFFUUUUU today?

yourmindblown:

funny facts:

random facts about people

I feel stupid for not knowing what half of these words mean. Oh well. good vocab lesson for me then, I guess. -YMB (follow us)

Thought this was a pretty good chart for a current internet meme.  Just as fandoms have their own language, internet sites like Reddit and 4chan have their own, often visual, languages.  Also, this has some pretty good words, like insouciant (a casual lack of concern.)

(Source: quickmeme)