Music

I like a variety of music, but I most identify with Christian alternative or alternative rock because it is the music I have grown up with. I have fond memories of waking up to the sound of worship music wafting through the house as my family got ready for the day. It always created such a warm, happy and loving atmosphere in the house as the soft tunes reminded us of all we had to be thankful for and Who our focus was to be on.
I don't turn music on very often, mostly just in the car or when I am doing some household chores. My boyfriend plays the guitar though, so I hear him play a lot and through him I have gotten to know Dave Matthews and Phish much better than I did on my own.
For worship music I especially like Kevin Prosch, Delirious?, David Crowder and David Ruis. They all write or cover songs that draw me into communing with God. They also like to use strong, powerful beats and have a lot of very energetic songs, which I love.
For Christian Alternative I like Third Day, Jars of Clay, the Newsboys, MercyMe, and Salvador, among others. I mostly like bands with male singers, but I also enjoy listening to some of the female singers. They tend to be more pop though.
For Rock, Alternative Rock and Pop, I also like a variety of bands and singers. I tend to just listen to them on the radio and with my boyfirend although I have a large collection of music on my computer as well. I love 3 Doors Down and Men at Work, and I enjoy Dave Matthews, Jason Mraz, John Mayer, Phish, Tom Petty, and U2 among others.
Since I am a tango dancer, I adore tango music as well!
Lately I have been getting into classical music and so I listen to MPR a lot, especially when I am driving, washing the dishes or cooking.


Here is a song I listened to a lot in high school. I got the cd after volunteering at HoodFest, a music event in North Mpls. This song talks about how people often do things that they don't believe is right, how they go against their beliefs. Christians often talk about this when after they sin and they are upset with themselves. This song ends with the speaker asking God to make him perfect, and cover his sins (forgive) until he is able to be like God in this area of his life. I really like the fast pace and the fun rhymes of this songs. The singer does a good job of sounding desperate, which is as he should be when trying to allow God to change him. I also like the "be careful little feet" section because it reminds me of sunday school. It references a fun little song we always sang together.


Artist: Smalltown Poets
Album: Smalltown Poets
Track: Everything I Hate

i think i am elastic
these arms they are a wonder
pull from sideways, up and under
i think it's time for something drastic
and it could be more than i bargained for
ten to one it is

oh i'm into everything i hate
my spirit is not fooled; my members take the bait
oh i'm in to everything i hate
still not dead enough to stifle this debate

these heels were made for bruising
and the cobblestones they're using
are the pleasures of my choosing
i must be born for losing
heal these soles to hurt no more
and i'll lift these hands just like before
Cover me like a dimestore suit
until I'm just like you

careful little eyes what you see
careful little feet where you go.
© 2006 Forefront / Emd

Documentary

If I was going to make a documentary, I would do it on the impact of samurai culture on modern day Japan. I am part Japanese and have always been deeply interested in Japan. I lived there for a nearly a year after I graduated from college, and taught English there. I really love learning about Japanese culture and greatly enjoyed reading "Tale of Genji" this past summer. I believe that the roots of samurai culture are still influencing modern day thought and way of life in Japan in some degree, also that hold may be diminishing somewhat with time. Japanese people are very commited to tradition, even as they are usually on the forefront of innovation, and love to keep traditional elements alive in their way of life and thought. My message would be that modern Japanese culture is still heavily influenced by samurai tradition and this tradition both impedes and pushes the Japanese forward as a people group and world player.

To make this documentary I would first decide who to interview. I would want to interview professors of Japan and Japanese culture, history, language, anthropology, etc. I would interview some professors who are Japanese and some who are from other countries but who have studied Japan. I believe that they would give a good "outsiders" perspective that might be difficult for a Japanese person to give. I would also compile some of my own memories and those of others who lived in Japan, focusing on our impressions of Japanese ways and correlating them to samurai cultural ways. I would also like to interview those who practice the ancient samurai arts, such as swordfighting, ikebana (flower arrangment), and the tea ceremony as these were important aspects of samurai life in peacetime.

I would ask each person to describe, as best they could, Japanese culture and then samurai culture. I would ask them how they would rate the importance of various attribuutes held sacred by the samurai, and ask them to react to news of salaryman suicides and heads of company honor suicides, among samurai influenced behavior.

I would film some traditional arts: ikebana, tea ceremony to use in the film, as well as some martial arts. I would tour some of the castles for traditional images, as well as all the interviews. I would potentially include my footage of the emperor's New Year's speech.

It might be difficult to get a truly accurate portrayal because it is hard for a culture to analyze themselves, but I think it would be pretty accurate, since I am an outsider and I would be the editor of the documentary. It would also be difficult as I would not be interviews members of all parts of society, but only a few that I select. So the teenage cute world might not be used, which is a lare part of Japanese culture as well.

Hospital Dramas

Theresa and I focused our PowerPoint on Hospital dramas, specifically Grey's Anatomy and ER.

Some of the characteristics of these shows:
They are fast paced, with constantly switching storylines and rare slow momments. This is done to mimic the feeling of life and death situations, which is what these doctors often deal with.

They usually have two interesting cases that the doctors are invested in and two life situations that the doctors are agonizing over, usually of a romantic/relationship nature. These intersect in interesting ways, for example, a patient might say something that gives the doctor an idea or reveals a step that the doctors also needs to take in their own lives.

Grey's Anatomy is set in three spaces, the promary space is the hospital, and the two secondary spaces are the house that many of the interns share and the bar, where all the doctors go after work to relax. ER is set primarily in the hospital, the alley where the doctors smoke and occasionally in the homes of the various doctors.

The language is a mixture of medical jargon and everyday language. Grey's Anatomy has some teenager-y language such as "seriously!" which they sprinkle throughout their conversations.

They are fun shows and ER has proved to be quite popular for many years. Grey's Anatomy is currently quite popular and may continue to be for some time.

Self-driving car Advertisement

Tired of your long commute that takes up your valuable time? Want to spend your morning drive catching up on your sleep, enjoying a relaxed breakfast or reading the paper?
Would you like to wind down on the way home by watching a movie?
The new hybrid Blithe allows you to do all this and more by . . .

DRIVING FOR YOU!

That's right! No more worries or stressful rush hour commutes. Simply put you destination into the car's software (run on Tiger OS), pull the curtains, relax and enjoy your cup of coffee.



The new hybrid Blithe runs so smoothly and quietly you will hardly notice that you are in a car. A gentle tone or music can play to let you know that you have arrived at your destination.

Critical Approaches to media

Observation:
He opens the Internet, which opens to his homepage of CNN. He scans the headlines then goes to YouTube to listen to some music and watch some music videos. He particularly liked the private fan concert that one artist had done, and which is one of the unique draws of YouTube. He opens Word and types a bit of his homework, then goes back to YouTube to look at some Daily Show snippets. He goes back to his homework until he takes another YouTube break. Later on he checks spiked humor for some Dave Chappelle clips and watches demonstrations of some new video games. This is his routine for most days.

Interview:
Q: Tell me about your media viewing habits.
A: Everything I get is from the Internet. I download movies and TV shows, but my primary forms of entertainment comes from YouTube, and other clips sites (spiked humor, compfused, sites like that). My source of news is CNN and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I don’t read books, magazines or newspapers.

Q: Why do you choose to make the Internet your source of information?
A: It is what I am used to; I grew up with it. It is cheaper. It allows me to access more content, when and how I want to.

Q: Are you against reading books, magazines or newspapers?
A: I just don’t like them. I don’t find them fun.

Q: Do you use the Internet to connect with others?
A: Yeah, but not in a Myspace-y way. I contact friends through iChat and keep in touch with them. I don’t use it to meet new people.

Q: On average how many hours do you use the Internet recreationally?
A: I am connected to the Internet virtually the entire day. I don't know how much of that time I am using it recreationally. I don't know, many hours.

Q: What is the future of the Internet?
A: In the short term it will be distributor sites like YouTube. It is impossible to predict.
- a 24 year old male

Analysis:
This person that I interviewed is a typical Y-Generation person in some ways, and not in others. He uses the Internet extensively and constantly. He uses it to find pretty much everything he needs, from recipes to guitar tabs to music videos and research for classes. He uses it for social networking in a way, as he uses email and chatting quite often. He does video chats and voice only chats as well, especially with his family members. He doesn't care about meeting new people, so he is not involved in the Myspace, Friendster, and other social space sites. He loves technology and really enjoys using the internet as a way to contact friends and family members. Because it is cheaper than using the phone and it is easy to leave messages with people, he prefers using the internet to contact people. He will often use it as the primary contact, to see if the person is available, then call them, or have them call him.

He prefers to use the Internet as a tool, the mode of receiving information instantly, at the momment he needs it. His agenda is to find the information that he is looking for and the entertainment that he wants, whenever he thinks of it, which is why the medium serves him so well. It provides near instant information and is quite useful. The subject of this interview believes that he simply uses the internet as a source of information. From observation, I see that it also provides him with instant entertainment. He enjoyes checking out the latest movie ratings, watching baseball games, seeing clips, etc. THe thought of using a regular TV, in which he would be limited to what is on at the time, seems archaic and silly to him when he could watch whatever he likes whenever he wants to. He believes that as time goes on, TV will have to change to become more interactive and like the internet to remain popular. Otherwise these clip sites will take over the popularity of TV, especially as this generation ages and gets more buying power.

immigrants and the media

There are a lot of conflicting images of immigrants to the United States in the media. Since the U.S. was founded by immigrants and originally welcomed them to the country, there are three main images of immigrants. The first is the positive pictures of the European immigrants with the theme of "they came and built this country into what it is today." The second image regards the newer immigrants as "welfare or the American people's jobs seeking poor people who can't be trusted. They are surrounded by somewhat shifty images, unstable and not to be trusted. The next is trying to combat that view with images of immigrants working hard, bettering themselves and their situations and here to build the United States into an even greater country.
In my collage I chose a classic 1800's immigrant photograph as the central picture. A husband, wife and two small children stand on the deck of a boat as they enter the harbor. They are wearing old-fashioned clothes from the "old country"and they look tired, yet excited to begin their new lives in the promise land. A faint smile plays on the parents' lips. The father stands with his hand grasping their lugguage, all that they have to start with. He is ready to disembark.
I surrounded this photograph with modern and old images of immigrants. I chose them for the faces, the hope, the desperation of the people, as well as some rally photographs from the recent illegal immigrant protest. Some of the people are working. Others are just arriving. In one photograph, the people are trying to get to the U.S. by floating on a raft made with garbage bags. Some of them are showing their support for the U.S. by waving the American flag. I also included a photograph of immigrants with Lady Liberty in the background, as she is a symbol of both freedom and immigrantion.
These photographs show the different views of immigrants that many Americans hold. They are conflicting views. I hope that as a whole, the people of this country are moving towards as more accepting view and position for immigrants. As a grandchild of an immigrant and a friend of several, I know what it means to many people to be able to enter this country and made a new life for themselves. America may not have everything right, but I believe that one of our nation's best qualities is acceptance and giving people new chances in life. Let the inscription on Lady Liberty stay true and legal for all generations. We should not be a people of fences, but of open arms.

Editing scenes analysis

This is a series of three scenes. In the first, the group discovers that a member has been killed with a knife. They go out to find him, it is night. They find him stabbed, sitting on a park bench. It is very dark. The men check him over, find all his belongings on him and sit sadly on the bench next to him and think for a while. The scene cuts to the second, Bana enters his apartment and check it over for those who could be hiding to kill him. This scene is juxtaposed with that of the bombmaker's death. The third scene begins with a phone call to Bana who is told that the bombmarker has died. He drops the phone. It then cuts to Bana meeting his contact who insinuates that he allowed information about the members to be told to those who were seeking to kill them.

In most of the shots we are seeing the characters on an equal level. In the first scene there are a lot of long shots andsome extreme longshots. The characters are allowed some distance to grieve and the audience is to take a step back and think about them. Who are these men? Are their actions right or wrong? Should they continue?
In the second scene, it starts with sme medium and long shots. The camera is still pretty equal level so that the audience can identify with the characters. We start getting closer shots as Bana's characters gets more advanced in his search for a bomb. We focus a lot nn the bombmaker's hands as they create the killings. We begin to peer into Bana's face and look at him from underneath as he slits the bed and rips it apart. We are looking at him from below for most of the rest of the scene. When he goes into the closet, the camera moves from above him as it focuses closely on his face. The bombmaker is made fuzzy as the camera focuses on the mechanical monkey on the ferris wheel. A long shot of the house as it blows up.
With the third scene, we see Bana emerge from the closet and pick on the phone, then focus on the phone as he drops it down to his knees. The news is sad.
The first scene has a few words, but they are mostly very silent. The next two scenes have no words at all. This allows the viewers to come to their own conclusions while giving them space to think about what is happening. We are able to ponder the actions of the them and decide if they are in the right or wrong. The camera gives us lots of searching looks into Bana's face to try to understand him while maintaining a pretty equal level shots on all the characters to avoid passing judgement.

Scene analysis

I am analyzing a scene from the movie Munich in which the main character played by Eric Bana, who has been assasinating those believed responsible for the Munich Olympic athlete kidnapping and murders, starts to believe that he is being hunted as well. Members of his team are slowly being killed off and he knows that he is mostly likely also a target.

The scene opens with Eric Bana opening the door to his apartment. Thunder crashes outside and the sound of rain is loud. He is shadowed and moves around with his gun, checking each room for would-be-assasins. He does not turn on the lights. As he checks his apartment, the camera moves to show another team member, the bomb marker. It starts with a longshot of his house, then moves indoors. He has taken a break for the killing and is supposed to be relaxing so that he can be a part of the next mission. He is in a room surrounded by the little mechanical creatures that are his hobby, little wire creatures that are remote controled or on a timed thing. One of the wire monkeys is hanging on a wire ferris wheel, switching from one little car to the next. The movie switches back to Bana, who begins to rip open his mattress to check for bombs, which was a place that his team had put a bomb. He then check the phone for a bomb, another place his team had put one. The music gets soft and scary. We look at the bomb marker. His workplace has suddenly gotten a lot shadowy. Bana is sitting on his bed looking defeated and sad. He picks up his blanket and goes to sleep in the closet, a reference to earlier in the movie when the team was talking about a man who was on a similar mission and was too scared to sleep in beds. He only slept in the closet. The camer moves back and forth between the two scenes. The bombmaker is working on diffusing a grenade. We switch, focusing on Bana's face behind the slats of the closet door, suggesting that he is in a jail of his fears. Switch again, the bombmarker is fuzzy in the background as the camera focuses on the monkey on the ferris wheel. It ticks with each swing up. We go to a longshot of the bombmarker's house. The clicks stop and the house blows up.

This scene is important to the movie as it shows how the team is slowly being killed off and how Bana's character is struggling with the dangers and facts of the mission. He knows that his life is in danger and he is wondering if this work is actually useful to his government. He checks every trick that he and his team employed to kill a target and in the end is not satisfied with his search and sleeps in the closet. The bombmaker's house starts out light and slightly cheery, he is relaxing and has gotten away from the work for a little while, though he is still working on bombs in his house. When the room gets darker and shadowy, we know something bad is going to happen to him. The rain and thunder outside depict the mood of the characters, tormented by their work. The slats of the closet door represent the bars of a jail that shows Bana's state of mind. The juxtaposition of the two scenes also lets the audience know that what Bana's character is searching for, and his fear, is probably going to affect the bombmaker, even though he doesn't seem to be afraid. The work the Bana is putting in to ensure his safety is what the bombmarker should also be doing, but didn't and so died. It also shows tha Bana's fears are justified. This scene is the part of the movie that questions these character's actioins. Is what they are doing right?

media studies

Improving test scores and raising the caliber of learning in all English and Language Arts classrooms is a wonderful goal and one that I hope all teachers are striving for. Many districts think that going "Back to the Basics" will acomplish this goal, but in reality this ignores a wide range of activities that could actually improve the "basic skills" of reading and writing in a more engaging and motivating way for this generation than many traditional methods.
At Nicollet Junior High in the Burnsville-Eagan-Savage district, students focus on grammar and literature (mostly short stories and poems with a few novels). They are supposed to increase their writing abilities as the basic skills test is fast approaching as well as a few other state exams. The school is fairly open to the use of technology in the classrooms and has a rolling computer lab, a computer lab and a few software options. The English office has a ton of movies that go along with the curriculum and the literature textbook has a cd that goes with it so that the students can listen to the stories and poem being read out loud. They do believe that media and technology is a great tool, but don't really know how to incorporate it in.


Rationale: We need to incorporate more technology and media studies into the classroom in order to give our students a better sense of the world that they live in and help them learn to filter the messages that they encounter online, in movies and from television.
---When students are taught to analyze movies and television in the same manner that they would a written text, they will be able to filter the messages that they are hearing and choose what they will believe. It is people's natural tendency to believe what they see and hear, unless they are taught to analyze it properly. They will learn to think critically and see that the music, shot angles, costumes, etc are all used to manipulate the senses so that an emotion is stirred or an idea is raised. They need to understand how this works so that they are not unduly influenced by the world and advertisers. They need to be intelligent, thoughtful consumers of media.
---When students are able to use technology with their schoolwork they are able to do something that most are already quite familiar with, or enjoy a great deal, to learn. This gives them some intrinsic motivation to do the work. When the students enjoy doing their work, they will do it better and spend more time with it so they will learn more. Our goal is to get students to love learning, as most do when they are young, so that they will become lifelong learners, always curious and interested in the world around them. Otherwise they may become complacent adults who simply accept what they are told and do not participate in government and in improving our society as much as they could.
---If students truly understand how the messages in advertising they can choose whether or not they want to recieve the messages. Advertising promotes consumerism, self-centered behavior, and avoidance of the hard issues. They learn how to understand the messages with critical thinking and visual, auditory and textual analysis, skills that are being taught in language arts curriculum as well.