Topics we didn’t cover: Radio

Since I had wrote a mid-term paper, I didn’t need to do a final project, but I did think it would be fun to talk about news and radio—my two passions. Radio is another form of art that falls under the umbrella of DMA but can be overlooked (pun intended). I find this one of my favorite forms of art because it all takes place in your mind’s eye. It is so engaging because it completely captures your mind in a world that you have built. Recently my team member, Jazlyn Rust, and I made a radio drama that I got the inspiration for in this class. We found it a wonderful challenge to convince our audience to believe there was a character that was not a human without telling that he wasn’t human. It was fun to come up with the script when we knew that the audience will never see what is in our heads unless we describe it to them with voices, music and sound effects. I find this method of communicating so personal because you are only using one form of your senses—hearing. With the stage of your performance in the minds of the audience, this gives the perception of a one-on-one interaction.

Topics we didn’t cover: News

Since I had wrote a mid-term paper, I didn’t need to do a final project, but I did think it would be fun to talk about news and radio—my two passions. I know we went over documentaries, and those are similar to news, but I think news has a few different aspects. The first of which is the time, for a long story you only have about 4-5 minutes of airtime max. This presents its own trials, what to keep and what to not show your audience. I ran into this problem yesterday when I was producing a package about the Cruz rally but only had 2.5 minutes to explain everything that had happen. The next challenge is the timeliness of the piece. Since FDN only covers the news once a week, everything we talk about needs to be accurate for the moment we go on air. This week of FDN was a challenge to present all the rallies FDN filmed but told it in a way that explained the final outcome. The final challenge that I find the most difficult is portraying everything in the right light. The last thing you want to do as a reporter is to report falsely, even if it is just displaying something in a false light. This is where news media tends to get a bad rap. Putting all of those factors together (and many other challenges) news becomes a race to the truthful finish with many challenges crazy deadlines and only a few minutes to show for it. It is wonderful.  

Film Review: Poltergeist (2015)

So I enjoy an occasional scary movie so last night my husband and I went to Family Video to rent one. James had heard a lot about Poltergeist (2015) and how good it was supposed to be, so we rented it. I hadn’t seen the ‘82 version so I had no idea what it was about. From the cover I thought it was about clowns, which would have probably been a better movie. Anyway, this film was a major let down. There wasn’t much character building before the hauntings happened, thus I really didn’t feel connected with the family. So when bad things started happening to the family it was hard feel emotions for them. As the film continued there wasn’t much build up in the hauntings. There was a few instances where strange things were happening, but it just kind of jumped into the scariest part without any suspense. Before the movie had really began, the youngest daughter was taken into the world of the poltergeist. The family suddenly knew where to turn to get help, and conveniently the lady that helps them was formally married to a tv star that deals with hauntings all the time. From there on there was just a giant portal that leaded into this other world, where the graphics were pretty bad. After they retrieve the girl form this other world, the tv star sacrifices himself to lead the poltergeist into the light. I think they wanted the audience to be sad that he might have died, but back to my first point, they didn’t do enough character building to make you feel any emotions for any of the characters. So if you are wanting an actual scary movie with an engaging storyline, this is NOT your film.

VR: News and Sisters

So I have to say, I never thought I would have liked VR. I am now quite obsessed with it. There are so many cool things you can do with it. In my field of broadcasting, news reports can now come to life. I found this you tube video on the Japan earthquakes were it was a 360 video where the reporter is talking with you but you can look around you. There are so many applications for this new medium of media. I would really like to start a YouTube channel of making these type of news stories.

I didn’t realizes how realistic and engaging the virtual world until I downloaded the app called Sisters. It is a VR game that takes you into the world of a horror story. I don’t watch too many scary movies because I spend the majority of the time hiding my eyes and covering my ears. But when you are in a VR scary movie, you cannot cover your eyes or plug your ears as easily.  The genius behind this new technology is that the simulation knows exactly where you are looking so it can purposely let you only see certain things in your peripheral vison. And the story line will not move on until you have seen everything that the designer wants you to see.

My brother gets scarred quite easily so I made him watch it.

My Limited Knowledge of Video Games

I’m going to be honest, I really have never been a huge fan of video games, so I really don’t know the first thing when it comes to them. But when I do play video games my favorite are puzzle solving games. I used to play Nancy Drew computer games when I was a pre-teen. I enjoyed the challenge of solving the mystery of what happened and who did it.

When I was a few years older I enjoyed playing Myst. This defiantly doesn’t take the cake for the best graphics but it also was released in 1993. I enjoy the interactive puzzle solving world. The game has different ending depending on your choices. I have not yet solve this game, but I really enjoyed attempting to solve the puzzles. I enjoyed spending time with my mom and brother trying to solve the mysteries, we would all work together and help each other to find the clues.

Portal 2 is another game I played a few years ago. I really didn’t play that much, but I loved having the different levels and different puzzles. This changed your view of space. All the sudden an impossible jump is a simple fall. My dad and I would play this together, so I have great memories of solving the maze of puzzles.

Documentaries and Children

I really enjoyed the documentaries we watched in class on Thursday. I had never seen an animated documentary before. At first I didn't like seeing the pictures displaying what the interviewee was saying, but after I got more used to it, I began to see it as creative and beautiful. I especially liked the documentaries about kids!
Interviewing kids is probably number one on my favorite type of people to interview. The stories they can come up with is incredible, their minds are so full of colors, images and fun all racing through their heads at 100 mph. I think the animation did a great job portraying that. Just seeing the kids (although I would love to see their cute faces) wouldn't have painted what was going on inside their heads as well as the documentaries did.
I think one of my favorite things about documentaries is the ability to show as well as tell. Books are great when you want a lot of information on a certain topic, but unless they have pictures it is hard to accurately imagine what actually happened. Documentaries give you the ability to hear about a person or an event and see that person or event at the same time. I especially love hearing stories form the real people who lived through an event or knew that person. What a great way to tell stories.

Documentaries Similar to News

Capturing Reality reminded me a lot of broadcasting for TV. Similar to the different views of the documentary creators, reporters can have different views on how to tell the story of what happened. But unlike documentaries you cannot change the scene, unless you want to be the next Nightcrawler, a story of a tv photographer that messes with the crime scene to get the best shots. As far as documentaries go, I agree more with the directors that say you should never change anything. As a reporter, I believe it is the job of those telling stories to portray them as truthfully as possible.

Music Videos: Happy

I rarely ever watch music videos. If I watch them it is usually to hear the song so I don’t even watch the video. But I enjoyed most of the music videos that were played in class. My favorite was This too Shall Pass by Ok Go. I enjoyed all of the work that was put into creating it. There were so many times when it appeared as if it were about to fail, but it didn’t. I loved it!

Another music video that I enjoyed watching was Happy by Pharrell Williams. It got overplayed and now I really don’t enjoy listening to the song any more, but I loved the concept of a 24 hour music video. They invited the audience to be a part of their music video and dance along. So throughout a 24 hour time people we stationed all over and would dance along to the song. I watched the credits for the music video and it took half the song to go through all of the people that went into the making the music video. What I enjoyed the most from this video was that it makes the viewer want to join in the 24 hour dance. You can watch along with the 24 hours of happy here: http://24hoursofhappy.com/

Quiz 2

For the Birds was a perfect example of Pixar’s amazing storytelling that is explained by Greg Singer in The Secret of Pixar Storytelling. The way Pixar told the simple story of a flock of birds on a wire was engaging and entertaining. They used the short to further their understanding and abilities as animators, and to bring to the screen entertainment. This film holds a special place in my heart because the first movie I can ever remember seeing in theaters was Monsters Inc. My dad got me tickets to see it for Christmas. When we went, For the Birds played and I remember almost crying I laughed so hard. It was a great memory. I was so happy when I saw the birds again in cars during the Life is a Highway song (1:30 into the YouTube video). Every time I see For the Birds it takes me back when I was 5 walking into the theater with my dad.

Darkness

Deleted Blog Post: This is an old blog post I accidently deleted lol!I am a person that defines myself as a happy person. I love smiling and laughing. Until I was 16 I had only had brothers, so crying was always viewed as weak. And until this last year, I would have told you I rarely cry. Now I find it healing, and I can barely go a week without crying at least once.

The world is a broken place full of broken people with broken dreams. Living in ignorance of that fact only worsens the pain of tragedy when it comes. And it will come.

The short film that touched my heart the most was Small Hands. The past few months of my life have been filled with the absence of a few very wonderful people who have passed away. Seeing this film reminded me of how hard it can be just getting through the day without them. Films that depict this struggle are comforting in a way. I know that others are going through the same thing and that I am not alone.

Ok, I am going to admit I am a nerd and I absolutely love documentaries. Right now I am watching BBC’s Frozen Planet. The cruelness of the world astounds me every time I watch another episode. Polar bears that are friends during the summer will kill each other in the winter. They will even eat their own cubs. Anything for survival. Even in the farthest reaches of the earth, where humans don’t even live, our world is full of darkness.

Delight or Challenge

Deleted blog post: This is a repost of a deleted post I did a while ago. My favorite movie that was shown in class this last Thursday was “Devotion.” I didn’t get that he was a dog until he went and got the toy for the woman. I love how it was a cute show but made you think. These are the type of films I love!

I love watching a movie and being surprised by a twist that I couldn’t see coming, or figuring it out before the reveal. I just watched Stonehearst Asylum the other night and was surprised by a twist at the end, I had completely shut off my brain so I didn’t really see it coming.

I didn’t realize how much media I consume just for the entertainment value until this lecture. I think there is a time and place for delighting and challenging media. Usually when I watch a movie to relax the last thing I want is to think, but I love a challenging movie or tv show when I am not very tired or if I am doing something else like folding laundry.

Imagining the Sacred: Spiritual themes in Children’s Media and Sientje

My favorite quote from the sections I read in Professor Leeper's paper was, “My animation is generally thought of as children’s films, not because it lacks the content to engage adults, but because one encounters themes of mystery and wonder, differently by taking on the stature of a child.” I think when looking through the eyes of a child, observations are made without the basis of a worldview. Children have the ability to unbiasedly see the world as it is(or at least less biasedly then most adults), making them one of the best critics.

This paper made me realize how unique writing for a children’s book or movie is. The author has to take on the perspective of a child to view the world as a mystery. I can sometimes consume children’s media with a superior view, thinking I won’t gain anything from children’s media. I was very much reminded how wrong this view is while I read the article and watched the short, “Sientje.”  felt myself take on this mentality of superiority, but by the end I realized that I needed to watch that to understand the child’s perspective. This is what I love that children’s media: it brings me back to the perspective I used to own—viewing the world as a place of mystery and wonder.

Children’s Media

I absolutely love children’s films/books! They leave so much room for the imagination and discovery. I often leave children movies wondering in the back of my head if there is another dimension where animals talk, plants come to life, or new creatures exist.

When I was younger I would imagine that a birds song was wishing me a good morning, a squirrel playing in the snow was begging me to join him, or a tree’s soft rustle was describing what it has seen over its long life.  Children’s media channels kid's imagination into these worlds and initiate thoughts about other worlds and dimensions.

I really liked Professor Leeper’s “Line Drawing”—seemingly sporadic to the viewer, but seamlessly systematic by the creator. When I observe the imaginations of kids I babysit for, I am in awe of how fast their brains create the most elaborate worlds. Suddenly, the blankets thrown over the dining room chairs becomes a farmer’s home and barn where she raises horses.

Children’s movies inspire the imaginations of kids and adults to dream bigger.

Christians in our Culture

I have been told many times that Christian movies are extremely cheesy. I have also heard other Christians say that to find great written movies and films you must watch shows and movies with lots of drugs, sex and violence.

I have heard others say that Christians need to make movies like everyone else makes so the world will watch. Which begs the question: What do you mean? If we are to make movies with drugs, sex and violence because that is just the world we live in and that’s the only way we can relate to people, I beg to differ.

As Christians we are called to live like Jesus, in the world but not of it. We can do this by the way we chose to think, act and live. If Christian movie makers are producing the same kind of movies as the rest of the world, what is the difference between them and us? Even if the message is good, pictures speak louder than words in this culture.

1 Peter 2:9, “But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.” We are chosen to be set apart, but far too many Christians are afraid to. Why are we so afraid? Will we step on some toes? Will we get looked down upon? Will we not get hired? When will we learn to be bold? (I know Christian’s struggle with the opposite, by being so separated from the world and so unlovingly bold that we don’t demonstrate God’s love, but I honestly haven’t seen this as an issue in my generation. So this is why I have not chosen to write on this side of the argument.)

I would just love to hear of Christian film makers producing movies with award winning story lines and production values without the audience having to cover their kid’s eyes and ears. That would make Christians in the world but not of it. Maybe the reason “Christian” movies are cheesy is because they consist of uneducated writers, producers, actors, etc. because all of the educated Christian media makers have not been encouraged to make good clean movies.

Fairytale

When I was in elementary school I would go to a program at our local library. The program was about building our imagination. I loved it! Every week we would read a fairytale, write a page or two in our own fairytale that we were writing, then go on a mental walk.


For the mental walk, the teacher would have us lie down and close our eyes. She would then describe an incredibly detailed story. In that world anything could happen: we would visit the beach, go through walks through an enchanted woods, or run around our neighborhood. Some of my most vivid memories from childhood are imagining these new worlds.

Even today I am reminded of the enchanted woods every time I go on a walk through a forest. Because of those stories I almost feel there is another dimension, where all of the magic and wonder are still happening just as I believed they had when I was a child.

I wonder if this is the reason my transition from fairytale to religion was so seamless, I don’t even remember it. I had never thought of this concept before last Tuesday’s class. It make so much sense that if we grow up believing wonderful fairytales, it is easier to accept the most beautiful fairytale of all—The Gospel.

Good vs. Bad Readers

How we intake the world around us shows us a lot about who we are as a person. For those who are good readers, they are open to new ideas, they crave more, they will come back to the same information again and again, and they let the information change them. On the other hand, bad readers are not open to new ideas, they could take or leave information, they only engage once with the reading, and they do not let their minds be changed.

This can describe many Christians. Not to define a Christian is either good nor bad, but for the sake of the article I will be doing so. The "bad" Christian is your typical Easter and Christmas church attender. They don't make a habit of engaging the Bible, and they most certainly do not let the knowledge of the Gospel change them in any way. It is sad how easily it is to fall into this way of living. From this perspective your thoughts and ideals are the only way to live--the best way to live. A"good" Christian suddenly sees how flawed their views are. They see that habitually engaging in the Bible is transforming.

Hey!

My name is Kaylea! I am a commuter from Columbia City (30 min north of here). I am a broadcast fusion media major. I am a transfer from Trine University where I was studying mechanical engineering.



I don't actually know what I want to do with my degree, but I know that God has called me to come to HU and study broadcasting.

I grew up with 4 siblings. My family means everything to me. I am now married to my best friend.

I enjoy cooking and baking. I absolutely love animals! Fun fact: I have bottle fed 13 kittens from birth. I love kids! My favorite tv show is Parks and Recreation!