Special Thanksgiving Topic: The Day/Way Music Died

THE WAY (OR DAY MUSIC DIED)
1. Questions about Flash animations?
2. Overview of Andrew Keen's The Cult of the Amateur
3. Music as the Toy at the Bottom of the Cornflakes Box

4. view 2004's "The Way Music Died"

In the recording studios of Los Angeles and the boardrooms of New York, they say the record business has been hit by a perfect storm: a convergence of industry-wide consolidation, Internet theft, and artistic drought. The effect has been the loss of billions of dollars, thousands of jobs, and that indefinable quality that once characterized American pop music. (more) »

"It's a classic example of art and commerce colliding and nobody wins," says Nic Harcourt, music director at Los Angeles's KCRW-FM. "It's just a train wreck."

In "The Way the Music Died," FRONTLINE follows the trajectory of the recording industry from its post-Woodstock heyday in the 1970s and 1980s to what one observer describes as a "hysteria" of mass layoffs and bankruptcy in 2004.

5. Reading Due December 1st From Cult of the Amateur- The Day Music Died [side b]

Creating a New Online Youth Culture / Turn in Flash Animations

The PBS Frontline documentary, Growing Up Online, is an exploration of the digital world that kids are spending a lot of time in these days. Frontline may tend to put a hard spin issues like this, but this one was SCARY... And I'm not even a parent! If this is not a fair depiction of American youth at present, one can easily imagine it in the near future. Educators take various worthy positions on the form media education should take into schools -- teach about media without technology, teach about media through collaborative production (wink), etc. Whatever position you take, it is clear, evidenced by videos like this, that emerging digital technologies impact kids' identity formation and what it means to be a citizen in our culture, and the it is the responsibility of schools to adapt to that influence one way or another.
- from The Media Spot

1. If you haven't turned in your Flash Animations, then you can quietly work on them during this video. I can help those who need it.

2. Watch Growing Up Online

3. Blog Entry for 11/24:

• Write an analysis of "Growing Up Online"
• some ideas could include:
  
• Analyzing how advertising is enmeshed and personalized on MySpace
• You could also Investigate the terms target audience, datamining and advergame and make connections to other social networking sites
  

FLASH WORKSHOP II

1. Learn how to create (publish) a .swf file from your flash project file (.fla)

2. You will have today's class to finish your animations and publish your files.

3. name your finished file like this ( yourname_com155.swf )

I will be available in class today to answer any questions, and collect your .swf files when finished.

Flash Workshop

I will be available today to check your articles and help you set up and start your animations.

Using your an example of a media article concerning unequal power relationships between men and women, social classes or different ethnic groups create a flash animation that illustrates the following:

• Is there more than one kind of ideological position/perspective evident within the media content?

1. Collect a series of images and text that can be used in a simple flash animation visually representing the ideological discourse that occurs in your media example.

2. Today you will show me the article, and start to create your animations

3. .fla files should be finished by mon. the 17th

4. .swf files can be turned in on wed. 19th

Intro to Flash CS3 / Chapter 5: Media Ideology

Important concepts in Flash:

FLASH STAGE: The stage, the large white area in the center of the screen is where the action happens. For our purposes, If it isn't on the stage, the user isn't going to see it.

TOOLS: Allow you to draw, color, and otherwise manipulate objects on the stage

TIMELINE: a place where action occurs, the timeline is broken into a series of frames. You can think of these as individual frames of a film. When you put something on the stage, it will appear in a frame. If you want to move it from one place to another it will start in one frame and end in another a little further down the timeline. The red box you see in frame one of the timeline is called the playhead

PLAYHEAD: this shows you the current frame being displayed. When a Flash movie is playing through a browser, the playhead is in motion and the user is seeing the frame where the playhead is located

PANELS: These are used to modify and manipulate whatever object you may have selected on the stage or even to add an object to the stage (library)

PROPERTIES PANEL: When an object is placed on the stage and selected using the selection arrows in the tools panel, the properties inspector panel will change to reflect the properties of that object that can be manipulated. Such as, stroke, fill, size/scaling, you can also add motion tweens here

flash tweening explained

In class:
1. learn to set up a flash document
2. learn to draw a shape, and convert it to a symbol
3. learn to import to the library
4. Create a simple motion tween using keyframes and/or a motion guide layer

For Next Class 11/12 Wed.
1. Read 150-157
2. Find an example of media coverage concerning unequal power relationships between men and women, social classes or different ethnic groups

• Is there more than one kind of ideological position/perspective evident within the media content?

3. Collect a series of images and text that can be used in a simple flash animation visually representing the ideological discourse that occurs in your media example.

4. Bring a copy of the article, and the images ready to animate for next class

Do campain producers give us what we want?

“Political advertising ... is just the artful assembling of nominal facts into hideous, outrageous lies.”
Bob Garfield, Columnist, Advertising Age

Campaign 2008 broken all records for advertising dollars spent in a single election -- no picnic for the bombarded electorate, but a bonanza for the industry that does the bombarding.

So who are these marketing wizards, and how do they decide what works and what doesn't? For answers, we nominate this excerpt from The Persuaders, a 2004 FRONTLINE classic that looks at the sophisticated niche marketing tools advertisers use to customize messages for particular constituencies.

In the excerpt, correspondent and media critic Douglas Rushkoff visits with Republican political consultant Frank Luntz, a venerable practitioner of the persuasive arts and a master at telling people what his research says they want to hear.

For Mon 10th Have a blog entry created answering the following questions:

1. Where are we headed? What's the future? What are your thoughts on how far the techniques of persuasion might go?

2. Is there something distinctive in the American character that makes us susceptible to this world of advertising and messages? "The Persuaders" program explores the idea that Americans are seeking and finding a sort of identity in buying/joining a brand. What is this about?

3. What are the common elements in the persuasion/selling strategies of advertising and marketing? And how can we move about in this world with a degree of self-awareness as to what's happening, especially since all these messages are increasingly trying to move us to act and make choices on an emotional level?

PBS FRONTLINE: The Merchants of Cool

The Merchants of Cool - PBS FRONTLINE REPORT

They spend their days sifting through reams of market research data. They conduct endless surveys and focus groups. They comb the streets, the schools, and the malls, hot on the trail of the "next big thing" that will snare the attention of their prey--a market segment worth an estimated $150 billion a year.

They are the merchants of cool: creators and sellers of popular culture who have made teenagers the hottest consumer demographic in America. But are they simply reflecting teen desires or have they begun to manufacture those desires in a bid to secure this lucrative market? And have they gone too far in their attempts to reach the hearts--and wallets--of America's youth?

FRONTLINE correspondent Douglas Rushkoff examines the tactics, techniques, and cultural ramifications of these marketing moguls in "The Merchants of Cool." Produced by Barak Goodman and Rachel Dretzin, the program talks with top marketers, media executives and cultural/media critics, and explores the symbiotic relationship between the media and today's teens, as each looks to the other for their identity.

DUE WED. November 5th BLOG ENTRY:

What are your opinions on the tactics and techniques of the marketing media who are targeting teenagers? Have they gone too far?