Movie Originality

The past couple of weeks I have taken slightly more interest in what everyone else in my class is saying in their blogs. I get the general idea that we don't necessarily have to write about what is happening in class (even though I thought that's what we were told to do). Personally, I find it quite rewarding and a great catch-up to go over what I learnt in class in my blog. Especially when I realise that I actually have no idea what we learnt and I have to back track through moodle. Anyway, I've decided that this time I will try and venture away from my classroom learnings and take a look at the world around me, and talk about something that interests me.

The first thing that comes to my mind is movies. Firstly because I work there and secondly because my boyfriend and I are going through a phase of watching a whole lot of dvds that we've never seen before. For him it's the Disney classics like Cinderella, Snow White and Peter Pan (How he managed to not see them for 21 years is mind-boggling!) and for me, cult classics like Donnie Darko, Sin City and What's Eating Gilbert Grape. I'm also enjoying the old-school classics like Breakfast at Tiffany's and Casablanca.

All of this movie watching has got me thinking about originality though. Oh, and how Video stores are going to cope years down the track.

It is arguable that no idea is original. AMC last semester taught us that every idea branched from something or somewhere else, and that nothing is completely original. While the other side to that argument would probably be that in order to create something using ideas from different sources is in fact, creating something original.

But when do all of the good ideas run out? New movies being made lately seem to be either made from books or are sequels or remakes. Do these count as original? I think to a degree. Movies made from books require imagination to be turned into a screenplay, sequels require thought into different ways the hero/heroine can save the day again and remakes often have little changes so that they are their own movie. The same goes for movies made from TV shows and Spoof movies.

Working at the movies gives me an insight into what movies are popular and what ones fail. Shrek 2 was far more popular than its predecessor, as was Spiderman 3. Pirates of the Caribbean, in my opinion got worse as the sequels went on, but they franchise drew in decent numbers, nevertheless. The same for Harry Potter.

James Bond movies are always popular. Teeny bopper movies like Hairspray and High School Musical always incur chaos, and super-hero movies are definitely reign supreme (think Marvel's Spiderman, Iron Man and DC Comic's Batman).

I've come to the conclusion that originality is interpreted very differently, person to person. One person's trash is another person's treasure after all. It doesn't matter if it's a remake of a 60s classic, the 22nd movie in a series or a movie adaption of a comic book hero, as long as it has action, romance, comedy and drama all neatly packaged in one, there's a chance it'll do alright at the box office. Oh, but it must have a big-time director, multi-billion dollar corporation sponsorship and an obscene amount of advertising too. Not much really.

Time to take a breather

Week three in the world of Wintec Media Arts 2008 means Spark Week; a break from normal classes in order to view presentations, showcases, workshops and screenings from established industry people. A very interesting informative week that helps students, such as myself, pick up tips, learn exciting bits and bobs and just enjoy the work of someone who has been successful in their chosen field.

One presentation that I went and saw was that by Wintec's Editor-in-Residence, Julie Starr. She further reiterated my fear that there is a never-ending amount of sites on the Internet that in someway inform people or help them interact with one another.

One I want to mention is Twitter. This site allows you to tell everyone what you're doing at that point in time. You have a certain amount of characters you are allowed to use, and that's it. Write anything; what you're doing, something about yourself, recommend something, practically anything. It seems all pointless and quite trivial but it can be quite entertaining once you get into it. Although I'm not one to talk, at the present point I have made two posts, nothing exciting but there are people, such as Julie who talk to a lot of people on twitter and follow heaps as well.

I also found out that there is just an inconceivable amount of information on the Internet. Blogs are fast becoming the new way people get their information. For example, Julie said she heard about the Chinese earthquake through a Chinese man on Twitter. And he wasn't even in China at the time, meaning he had to source his information from someone else who was possibly there. But this in turn means, that during or straight after the earthquake, someone went on to their computer and started blogging about it.

This somewhat worries me. Is blogging that much of someones life that they must report the news to everyone else as quickly as possible? It seems very trivial to me. Perhaps my skepticism is blinding me from this wonderful cyber-space world though. Hopefully, this doesn't turn into something from a bad sci-fi movie where the technology consumes the human race and we become it's slave. But that's a whole other topic. 

Is This Possibly Too Much?

My Web Media class is steaming along now, (two weeks infact), and I have already learnt of tools and pages that I would never have dreamed existed a few years ago. As I alluded to in my last blog, I have never nor do I expect to, ever fully comprehend the immense power and capability the Internet possesses. However, it brings to my mind the question of whether this could all be too much?

This week's class taught my classmates and I of a new tool called bloglines. It basically lets you know when a new blogs have been posted by people and sites that you are interested in. It saves you the hassle of visiting the site and checking whether or not this has happened. It's great if you have this great desire to read a million blogs I guess, but personally I am not fond of it.

Firstly, I find it very difficult to connect with it. It appears so messy and unorganised and it takes me a while to find what I want to do because there is so much links and other pages to click on, that sometimes it becomes a bit overwhelming when all I want to do is look at one of my classmates' blog page. Once one learns where to look however, it does become much easier, but then I start to wonder what the point of the rest of the stuff is for.

Secondly, one of the things that has always intrigued me about the Internet is that you can get completely lost going from one page to the next; even though, granted, this is how you are most likely to get spam and come across a site that was maybe not what it said it would be. Even still, bloglines takes this away in a sense. True it saves time, but I don't mind snooping through webpages till I find what I am looking for. It's great sport for me.

And I don't have this huge desire to read an obscene amount of blogs. Sure this is part of the course this semester but I don't think I can honestly say that I have the time to read any randoms person's blogs. And after this course, who knows what will become of this blog.

Don't get me wrong, I think that bloglines, coComment etc. are all wonderful little tools that can in some cases be very helpful, I just don't believe that they are for me, nor any other average Internet user.