Robert's Extra Credit Blog

No, I had never written a blog before I attended this class. The positive aspects of using a blog for this class was that, it was a faster way to turn in our assignments without having to print them out and worry about all that mess. I had never blogged before, but I did not really find any difficulties using the system and summiting my blogs. One of the Blog prompts I had the most trouble with was the Hegemony prompt because I didn’t really understand the concept when I was writing the Blog at the beginning of the semester. The blogs that I found more interesting were the ones we had to write about films, because we could choose the movie we wanted to talk about and the information was easier to present that way. Yes, I would definitely recommend using a blog in other courses around campus because it is easier to summit your assignments and a different way to show you understand the material. I actually have no problem with the Blog the way it is but something that might help could be some comments from other student to maybe improve your blogging skills for future blogs and assignments. Yes, you can use my blog in a paper or report.

Robert's Globalization Blog

Globalization is the process of diminishing cultural barriers and interacting more and more with each other. From culture to culture, ideas or goods can be shared and interacted due to technology. Media is now reaching across borders and is helping to integrate cultures.  

Due to new technology, Globalization has increased in the last years as well as Glocalization. Glocalization is used to describe a product or service that is developed and distributed globally. Just like Globalization, Glocalization interacts culture with culture in different ways.

A good example of Glocalization is McDonalds. McDonalds is all over the world, but they do not have the same menu for every single one of their locations. In order to be successful McDonalds makes some changes to satisfy the culture where it is located. Some example are :  there are no Big Macs in India due to the fact that Hindu people do not eat beef, McDonalds serves beer in Germany, and in Chile you can dress your burger with avocado paste instead of ketchup. Glocalization allows McDonalds to do this in order to expand and diffuse cultures.

Robert's advertising blog

We see hundreds of advertising commercials every day on television, and every single one of them is trying to get us to buy their product. A recent commercial that I saw and caught my attention was the Life Alert Commercial. An elderly alert system, for when senior citizens fall or need rapid emergency assistance.  During the commercial, they show elderly people falling and accident statistics with the intent to scare their safety and catch their attention.

I feel that elderly people are very vulnerable to this type of commercials.  They hear about senior citizens falling and then they see them on TV on these commercials, they start fearing for themselves. They are using their safety appeal in order get their attention on their product. They see an elderly women fall to the ground and fight desperately to get up and call the medics, but due to her fall she cannot get up and just lay on the floor until someone has to find her. This clearly directed to senior citizens who live alone.

How can they not be scared with images like these shown to them on a daily bases. That if they do not have Life Alert the worst can happen if no one is there to help during a fall or accident.I feel that the commercial is scary and grabs their attention.

Robert's Three Act Structure

One of my favorite movies and really enjoy watching is Never Back Down. Director Jeff Wadlow, uses Hollywood’s three Act Structure to develop the film. A film about a young man that moves to another city and finds himself in a totally new environment. The movie starts out with a football game and we learn a little bit about the Main Character’s past Jake (Sean Faris), we learn he has a past he cannot deal with and most of the characters are introduced. The main plot of Act 1, comes when the protagonist is embarrassed and humiliated in front of the whole school by losing a fight and getting really bad beaten up.

The second act starts as the main character gets an offer to start training at a local Mix Martial Arts club. The second act gets developed as he starts liking the gym and training with Rocca, his MMA coach. He is enjoying the art of Mix Martial Arts not because he wants to get back at the guy that beat him up as he originally intended, but because he is becoming very good friends with his coach. The big decision in Act 2 is when he decides he is not going to enter a MMA tournament and the Ryan(the antagonist) finds out.

The Third act, where the climax occurs is when Max, Jakes best friend, is brutally beaten up by Ryan in order to make Jake participate in the tournament. Jake fights his way through the tournament because he knows that Ryan will make it to the finals. As Jake prepares to fight in the semifinals, he learns Ryan has been disqualified and decides to forfeit and walk out. Ryan is furious about the forfeit and confronts him in the parking lot; a fight for the ages breaks out. Jake ends up winning the fight and the respect of Ryan.

Blog 6 Shots

Filmmakers use different kinds of shots to help the audience understand and realize what is going on.  They use three different shots; long shot, medium shot, and close up. The long shot lets you know what is going on, where are we, what kind of setting we are in. The medium shot helps us understand where we are supposed to be focusing to, what were supposed be looking at. Finally, the close up shot, this shot shows us specific detail that the filmmaker wants us to know. Here are several shots from one of my favorite movie Never Back Down.

In this shot we see a building, we really don't know what  it is but our attention is focused on it because it is the only thing in the shot.

In this shot, the director takes us into this warehouse and we see that it is actually a training facility. We also see the main actors interacting and using the facility. this setting is important because the protagonist is able to learn and fight through the use of this gym.

In this last shot, we have a close up of the main actor. We see bruising on his face and we can tell he is pretty upset. 

Robert's Hollywood Blob

The Classical Hollywood Era, a time period of the dominance of vertical integration. Hollywood dominated the movie business through vertical integration. They were able to control every aspect of production, from producers to actors. They developed a trend of placing actors with a type of genre for audience to identify.

Through actors, Hollywood started developing genres that would identify them. Therefore every time you went to go see a certain actor, you had an idea of what kind of movie you were going to go see, and vice- versa. If you liked a certain type of movies you would probably see a familiar actor in most of those films.

The best example for this type of practice is, John Wayne. If we knew John Wayne was going to be in the movie, we knew the movie was probably going to be a western type movie. If you like westerns, you probably also like John Wayne and therefor you would keep on watching his movies and Hollywood films.

Blog # 4

All in the family, a show that portrayed a family dealing with different issues that metaphorically showed how society felt about certain ideas at that time. The episode we watched in class, about the “gay” issue in society made me think and   while I was watching this episode, I started recalling other shows that are similarly based. One that popped up was “That 70’s shows”, how in some episodes they try to deal with issues that maybe society is questioning. They both try to maybe change the way the public thinks and reacts to certain situations and make them a little more common.                                          In the other hand “That 70’s Show” shows the point of view of teenagers and how they deal with their thoughts and perceptions, while “All in the Family” is more conventional with the mom and dad and their views on what’s “right” and “wrong”. “That 70’s Shows” introduces the idea that people’s perception changes over time and how society may start seeing some ideas as common, that may had been controversial in the past. It also starts telling us how teenagers might start thinking differently than their parents.                                                                                                                                                                I am not a fan of “All in the Family” but from what I saw from the episode from class, they try to deal with issues in blunt kind of manner. While in “That 70’s Show” is more of everyone starts respecting how anyone feels about a given subject. They are both great shows for society but they present the information in their own way.