Journal 56

4. Is there more freedom for such commentary on cable news?

I believe that there is more freedom for commentary like this on cable news, if not only for the reason that they have more time to fill. In the 24 hour news cycle that cable news stations go though every day, you can only report on a story so many times until it is beat to death and people will stop watching. So to fill that time, news networks like MSNBC, etc use commentary, because lets be honest, almost anyone in the world could go on for hours about how they feel on certain issues, throw someone in there that feels differently and you've got yourself a program.

Journal 55

3. Would this make his news show more -- or less -- appealing to you?

I am not going to doubt the need for some commentary in the media, but if Olbermann made a segment like this for everyone of his show, I would not enjoy it as much. I think that there would then be too much commentary and not enough actual news, which I believe is more beneficial to the viewer. Some people might disagree with me on this point, and for those people I say go watch Fox News if you want to see excessive biased commentary, with little or no factual news.

Journal 54

2. Do you think Olbermann's comments are sincere or is this a TV performance?

When I first started watching Olbermann's segment it seemed as if he was being sincere with everything he said. But as time went on it seemed more like a scripted performance. I am not doubting that he supports gay marriage, but it seems like he was I guess you would say "milking it." One example that first tipped me off was when he paused right after the beginning of his segment, took a deep breath as to seem deeply uncomfortable with Proposition 8. He repeated this many times throughout the segment, each time then switching to a different camera, which made it seem more like a performance to me.

Journal 53

I had a pretty interesting topic I wrote about in my Journalism class throughout the week. It centered around a special 6 minute segment TV reporter Keith Olbermann had a little while after prop 8 was passed in California.

1. Is it appropriate that such a prominent news reporter should have a "special segment" to plead to Californians about the ban, or is he going too far?

As much as I like the fact that someone like this would care so much about something like this to make a special comment about gay marriage, I think that he is going a little too far. If you look to what the root of the media is suppose to be telling you it is the straight facts. Non-biased news. Sure over time opinion sections in newspapers, television broadcasts, etc have come into play, but I don't think that commentary is what the mainstream media should be peddling out to their viewers. Okay, make a comment about you feeling on the issue while bringing up the story, but I don't think that comment should be stretched out into a 6 minute "special segment." I don't find this surprising from a reporter such as Olbermann because he is somewhat famous for always making his point heard especially when it clashes with something Faux Noise Spin Doctor Bill O'Riely says.

Journal 52

As far as the design goes, the CRAP principles I believe are used. I don’t have much in the way of text because of the nature of the movie, but when I did I made sure there was a lot of contrast by putting white text on a black background. I also made sure there was ample space around the text to make it easy for the viewer of the movie to read. The way I framed the characters was also influenced by CRAP. I made sure that they were presented with space around them to make sure the viewer was paying attention to the right character.
I had to gather a few people together to make this project work. I found out quick that getting people to agree on a time is easier said than done. Because of that, a bulk of the work on the project had to be squeezed into basically 3 days leading up to today. This made it very hectic for me and in retrospect I think I should have picked an easier mode like a brochure. But in the end, I am pleased with my movie, and hope it will persuade people to take a look at open source software.

Journal 51

Of course though you can’t stop everyone, this is where the main character comes in, Mr. Gonzales. The government caught him using open source software and were now threatening to throw him in prison, but he escapes while the interrogator is out of the room. It is not his mission to spread the word about open source software, and free the world from the clutches of the greedy software companies. I should mention that my idea for making a full length movie was eventually scrapped in place of a trailer for a movie because of time constraints, more on that later though.

Journal 50

I started off with an idea for a movie that would glamorize certain pieces of open source software. I wanted something that would be both educational and entertaining to my audience of college students. To accomplish that goal, I set out to make an epic-type movie. The movie would be sort of a spoof of a serious action movie. These types of videos can be found anywhere these days, from video sites like YouTube, to the silver screen. They are also very popular with college students.
With the basic idea for the movie under my belt, I set about forming a plot. This part was actually pretty hard for me because I haven’t written any type of creative work in a while. To come up with the plot I sat at my desk with the list of software I wanted to incorporate into the movie. Eventually, after a few hours of hitting my head against the keyboard I arrived at a plot. The movie would start out with the typical movie announcer “In a world…” and go on to explain how, in the future, software companies would control the government forcing people to buy more upgrades and banning open source software all together.

Journal 49

So I think its a good time to maybe start my reflection that is due on Friday, anyway here we go...
From the time I heard that we were going to be doing an assignment like this I was excited. “Finally, a chance for me to show off what I can do!” I thought to myself. The project I enjoyed most in your class were the articles I wrote on open source software, so it was a no-brainer that I would be remixing one of them. I chose the article written towards college students because it was a little more informal than the other article which meant I could have a little more fun with it. I have been making short movies for classes since I figured out how to operate a video camera many years ago. I haven’t gotten the chance to make any sort of video for any class in college yet, so making one based on the content of this article seemed like the right thing to do.

Journal 48

I am excited. Why am I excited? because this weekend is opening day for rifle deer hunting season in Michigan. Now I know what you are probably thinking, me a hunter? Really? I know I come off as a person that would not only not hunt, but would be protecting animal rights or something, but in reality I have been hunting since I was in 7th grade. I love going hunting every year on my property up north. Except for having to get up so early every morning, lol. I usually have to get up at 5:30am so I can get out to the blind and get settled before the sun comes up. Even though it is so early and I am definitely not a morning person by any means, I still love going out. I love the anticipation of seeing a deer and how my heart races the moment in comes into range.I am sure a lot of people probably don't like the idea of hunting and to be honest I was really sure of it when I frist started all those years ago, but it's fun and if you think you are up to it, maybe you should try it.

Journal 47

I had another taping of Focal Point last night. I would by lying if I said that the show gets going like a well oiled machine. Actually I don't think I have ever been to a taping where at least one thing didn't go wrong. The taping usually starts out with people showing up on time around 6p.m. We usually set a goal of getting started by 7p.m. so we don't spend most of our night there. But then something never fails to go wrong, usually it has something to do with the prompter either not working or being at the wrong resolution to show up on the monitors hooked up on the cameras. One time actually the reason we were having problems was because the prompters weren't plugged in! That took about 10 minutes to diagnose. I am used to these types of things, but this show in particular went really bad. When we finally did start at around 8:30 it took us way longer than it should have to shoot the show. We tape the show "live-to-tape" so theoretically it should only take 30 minutes to tape since that is how long the show is, but one of the luxuries of doing this is that we can allow screw ups which take up a lot of time.

Journal 46

I love House. No not like my house, the show House on Fox. I had never watched it until I came up here to state and my roommate watched it. Now a days, I can't get enough of it. It is so unlike any of the other typical hospital dramas out there like ER or Grey's Anatomy (ick!). I find those type of shows very boring and predictable. But shows like House and my other favorite hospital show Scrubs have something different about them that makes them interesting. In House's case you have a very intelligent jackass of a doctor that pretty much gets away with anything becuase of how good of a doctor he is. Also his abrasive Vicodin popping personality makes for some interesting scenes when interacting with anyone. The best part of it is you don't really need to know much about the series to start watching it, so if you have never seen it before, you should check it out, it's on usa a lot, and new episodes are on every tuesday on Fox.

Journal 45

The election has long passed, but people are still talking about it. So I am too. I saw an interesting image on the internet today. The image was a map of the United States colored with blue and red, much like the various maps everyone saw on election night, but there was something different about this one. The difference was that this was one was even more blue than the others with only a few states colored red. Why was this map colored this way? because this was a map of how youth voters voted (18-24). When I saw it all I could think about is how different this election was in respect to youth voting and how Obama helped organize a usually neglected group of voters to win the election. Unlike most candidates, including McCain, Obama realized that youth voters do care and really want to vote, just usually they are not targeted in any way and therefore feel like they are unimportant.

Journal 44

Okay so back to SpartanTV. So besides what I was specifically doing, just being in the studio and being a part of the whole night was awesome and exciting. The best part for me was being able to watch the states light up online while the were being called for Obama and McCain, and then taking that and lighting up our own map. We had one woman who stood in front of it who was awesome, she will probably end up on CNN one day. Also orchestrating the whole night was fun because we not only had people conducting interviews, etc. in the studio, but we had people out in the field calling in with skype. By the end of the night the excitment was running very high, but our energy very low, even so, I can't wait to do something like that for SpartanTV again.

Journal 43

We have a new president-elect! For me the excitement is basically still at the same level as it was last night at 11pm when they called the election for Obama. Needless to say, his acceptance speech was awesome. And also in a surprising turn of events McCain was actually very humble and his concession speech was actually very good, he went back to the pre-campaign McCain that people actually liked. Ok enough about that guy, back to Obama. So Obama is going to be the next president of the United States, wow it feels good just saying that. For me, the most exciting part about all of this is how I was part of it. I keep thinking of how years from now I will be able to tell my family that I was part of the eleciton that elected the first ever black president, and hopefully the president that finally turned the courntry around after 8 years of good ol Georgie-boy. I may be expecting a little much by saying that as I understand the mess that he has to step in and clean up, but for some reason I think he can do it, well not just him, but everyone, like his campaign slogan I believe that "Yes we can."

Journal 42

Wow what a day, for lack of a better term, I am pooped. I am not going to talk about Obama just yet, I will save that for tomorrow's entry because I just have too much to say about the election coverage I was part of tonight for SpartanTV. We started broadcasting tonight at 7pm, right after the first polls started closing and we kept it up until sometime after 11pm. If you didn't know, my job on the show is running the graphics, and usually that is a pretty cut-and-dry task because all of the information was already there in order and you just sit there and click a button, maybe sometime pausing to fix a spelling error. But tonight was different. It was live so most of the information had to be gathered and put into graphics on the fly, especially the percentages for each candidate in each state to go along with the map of the country colored red and blue. Wow there is still too much to cover so I will continue this in thursday's journal.

Journal 41

THE ELECTION IS TOMORROW!!!!!
Well I am just downright excited for so many reasons right now. Not only because possibly one of the most historic presidential elections is tomorrow, but also because of all of the exciting things I will be doing with Spartan TV the next few days. Tonight we are hosted a debate between MSU student representatives of the Obama, McCain, ad Nader campaigns. But this was only a precursor to the big election coverage we are going to have tomorrow. The debate was broadcasted live on Spartantv.cas.msu.edu starting at 8pm. It lasted a little over an hour and was definitely interesting. I would encourage any undecided voters to go check it out on the SpartanTV website if they missed it tonight so they can get ready to vote TOMORROW!