Dark Side of The Rainbow

Dark Side of The Rainbow

Pink Floyd has been one of my top five favorite bands of all time, and still is to this day. They are best known for their progressive and psychedelic music, that accompanies philosophical lyrics and experimental sound and are acclaimed to be one of the most influential bands in music history. Being a fan of their music, I often find myself reading interesting articles or watching movies about their legacy. One story in particular that always struck me as unusual is titled “The Dark Side of the Rainbow.” The article discusses how one of Pink Floyd’s famous albums, The Dark Side of The Moon, if pared correctly will be in perfect synchronization with visual portion of the 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. This is not the only part of the film that people believe to have coincided. The article also mentions how the song “Brain Damage” appears to play in the film during the scene with the scarecrow singing “If I only had a brain.” As well as how it is believed that the song “Over The Rainbow,” in the film is synonymous to The Dark Side of The Moons album art cover, which displays a beam of light hitting a prism producing a rainbow. The albums cover has also been known to coincide with transitioning from black and white, to color in the film as Dorothy finds herself in The Land of Oz after a tornado hits her home in Kansas. As a result, Pink Floyd fans and the media began creating websites and portraying news through a number of ways to people, about synchronizing the two together. Giving people advices as to when to turn the volume of the movie down and when to start the album in order to enjoy the experience. However, the band denies that there was any intension for their music to synchronize with the film and believe that it was nothing but a coincidence.

Although, I have been a fan of Pink Floyd for some time now and have briefly touched base with the synchronization of this story over the years. I found that there were some interesting aspects about it that I never realized until reading this article. For instance, how the albums; cover can be viewed as having two different meanings or when the song “Brain Damage” plays, it synchronizes with the scarecrow signing about wishing he had a brain. It was interesting to see this first hand as I fast forward to the scene of the scarecrow dancing around the yellow brick road, as Pink Floyd’s lyrics of a person loosing their mind. I believe that this story earned a spot on a Wikipedia page is, partially because it compares a famous rock band from the early 70’s to that of a film from the late 30’s. I also believe that it earned its fame, for the simple fact that it synchronizes, not only visually but musically as well. Coincidence or not, the album synchronizes so well, one could almost say that the music had been a reflection of the film and written specifically for the film. Due to this being such an odd topic and the fact that both, The Wizard of Oz and Pink Floyd are so popular I do not see it being difficult to find information about this anywhere else. Typing both of these names together in a web browser will definitely provide the same, if not more insight about this story. Either through videos, that actually play the recorded synchronization or other websites that dive deeper into how this idea was started. I found these ideas to this story to be quite useful because, it makes the viewer think in a non-traditional way or look at something in a different perspective. As a visual artist myself, I am constantly trying to think of different ways to get my viewers to look at my work.   

Sitcoms

The Big Bang Theory

Recently, I watched the relatively new comedy sitcom, The Big Bang Theory, in search of finding product placement. I picked this show out of other sitcoms, because I felt it referred to technology and other types of branding throughout the show. The basic synopsis of the show is about a group of friends and neighbors that range from the intelligent scientific, geeky to the ditzy unintelligent, creating a comical atmosphere throughout the show. “The Indecision Amalgamation,” is the name of the episode that I watched and felt had a significant amount of product placement, both visually as well as verbally. Brand names appeared clearly twenty times during the episode but only twelve of them were product placement. The main focus that I found to show product placement was about the Xbox 1 and PS4. Both gaming systems were mentioned multiple times by the character, Sheldon, who was trying to decide on what system to purchase. Every time he was seen in the episode he was debating on which specifications were better for each system. However, this was not the only example of product placement that can be seen. In the beginning of the episode it can clearly be seen that Sheldon is using an Alienware computer, to play video games with a fellow roommate. The computer is clearly seen by the front of the screen for the viewer to see not once, but  multiple times in the first five minutes of the episode. Other examples of product placement that can be seen in the show were found in an electronic store when Sheldon was debating on which gaming system to buy. These examples include ,Donkey Kong, Rift, Logitech, Nintendo 3DS, Wii, Mario, Samsung, Guild wars, and NVidia on the shelves next to the Xbox 1 and PS4. These devices were stacked and viewed multiple times during this scene and were clearly on display for the viewer to see. Therefore,they can be seen as product placement because of the number of times they appeared clearly on the show. Other cases of product placement can be see not only of electronics, but of clothing brands as well. For instance, when one of the characters goes out on a date and the girl told him that his shirt looked nice. The character, instantly tells her that its a shirt from J Crew with confidence, giving the the brand a positive appearance, showing viewers that if you want to look nice for a date you should buy J Crew. Although there is no real sign that the shirt is from J Crew, its the fact that he mentions the brand that makes it another example of product placement. There were other instances throughout the episode as well that show short glimpses of a product. Such as, an iMac which appeared on the counter during one of the scenes, but I do not feel it can be considered product placement because it is off in the distance and dose not appear as in focus as the character speaking does. Looking back at all the instances where different products can be found I can say that this episode reflects product placement in a positive way.
 

Daily Show

The Daily show episode that I watched aired July 22^nd, 2014. This episode briefly touched base on whether John McCain thought John Stewart was being fair to republicans. McCain believes that Stewart is funny but does not have fair or right information about republican situations. Stewart pokes fun at McCain by talking about how both are wrong about different events that have happened in the past.  He wants McCain to come onto the show and have a “Wrong Off” to see you is more wrong. Then Stewart briefly spoke about Rupert Murdock, and how he was planning to buy Time Warner for $80 billion dollars however, Time Warner said no. Then states that Murdock has been able to buy out companies in the past if he kept persisting to buy them. Later, the show talks briefly about a story about a woman who was pulled over by the police to hand over her cash, or they would have to take her children, because the police believed that the woman was intending to sell drugs. Lastly, John Stewart, spoke with his guest Richard Linklater, who spoke about his new movie “Boy Hood”. A story that he had filmed about a boy and his life over a span of 12 years, from when he was 6 to age 19 This filmed was actually taken place over 12 year which is unlike any other typical movie.

After watching this episode I found that most the information covered was skimmed over and did not truly give an actual news story. The majority of the show was about Stewart defending his character from McCain instead of talking about more pressing news that is occurring in the world. Although, what McCain said about Stewart can be considered news. It seemed to me that the show lacks a focus for what stories were more important than others. Such as, the Malaysian plane that was shot down in the Ukraine or even a story about the immigrants coming into the United States illegally and what President Obama’s plans were in order to solve this issue, and instead was brushed off completely to tell the story of being disliked by McCain. I feel that most of what is shown on the show also degrades the quality of the news, because I have seen that the video clips from other news stations that are portrayed on the Daily Show only shows specific parts of the clip that they want their viewers to see in order to show how ridiculous other news stations are being if their views do not agree with John Stewarts. I believe that people should still go to actual news stations, in order to receive more accurate information, and less commentary information. The show to me seems more of like a headline in a newspaper that briefly states some event instead of stating factual information that can be backed up. It is meant more to people as a comedy than an reliable new station for a normal basis.

Blog #4 Radio

Radio Commercials

FM and AM radio has been around for many years, and has entertained most Americans ever since its existence. The one thing that most people want to know is, “how much of the radio we listen to is actual entertaining information and how much of it is commercials?” After asking my self this question I did a little experiment to enlighten my self as well as enlighten others. I listen to one FM radio station and one AM station and listen to the station for at least 20 minutes, and listen to see how much of the station was comprised of entertaining information and how much of it was comprised of commercials. First, I listen to FM station (Wink 104.1) at 9:35am, a station that plays a mixed genre of rock and pop music with commentary in the morning. The local station had a guest on their show that had appeared on the reality T.V. show Bachelorette who had lost, and spoke on his behalf about his experience. The remainder of the show comprised of commercials and music. After gathering this information, I found it interesting to see that 18% of the station contained commercials while 82% represented actual entertaining or informative information. I did the same experiment as well with an AM radio station (WHP 580), a news station that would often transition from local news, to news that was from the Glen Beck program, which seemed to portray more commentary then actual news. However, I found the information to be quite entertaining, as they talked about an incident with a Comcast Cable customer wishing to cancel his service. However, the Comcast operator would not cancel the man’s service because the operator could not understand why the man would want to cancel his service due to Comcast being one of the number one Internet providers with the fastest Internet. The man however, would not state why, and the operator became irate and said he would not and could not cancel his service over the phone because he could not give any reason for canceling their Internet service. As a result, I found that only 3% of the station was comprised of commercials and the remaining 97% to be actual entertaining or informative information. After looking at these results, it is clear that FM radio stations contain far more commercials then AM stations. It is my belief that the reason for this is that the majority of actual radio stations are FM stations. Therefore, advertisers will want a station where more people will tune into and here about their product of service. Where as, AM stations are often hit or miss in finding a station that works and does not create the same amount of listeners as those who tune into FM radio.

Daft Punk

• Daft Punk opens up

  
  

  
  

  
  

  Weiner, J. (June 6, 2013). Robot Overlords. Rolling Stone, (1184), p. 54-61.

  
  

  
  

  The well-known electronic duo artists, Daft Punk have a highly secretive studio in Paris. The hidden studio houses many custom built super computers as well as memorabilia of previous projects they have worked on. Such as, blue-ray disks of Tron Legacy and their infamous pyramid, which they use to house a lot of their equipment when performing live. The duo ended up in this high-end studio by many years of friendship. They became friends in eighth grade and have been creating music together ever since. Bangalter and Homen-Christo were just as quiet in eighth grade as they are now. To this day nobody knows them except by Daft Punk, which is, do to the fact that they prefer to remain anonymous to the rest of the world by wearing robot looking helmets. Over the past few years their name has been an electronic music phenomena because of their many new albums including Homework, Discovery, and Random Access Memories.  The most successful album, Random Access Memories was made in collaboration with Ferrell Williams. Themselves and their ability to step out of their comfort zone and work with other well-known artists made their amount of success.  As a result the duo have become one of the most influential electronic dance icons to this day.  

  
  

  The reason I picked this article out of all the other articles was due to the fact that Daft Punk is one of my favorite artiest of all time. I learned that they were from France and they had collaborated with other artists. I found that the article was worth reading because even though they are one of my favorite artists I realized there was more to understand. I picked Rolling Stones magazine because I find it interesting. I borrowed the magazine from a friend who knew I was obsessed with Daft Punk and told me that the article was interesting.

  
  

  Having read the article, I was curious to see what ads surrounded the piece. I found that 37.7% of the magazine contained ads. The reason I believe that this magazine and others like it contain not as many as the average magazine because, more than half the ads are full-page ads. The frequency of full-page ads meets the quota for advertising in Rolling Stones magazine faster than many smaller ads. I believe that these ads are fitting towards Rolling Stones Customers because it seems as if the ads are targeted towards males in general. These ads range from male accessories to action packed TV shows. I do not believe that these ads reflect the main focus of the article, however they are contained in the same magazine because they can be associated to generating revenue to concert venues when it comes down to having a good time at a concert.

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

  
  

Robots are coming

RoboCup tournament headed to Brazil

The York Daily Record is the paper I used to find this interesting article in the Sports section (c1- c3). The article that I read was about a group of college students and professors from the University of Pennsylvania who are trying to accomplish their ultimate goal of creating a robotic soccer team that will eventually defeat the human World Cup by 2050.  Although this sounds like something new to most of us it has been going on for several years. Both students and professors have been trying to achieve their goal for a long time now and the real problem that the students and professors are facing is to be able to make the robots fully autonomous, and to be able to make quick and rash decisions. Much like humans there is a learning curve that the robots have to understand as well in order to play soccer successfully and people who play the sport know that a lot of it comes from making good judgment. Director and coach of the project Dan Lee states that “Back in the early stages of the project the games resembles humans playing soccer at 5-years of age. All clustered together kicking the ball and not really having a sense of where to kick the ball too.” Today, they are able to perform basic athletic skills and strategies much like those who play at 10-years of age. As the 2014 World Cup in Brazil begins to close another chapter, it begins another one for the RoboCup, which is to be held on July 19-25 in Brazil.

            I found this article to be interesting because I my self am an avid soccer player and find it interesting how this kind of thing has been going on for so long. Its interesting to see how they have taken gradual steps in trying to make these robots autonomous and to think quickly. I know first hand how difficult that can be, when coming face to face with a defender, and you have to make that quick decision as to whether you can get around him or if you should pass to your teammate. I also found it interesting how in the beginning stages of this program professor Dan Lee explains, how their robots resembled those who play when they are 5-years of age. The reason I find this interesting is that much like humans learning the sport at a young age the robots are learning at a young age too. Looking back I remember those days of not knowing what to do with the ball, and remember all of us crowded together kicking the ball and getting no where, but after many years of playing and being taught different athletic skills and techniques I, including others were able to work together. It will be very interesting to see whether there goal of beating humans in the 2050 World Cup will pan out. I think that if humans were to play against robots in the World Cup that these robotic scientists will have much more to look at than just being able to make them autonomous. Such as, how heavy they are and the fact that they could potentially can harm to the human players if they were to come in contact with one another.