Gollum’s MTV Awards Appearance

 The clip from Tama’s ‘Communication of Special Effects’ lecture featuring Gollum at the 2003 MTV Awards:

From Audience to Agency…

This week we’ve been thinking about audiences, reception and agency.  In Sue Turnbull’s article, she talks about fans and fan production.  To spur your thinking on this front, take a look at this 10 minutes fan-produced Star Wars and COPS fusion parody:

Troops, incidentally, is widely regarded as one of the first great fan films.  You read more about it in Wired and in the Wikipedia.  Think about the sort of Star Wars audience that created this film – how active are they, and how do they see their agency in relation to the Star Wars franchise?

Apple 1984 Clips

In Chantal’s lecture on audiences, she played a couple of media clips, the first of which was the famous Ridley Scott 1984 advertisement which was broadcast only oncem during the 1984 US Superbowl:

[Source: http://youtube.com/watch?v=OYecfV3ubP8]

Also of interest is the fact that Apple updated this advertisment for their 20th Anniversary in 2004 (can you see what’s different in this version?):

[Source: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Zew1bb5Sxk4]

Finally, a recent mashup of the 1984 ad with images from contemporary US politics caused a stir earlier this year when supporters of Barack Obama created this clip which features Hilary Clinton in the role of Big Brother:

[Source: http://youtube.com/watch?v=6h3G-lMZxjo] If you’d like to know more about this clip, read more here.

Also played in the audiences lecture was this EPIC clip:

[Source: http://youtube.com/watch?v=dKWK3xfvs-k] This was originally a Flash animation – how well do you think they used Flash for this clip?

Remember, you can use Vixy.net to convert any of these YouTube files into an .mp4 file to play on your video iPods!

Coffee-flavoured representations?

For this week’s tutorials you’re asked to create a representation of coffee in any medium you like.  When I was in Florence a few months ago with my lovely wife on our honeymoon, one of the little pleasures was the fantastic coffee we found.  Here’s one shot which illustrates the joy of proper Italian coffee being savoured in Florence:

This might also be a good time to mention that another thing you could do with your iPods is upload photos and other images and create slideshows.  You simply pop your images in a particular directory, tell iTunes where that directory is, and it’ll create a slideshow for you.  For more details instructions, click here and here.

If, on the other hand, you prefer your coffee representations a lot sillier, this Folger’s coffee advertisement is one of the more creative (and catchier) efforts I’ve seen in a long time:

Be warned, though, you’ll find yourself humming the tune if you watch that video!

The iPhone Shuffle?

What happens when convergence, miniturization and Apple-level cuteness get too much?

The iPhone Shuffle! (Don’t forget, you can Vixy this link – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QwnsQpcNvpE – to convert this YouTube clip into an mp4 that can play on your iPod!)

Thanks Chantal!

Mika Brzezinski Clip for this week’s Tutorials

This week you’re watching a clip from MSNBC where Mika Brzezinksi refused to read a lead story (on Paris Hilton). Here it is…

Don’t forget, if you’d like to have this video in your iPod, then use vixy.net, paste the YouTube URL (http://youtube.com/watch?v=6VdNcCcweL0) and convert it to mp4 (which is the video format iPods use).

Web 2.0 … The Machine is Us/ing Us

Ever heard of “Web2.0″? If not, watch this…

Now, you’re probably wondering why we’d point to a YouTube video since it’s not in a iPod video (mp4) format! Well, those of you who’d like to carry around this, or any other YouTube video, just use Vixy.net. To use this free online service, just paste in the URL (web address) of any YouTube video, select convert to “mp4 for iPod/PSP”, and give the website a few minutes and it’ll turn any YouTube clip into an mp4 format movie which you can upload to and play from you iPod!