SFX

There is increasing debate in the use of special effects. Some of the first SFX were things like stop motion in the original King Kong. This film was quite dependant on the actors. Now with the advance in technologies and huge SFX giants like ILM (Lucas' Industrial Light And Magic). The debate is that with the technology we have these days you can quite literally edit an actors facial expression, and even generate a different character and the actor does the movements and voice for it (Gollum by Andy Serkis in LOTR trilogy). Are people like Andy Serkis actors in these films, do they have as much right as any other actor to win awards? As films become increasingly less dependant on acting are we losing a certain quality to the movies and is their really such thing as an actor anymore???
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6571491.stm

Video sites

Youtube and Google Video; now both the same company but huge in their own rights. TV is often losing out to these sites because people can watch their program while they are on Myspace. The BBC have now created their own Youtube account so that they can at least get credit for their programs on the internet. Theres is some evidence that it is beneficial. Saturday Night Live in America had clips on these sites and their viewing figures increased as people saw the clips and were encouraged by them to watch it...

Social Networking

Myspace, Facebook, Bebo; all of these are social networking sites. The popularity of these sites is huge and still increasing. I believe that even email is being outdated by things like Myspace. I use Myspace messaging even more now than I do Hotmail and I even use Myspace rather than MSN in some cases.

The evolution of the games console controller...

Things were pretty basic at first, for example the Sega Master System controller, a rectangular piece of plastic with a some directional buttons on the left and a few more buttons on the right. Despite this simple design it has been the basis for most controllers still in use today. The shape began to change when most probably some research in anthropometrics (looking at the shapes, curves etc in the human body) was carried out to make them more comfortable in the hand. Some of the first of these controllers were the Sega Mega Drive controllers. Today we have Sony's Playstation 3 adopting the same old shape that fits nicely in 2 hands, Xbox 360 also using similar controllers (a bit chunkier) and these both have the directional buttons on the left and the others on the right, with the addition of a few more round the back and underneath. It is interesting to note that "start" buttons are also typically on the top middle. Nintendo have gone for something completely different with the Wii console. This controller, much more like TV remote almost seems to have taken a few steps back to make a very "new to gaming" friendly controller. Not only this but the controller is motion sensitive and comes with a numchuck to attach to do even more.
We then have the steering wheels, light guns, chainsaws etc to be used. With many flight sims you can even basically have the cockpit of a plane in your front room (a bit sad really) and similar things are done with driving games. Sony's Eye Toy completely removes the use of a controller and I had even my parents and their friends playing on that (under the influence of alcohol I might add). Guitar Hero is another recent game that uses a simple plastic guitar that looks more like it is a toddlers Fisher Price guitar!
So what comes next??? Is it worth buying all these controllers to pretend to play guitar or chop people up with chainsaws, or are we better off doing it for real (well maybe not the chainsaw part)...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_controller

Movie making

I am part of a group making a comedy show called Black and you have to bear in mind that we are able to film and edit our sketches to near proffesional standard, which not so many years ago would have been impossible. New media technologies allow us to do this, another less media related example is that my band is making studio quality recordings in pretty much a bedroom...