Posts Tagged ‘education’

Formally Studying the #Art of #Film & #Video Made me Less of a Cynical Critic

Posted: July 6, 2014 in Meat Me @ Camera 4
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
1

mm@C4logo2ajclogo2

by @anarchyroll
7/5/2014

While getting my BA I took a decent amount of film classes. Between film, television, and video studies I took eight classes that focused on the history of or making of the electronic visual medium(s).

I used to be quite the amateur, wannabe, cynical critic of movies. I assumed that knowing the history, terminology, etc would make me an even sharper critic since I would have actual knowledge to go with my sarcasm and self-proclaimed high level of taste. Instead the opposite happened.

Learning about the visual art of film making from misé en scene, cinematography, editing, set design, rule of thirds, set design, and the history of film from Edison and the Lumiere Brothers to the first talkies to the second golden age of American film in the 1970s gave me a true appreciation for almost all films and major motion pictures, even the bad ones. I really grew to appreciate the effort that goes into making a movie/television show.

That doesn’t mean that I confuse shit for steak, but I often see the good in the bad films, and rather than spend time, effort, energy, and emotion throwing shade at a lackluster film, I just follow the “if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all” paradigm.

I was and still am completely blown away by how much goes into making a movie. Even bad movies, even Michael Bay movies.

I thought studying film would turn me into a film snob who only liked avant-garde, black and white, indie flicks.

Instead my taste in film didn’t really change at all. In fact, the blockbuster movies I tend to see in movie theaters, I came to enjoy even more. Why? Because film is a visual medium. Big budget blockbusters are basically 100% tailored to be visual stimulation. Heaven knows most of them aren’t going to pull on the emotional strings based on their script(s). When I learned that nothing that appears on-screen of a film’s final cut is an accident, my appreciation and fandom grew.

My educated eyes allowed me to be more easily sucked into James Bond and comic book blockbuster movies, rather than more skeptical of them.

What I really learned in studying the history and processes of film, television, video production, directing, editing, cinematography, script writing and acting besides the terminology is an appreciation of each. That is why when I read cynical reviews online and in print all I see is bitter, childish, ego centered pouting by a failed artist/creator who now judges others. It’s why all of the film reviews I’ve posted on this blog have been pretty positive even though I have seen and written about some pretty underwhelming films.

I encourage anyone reading this to take a film history or art of film and video class. It will literally change the way you see what you see when you look at a screen, and that is a good thing.

Student Loan #Debt & The #Education Bubble

Posted: March 6, 2014 in Excess and Algorithms
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
1

eanda logoajclogo2

by @anarchyroll
3/5/2014

A lot has been written about student loan debt, but apparently not a lot of research has been done into the subject. The Department of Education releases default rates once a year, but that is just about it. Are you surprised at this? So was the New York State Federal Reserve Bank. Two analysts working their essentially had to do a bulk of the research that is now often cited by the media and protest groups.

They found that the percentage of 25-year-old college graduates with student loan debts essentially doubled while the average loan balance increased 91% from 2003 to 2012.

Economists are looking at education borrowing as the next bubble that could burst and drag down the US economy along with it. Much like the housing bubble, there are a lot of government backed loans being given away with a rubber stamp to large amounts of people who are unable to immediately if ever repay. Government officials are openly comparing student borrowing to the mortgage-backed security crisis of 2008. And remember, this article opened with the fact that there has been little study and even less data available on the subject.

Mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps, and derivatives trading are all complicated things. Let’s keep the education bubble concept simple.

Student loan debt in America = $1.2 trillion (with a T) more than any other form of consumer debt.

Much like the series of articles written about quantitative easing (QE), there will be multiple articles written about student loan debt as well as the debate over raising the minimum wage. These are the three economic issues I feel most passionately about and wish to shine light upon. Let those numbers listed above wash over you for a bit. Do you know anyone dealing with student loan debt? How are they doing? What is their quality of life?

It’s not just the loan or the interest, it is the unemployment, underemployment, or complete non-existence of careers in the fields thousands if not millions of students are graduating with each year. It’s not just the monthly payment on the loan(s). It’s the monthly payment on the loan plus rent, utilities, food, transportation, etc.

The Education Bubble and the student loan debt crisis are one and the same. They are intertwined, they are two terms describing essentially the same thing.

How is higher education a bubble akin to the dot-com, real estate bubbles, and other asset bubbles? We’ll cover that in part 2…