Blog 2

Welcome everybody to my second blog!

This week in the lecture we watched the movie Alphaville. Haven’t heard of it? I’m not surprised; it’s not exactly in the Rom-Com section at Blockbuster. That’s not to put it down though, despite being made in 1965 and the cast speaking entirely in French, I have to say I did get into it.

I had already done a little bit of a background search before the lecture so I had some idea of what to expect, which I can imagine made it a little bit easier to follow. Like I mentioned, the film was made in 1965 and was directed by Jean-Luc Godard. It’s the tale of tough talking detective Lemmy Caution who is saving the world from the giant computer that is ruling Alphaville, ‘Alpha 60’, all while winning the girl. Godard took a unique approach when filming by using no special effects (a concept foreign to us today), rather choosing to film in locations around Paris with modernist buildings that he thought had a futuristic feel. When watching the movie, keep in mind that in 1965 the concept of a super computer ruling over people seemed ludicrous, unlike today where computers and technology encroach on nearly all aspects of our lives.

In Thursdays early morning tutorial we started to discuss Alphaville and generally it seemed everybody got the concept of the film and could identify the major difference in the way people thought of technology between now and 1965. I also used the tute time to look into French New Wave cinema, I didn’t know anything about it having only really heard the phrase a few times but I found the info on Learning at Griffith really helpful. From what I’ve read it was the movement of new filming techniques within the French arts scene which became a somewhat of a revolution around 1958 to 1964 but continued on afterwards. A lot of the techniques that were used like using natural lighting, shooting on location and jump cuts are still used regularly in filming today.

Once that was all out of the way we began on the tute task which was to begin this blog and master the skill of adding a ‘link list’ to our pages. This is basically a little section on your blog page where you add links to your friend’s blogs. I figured this sounded simple enough and set about it. After a frustrating 10 minutes of fiddling I took the easy way out and went to the ever helpful HELP section. From there it was a piece of cake and I passed my knowledge on to those struggling around me as though I just happened to be brilliant. I’m certain they did not buy this.

Our blog task this week was to look into the different ways we use communications technologies to keep in touch with friends and family. Generally with me, communicating with my family is pretty basic, just using mobiles for calls and text messaging. Not so much because my parents can’t use things like email but I live with them and my brothers so we see each other daily and it isn’t really necessary. With friends though I suppose there are a few more variations, I use Myspace, my mobile, MSN and email pretty much daily. This may seem like a lot, but considering nearly everyone I know uses all of these it’s pretty much normal. I actually met the man who runs all of Myspace within Australia the other day at work and would have loved to talk to him and get his opinions on how Myspace has grown and created a whole new form of communication but we were flat out and I only got to speak to him for about 5 minutes!

Good grief this has been long.