Tuesday, November 27, 2007

Reality is coming.

I have less than a month left of school, which means I'll be heading out into the real world soon. This is both scary and exciting, and I think I'm ready to face reality. Hopefully at first I'll be able to find a job in my hometown so I can save up money for the possibility of having to move across the country.

I applied for a camera operator job, and I could have had it if I had been able to start training next week. They said they would keep my resume on file, so that was encouraging.

I finished my PSAs for my capstone, and now I have to present my capstone next Thursday. I am still having YouTube uploading troubles - I might have to go home this weekend so I can upload them on a faster server.

Saturday, November 17, 2007

Google and Movies


Google is one of the most well-known sites on the web, and so movie makers teamed up with them so they could help to promote one another. Some of the movies this happened with were The Break-Up


and The Da Vinci Code, in which the movies used some product of Google, such as Google video. The latest movie that they did this with was The Bourne Ultimatum, where Google had the ultimate search for Jason Bourne, at www.searchforbourne.com. The promotion is over now, so now the website just links you to a place to watch the movie near you, but the point of the promotion was to find the website that gave you the location of Jason Bourne. A pretty neat kind of interaction, because it makes you want to see the movie, and you have to use Google to find the website, so it worked very nicely as a collaboration. I was not aware of this promotion until after it was over, but I did go see the movie and it was incredible. The movie Crank also advertises Google Earth in it because they use a shot from Google Earth that still has the logo on it in the movie, but I am not sure if they were doing it to be promotional or simply because that was the only way to get the shot they wanted.



Information from: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-04-21-n50.html


Sunday, November 04, 2007

Simpsonize Me


An interesting use of convergence happened when the Simpson Movie came out. They decided to pair up with Burger King to help promote each other. A website was made where one could get turned into a Simpson character, and the machine used to do this was heavily advertising Burger King by having the burger king be the model for the transformation. It has signs on it that advertise the movie and Burger King, and Homer Simpson is commanding you to "Be Yellow." It's a wonderful marketing ploy, because I have never seen the Simpsons, but I wanted to become one when I found the site. And I did, as you can see. You know you're doing a good job when you can drive people to a website like this campaign has done. Admittedly, I haven't been to Burger King in years and I have not seen the Simpsons movie, but I did visit their site and now have both of these things on the brain. The use of the web for convergence is a pretty good idea because of this generation's obsession with the internet.