Month: January 2022

To me, digital citizenship is like regular citizenship, except online. In today’s world, we need to not only practice being a good citizen in real life, but a good digital citizen online as well. Digital citizenship is composed of different elements such as proper etiquette, security, literacy, and healthy communication.

Personal branding is promoting yourself or your business through the use of search engines, blogging, social media, and more. It is creating an image for the public eye to see you by. It’s how the world views you. You can aid this process and hopefully steer it in a certain direction by utilizing social media and such in an effective manner, or you can let it happen on its own naturally.

I am a huge advocate for the whole “pay it forward” thing. This is important in the world of social media because it falls under proper etiquette in being a good digital citizen, if you ask me. Personally, I choose to treat others how I would want to be treated myself. I feel that if everyone did this, the world would be a much better place. People tend to do this less often in the digital world because they don’t have to come face-to-face with people as much. This is very unacceptable. I have no problem sharing a post or recommending a page or service, or whatever it is that is required of me, because I know that that person or business may do the same for me when I need it. Just knowing that they may even do it for another person or business that isn’t myself later on down the road makes it worth it to me.

I absolutely feel that the film, “The Way Things Go”, is art. I also feel that it has influenced artists and filmmakers for many years now. According to an article from publicdelivery.org, Fischli and Weiss, the creators of the film, “successfully managed to transform the mundane into transformative artworks. Overall, their work through the years helped demonstrate that irony and sincerity are two components that cannot survive or occur without each other.”

I feel that this can be seen in a lot of abstract art that can be seen in today’s galleries and museums. It can also be seen in a lot of today’s films. This film also helped inspire filmmakers to become more creative in “setting up the stage” as you might call it and being prepared for what comes next. I could also see this film going on to be inspiration for many cinematographers to catch those very lengthy single take shots.

As far as a favorite film being inspirational to me, I am going to go with Hot Rod starring Andy Samberg. I feel that the combination of humor, retro late 80’s feel, and epic soundtrack, inspired me to make funny videos of my own. Of course, I feel I could use a lot improvement on them still, though.

YouTube posting: https://youtu.be/UWbRgqEgwtU

To the average Joe, it can be very easy to forget, or to not even realize in the first place, just how much time goes into perfecting a soundtrack during video production, or the importance of doing so. It may seem to a common member of the audience that the audio is a small fraction of the overall production, but this is far from the truth. It is much more.

Audio helps the audience develop a much stronger emotional connection with their favorite characters, relationships, settings, and situations. It does this by using voices, music, and sound effects. These elements prove to add more depth to the finished product versus a silent film with no audio or poorly edited audio. However, silence can be a powerful tool in the right situation. Take horror or thriller films for example. Ever notice how it goes dead silent right before they try to jolt you with one of those jump scares?

My favorite soundtrack would probably have to be from the film, “Inception”. I choose this because of how empowering the music is. I feel that Hans Zimmer did a beautiful job. The notes resonate with me almost on an emotional level. I absolutely love how the thematic score continues to reprise itself throughout the film while building up as the plot comes to a head.

I used the following scene from the movie “Hot Rod”:

I manage all of the social media accounts for Hermann Brothers Logging & Construction, a trucking company out of the Port Angeles area. My main goal in doing so is advertising for hiring potential new truck drivers. I currently already use Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. I use Facebook quite a bit. Not so much Instagram, and very little when it comes to LinkedIn. However, after reviewing the infographics, I feel that it might be very beneficial to add Google plus to that list. I am an amateur when it comes to managing social media accounts on a professional business level. I still need to refine my strategy some.

Here is what I would like to do with Hermann Brothers’ accounts. I would like to get establish a better footing in LinkedIn and get all set up on Google Plus. Then I would like to research how to use those two apps better and become proficient at using them. Then I will dedicate more time every week to designing graphic ads to post to these accounts. Maybe one every week or two. I would also like to upload pictures and other content at least 2-3 times a week, and be good about responding in a timely manner when someone attempts to communicate with the company accounts. I want to gain a bigger following with these accounts and engage them more.

Filmmakers and directors often have their own image system. Whether it be just for a specific film, or for all of their work entirely. They use the system for a number of things. One being to establish connections between certain characters, places, and things in a film. They may do this by using certain colors, shots, angles, editing techniques, audio, and more. Sometimes their image system can be so subtle that it’s hard for a even a trained eye to point out these indicators. Other times, it can be so obvious that anybody and everybody can notice it.

I do not have the time to watch enough movies to completely familiarize myself with a director’s image system, unfortunately. However, I can name off a few that I know of and enjoy. J.J. Abrams is great, along with Quentin Tarantino. I like Quentin Tarantino’s bizarre style of randomness. I really do enjoy Frank Miller’s films such as “Sin City” and “The Spirit”. I love the image system he uses in these films and the style they were shot in. It could be classified as dark film noir. I really like the way he shot everything in black and white in “Sin City”, but highlighted some of the colors.