Tuesday, November 17, 2009
CANADIAN MUSIC INDUSTRY REFLECTION
After completing my research on the Canadian Music Industry, a couple of things became clear to me:
1. Canada is an extremely diverse country with a diverse selection of music
2. The amount of Canadian content being played on Canadian radio stations is very limited
3. Canada has produced many extremely successful musicians, but unfortunately, there are some who have lost touch of their roots.
The styles, genres and markets throughout the different regions of Canada are extremely varied. In the northern part of the country there is a strong aboriginal and folk music scene. As we go closer to the south, our American influence is very apparent. After learning about the different styles of music throughout the country, it made me want to listen to them and also made me wonder why I am not exposed to these hidden styles of Canadian music.
By completing this assignment, I was able to see the actual percentages of Canadian content that must be played on Canadian radio stations. To be honest, I found these numbers shocking. Commercial Radio stations must broadcast 35% Canadian content; a percentage which I believe is embarrassing. We live in Canada yet the majority of our music is from different countries? Why is it that the majority of music on American radio stations is American? Or the majority of music on British radio stations is British? This 35% clearly shows a flaw in the Canadian music industry. Even CBC, a broadcaster meant to be the leader in Canadian programming, must play only 50% of Canadian content each week. As a country, we have been trained to follow the cultural footsteps of the United States whether it be music, film, or television. We need to begin supporting these Canadian industries or our culture will vanish all together.
Over the years, many Canadian musicians have gone on to having successful careers both in Canada and internationally. When looking at the nominees for the 2009 Grammy Awards I was somewhat surprised that 10 artists were nominated. I believe this is an impressive number considering that the Grammy’s are an American award show. When further looking into the nominees, I realized that though these 10 artists were considered Canadian, many of them had virtually no association with Canada. For example, though Rufus Wainwright is a Canadian citizen, he resides in the States and is signed to non Canadian labels. Rufus Wainwright is just one of many that have seemed to abandon their ‘Canadianess’ over the years. It is because of this that our Canadian culture is diminishing rather flourishing.
1. Canada is an extremely diverse country with a diverse selection of music
2. The amount of Canadian content being played on Canadian radio stations is very limited
3. Canada has produced many extremely successful musicians, but unfortunately, there are some who have lost touch of their roots.
The styles, genres and markets throughout the different regions of Canada are extremely varied. In the northern part of the country there is a strong aboriginal and folk music scene. As we go closer to the south, our American influence is very apparent. After learning about the different styles of music throughout the country, it made me want to listen to them and also made me wonder why I am not exposed to these hidden styles of Canadian music.
By completing this assignment, I was able to see the actual percentages of Canadian content that must be played on Canadian radio stations. To be honest, I found these numbers shocking. Commercial Radio stations must broadcast 35% Canadian content; a percentage which I believe is embarrassing. We live in Canada yet the majority of our music is from different countries? Why is it that the majority of music on American radio stations is American? Or the majority of music on British radio stations is British? This 35% clearly shows a flaw in the Canadian music industry. Even CBC, a broadcaster meant to be the leader in Canadian programming, must play only 50% of Canadian content each week. As a country, we have been trained to follow the cultural footsteps of the United States whether it be music, film, or television. We need to begin supporting these Canadian industries or our culture will vanish all together.
Over the years, many Canadian musicians have gone on to having successful careers both in Canada and internationally. When looking at the nominees for the 2009 Grammy Awards I was somewhat surprised that 10 artists were nominated. I believe this is an impressive number considering that the Grammy’s are an American award show. When further looking into the nominees, I realized that though these 10 artists were considered Canadian, many of them had virtually no association with Canada. For example, though Rufus Wainwright is a Canadian citizen, he resides in the States and is signed to non Canadian labels. Rufus Wainwright is just one of many that have seemed to abandon their ‘Canadianess’ over the years. It is because of this that our Canadian culture is diminishing rather flourishing.
Monday, November 2, 2009
RUMPUS- REFLECTION
Over the past month, our IDC class has been learning about the powers of social media. To demonstrate this point, we were assigned the task of creating short videos and making them go viral. It was our job to create a video with a message and to make sure that it got out there for the world to see.
When this project was first given out, I was immediately excited. I love making videos and I my competitive side was intrigued about the idea of seeing which group could get the most YouTube hits. From my past experience in media classes, I have learned that putting together a short film is a difficult process. Due to lack of proper lighting and insufficient editing programs, I find that live-action high school shorts usually come out looking very amateur. Because of this, my group and I thought it would be easiest to create an animated film.
After lots of brainstorming, Chantelle, Larissa and I, came up with the idea of making a stop-motion animation which would infuse live-action characters set in an animated backdrop. We would take hundreds of pictures of our actor (Chantelle), and then add them into our hand drawn frames. We would do this all on Photoshop by individually altering each frame. I knew that this would be a huuuugeeeee task to take on, but I felt very committed to the movie so I was ready for the challenge.
When we actually starting putting our film together, we were faced with several
problems. First, the pictures from our first shoot with Chantelle were unusable. The background was not deleting as planned, her hair had 'holes', and her positions were off. Since editing these pictures would have taken weeks, we decided to do a re shoot. We went into our re shoot with a lot more planning: we bought a green screen, Chantelle's hair was in a ponytail and we worked out each shot in advance. Despite all of this, it was still extremely difficult to remove Chantelle from each shot. Using these pictures was our only option, so we just had to suck it up and work hard on each picture.
The process of taking Chantelle from each picture was a long and exhausting process. We had over 200 shots that had to be individually edited. After hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, we finally finished editing the pictures of Chantelle, meaning it was time to actually put her into the backgrounds.
Though I knew that making the film animated would be long and tedious, I did not expect it to take sooo much time. To physically draw each background and alter it slightly for each frame took ALOT of time and effort. In the end, we had almost 300 individually created frames.
After lot and lots of work (I have never spent more time on a project---ever), we finally put all of our frames together in iMovie and added the music. Though making our short film was a looooong process, all and all, I was satisfied with our overall video. The video flowed and it worked perfectly with our music. Though it would have been better if we had more time and better tools, I believe we made the most with the time constraints we were given and the programs that are accessible to us. All that's left now is marketing our video and getting it out there for the world to see.
Here's a look at what some of our unedited pictures looked like:
When this project was first given out, I was immediately excited. I love making videos and I my competitive side was intrigued about the idea of seeing which group could get the most YouTube hits. From my past experience in media classes, I have learned that putting together a short film is a difficult process. Due to lack of proper lighting and insufficient editing programs, I find that live-action high school shorts usually come out looking very amateur. Because of this, my group and I thought it would be easiest to create an animated film.After lots of brainstorming, Chantelle, Larissa and I, came up with the idea of making a stop-motion animation which would infuse live-action characters set in an animated backdrop. We would take hundreds of pictures of our actor (Chantelle), and then add them into our hand drawn frames. We would do this all on Photoshop by individually altering each frame. I knew that this would be a huuuugeeeee task to take on, but I felt very committed to the movie so I was ready for the challenge.
When we actually starting putting our film together, we were faced with several
problems. First, the pictures from our first shoot with Chantelle were unusable. The background was not deleting as planned, her hair had 'holes', and her positions were off. Since editing these pictures would have taken weeks, we decided to do a re shoot. We went into our re shoot with a lot more planning: we bought a green screen, Chantelle's hair was in a ponytail and we worked out each shot in advance. Despite all of this, it was still extremely difficult to remove Chantelle from each shot. Using these pictures was our only option, so we just had to suck it up and work hard on each picture.
The process of taking Chantelle from each picture was a long and exhausting process. We had over 200 shots that had to be individually edited. After hours, and hours, and hours, and hours, we finally finished editing the pictures of Chantelle, meaning it was time to actually put her into the backgrounds.
Though I knew that making the film animated would be long and tedious, I did not expect it to take sooo much time. To physically draw each background and alter it slightly for each frame took ALOT of time and effort. In the end, we had almost 300 individually created frames.After lot and lots of work (I have never spent more time on a project---ever), we finally put all of our frames together in iMovie and added the music. Though making our short film was a looooong process, all and all, I was satisfied with our overall video. The video flowed and it worked perfectly with our music. Though it would have been better if we had more time and better tools, I believe we made the most with the time constraints we were given and the programs that are accessible to us. All that's left now is marketing our video and getting it out there for the world to see.
Here's a look at what some of our unedited pictures looked like:
THINGS I LIKE
