🚨 **SPOILER ALERT: The Revolution Will Not be Televised**  🚨

The film The Revolution Will Not be Televised is a film that shows you how much Digital Media in the form of Television can shape the way that people view political representation. With the addition, that you can change the course of history. This is done with the use go violence and showing fear. The revolution in fact will not be televised but a revolution will be created from television coverage.

The film The Revolution Will Not be Televised made me feel uneasy and traumatized. There were scenes were we saw people getting shot and killed, blood and all. I found for the majority of the time in the film that I didn’t felt okay, or happy. Unlike in the film Tickling Giants in which presented these horrific (not in the same intensity) but also featured a number of cometic relief aspects. It’s hard to really express any more emotions then that when the movie as a whole is depressing from the violence, to seeing that people don’t want progression in their political system when it would benefit the people of Venezuelan. I further found it hard to write notes in regards to this assignment due to the constant need to watch the screen due to the subtitles. However, at the same time I found it hard to watch due to the extreme level of violence. As Rod Stoneman put it:

>The emotional and narrative experience, however, does add up to the form if analysis and a new understanding; when you see the succession of events chronologically, a whole orchestrated shape emerges. Putting events together to reveal their organization has a different and more significant impact than isolated fragments of information (74).

With this in mind, it can be said that filmmaker had to include these scenes and in the order to bring realism to the documentary and to say that these are the real events that happened. With the further addition, to add the message and to incapsulate the idea.

With this all being said, however, there was one aspect of the film were I didn’t feel uneasy and that was when the Hugo Chavez supporters grew and more support was being shown and that they were not backing down, that they don’t believe what the media had said about Chavez and their fellow supporters.

The use of digital media is used to create specific thematic interactions such as, that the there was a coup and that Chavez is very bad and killed a bunch of people trough his platform of support. Which we later find out that this was all a ploy to create a narrative so that Vice-Admiral Victor Ramirez Perez could take the role of dictatorship and to revert the changes that the Chavez government had put in place to make it better for the community to get help, to get education, to learn how to read, and how to become their own leaders. However, with Perez going into power after Chavez he began to go against the Chavez government. As it was stated by Perez, he filmed the media address in his living room and that with the help of the private Television channel Venevison and the support of the US government he as able to declare a coup without actually saying that it was a coup until later on. We found out late that this so called coup and violence that was the supports of the Chavez government was all framed in a way to make it look real when in reality, it was fake. Thus, the Vice-Admiral created fake news to cause violence, death, and fear.

Like stated above, The Revolution Will Not be Televised is a film in which used media to construct a narrative to make you fear and not like Chavez. However, the actual film as a whole made you love Chavez and showed you that he’s amazing, dedicated, and respected. This was an interesting spin on the film and made me really think, of which view do I agree with more. I would say that the view that the filmmaker produced, I agree more with as, it showed Chavez caring about the people of Venezuelan and that he tried everything in his power to make sure people were heard and that was shown when the filmmaker showed the mail room and that there was letters. They further read some letters out showed that they cared about the letter and wanted to do what they could to help. As Matthew C. Nisbet and Aufderheide Patricia stated in their journal article,

>Documentaries are no longer conventionally perceived as a passive experience intended solely for informal learning or entertainment. Instead, with ever increasing frequency, these films are considered part of a larger effort to spark debate, mold public opinion, shape policy, and build activist networks. In addition to these new forms and uses, more traditional public media such as Frontline, Bill Moyers, and POV continue to be influential outlets for public affairs journalism and commentary (450).

With this we can say that documentary’s are now a more dynamic experience in which you can shape people’s opinions through different point of views on politics, policies, activism, and media. With The Revolution Will Not be Televised the filmmakers uses this dynamic experience to create a commentary for the viewers to decide how they proceed the information at hand.

The Revolution Will Not be Televised is a film to show you that it’s easy to shape history with the use of television. With the further use of the ability to shape peoples opinions on people. For instance, the film itself created Hugo Chavez as this amazing person; however, Venevison created Chavez as this bad guy that allows his supports to kill a large number of people.

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Nisbet, Matthew C., and Patricia Aufderheide. "Documentary Film: Towards A Research Agenda On Forms, Functions, And Impacts." Mass Communication And Society, vol 12, no. 4, 2009, pp. 450-456. Informa UK Limited, doi:10.1080/15205430903276863.

Stoneman, Rod. “Chavez: The Revolution Will Not Be Televised: A Case Study of Politics and the Media.” 2008. Wallflower Press.

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Film Diary: Digital Media; Creating an Intense Revolution?

🚨 **SPOILER ALERT: GTFO | Language Warning 🤬**  🚨

The film GTFO, expressed that in the gaming community there is a number of toxicity and sexual harassment both in the online world and in the real world scenes; towards primary female gamers. Thus, there needs to be a change and social impact is great way to do so. GTFO, is about the experiences of female gamers in which in the eyes of men, should “Get The Fuck Out” and not be gamers; when females have every right just as men do to play video games.

In the film GTFO, the filmmakers brought some topics and issues forth. In the filming it was made apparent that the gaming community is a toxic environment with sexes comments, death threats, sexual violence, and hate comments. This was expressed via. A variety of talking heads, screen pans that are executed in which displayed screenshots and video of messages that people receive on Xbox Live, when playing games, and when they write blog posts. With in these messages, things such as “games belong to [men]”, messages alluding to that they want to have sex with them, to messages of people wanting to rape them or wishing that they got rapped, to messages like that women are useless in video games, to messages like “people should play while being harassed”, and to messages of men being ‘uncomfortable’ when women start talking on the microphone. In the film, they also showed that at a gaming completion one of the female contenders was getting sexually harassed on a live stream. To the male’s perspective that was doing it, it wasn’t him as he was following the requests made by the people from the Live Chat (“Chat” or “The Chat” as most streamers refer to it). However, with that being said, he could of just as easily said no. As that was happening you could see that the female contender was uncomfortable and in turn, just wanted to be done with the tournament and began to throw games in which she didn’t put in any effort.

With this information at hand, we can say that the gaming community is not a fun environment to be apart of. The social impact of the film is to bring awareness of the community. With the further idea of the hopes to mitigate the toxicity in the community. With the idea that “your not alone” and that if your wanting big change you need small change and that by speaking out you have small changes, it’s a driven force of passion that is needed to name these impacts and to make social impact. All throughout the film, there was a number of times when it was said that “there needs to be a change” with that throughout GTFO, small suggestions were made, such as, speaking out about your experience, the game and to an extent the hardware developers should implement better moderation tools and banning mechanisms, to muting the players within the game chat, to disabling comments, there should be better sexual harassment/violence policy in place in the video game tournament world. By doing these things you are bring forth the idea that your not alone and that you can bring it to an audience and make a change from there. One solution that was brought up during the film, is that if you get a good group of friends together then you can create a support group and just focus on them verses focusing on the other players and their coms (voice channels/microphones).

As it was said, in the film, “women [tend to be] afraid to talk about what happened to them” be it online or in person. Thus, by having a few people beginning to open up, you can start to encourage people to do the same. An example of this is the “#MeTo” campaign that was trending on social media like Twitter and Facebook, in which encouraged women (and to an extent men as well) to open up and to share their story on sexual harassment that they have experienced. This trend gained a large response and people began to open up to talk about their experience. Personally, I think that with the #MeTo campaign and the gaming community beginning to open up, I think that we will see a major change in the way gamers and people in general interact with one another. The film, did display the notion, by showing the panels at conventions and that when they began to open, they showed the audience feeling motivated and wanting change and that they could help with the change!

In the film GTFO, I found that there was a great amount of detail in the interviews themselves. True facts were brought up and it was backed up by evidence. However, as it was discussed in class and from what I have seen, these problems aren’t only directed towards women, but also men who don’t fit the demographic of a white heterosexual in their 20s and fit the heteronormativity stereotypes. I think if the filmmaker wants to see change then they should also show, that it’s not just females.

GTFO, is a movie filled with social impact and the important factors that in the gaming community females tend to face a number of serious sexual harassment and toxicity. By talking about you can show other female gamers that you’re not alone and that you don’t need to “Get The Fuck Out!” With social impact we can try to end toxicity.

Film Diary: You’re Not Alone; GTFO

🚨 **SPOILER ALERT: Scared Scared and Waltz with Bashir**  🚨

The different forms in which was used to create the films Scared Scared and Waltz with Bashir included a range of different things from audiovisuals, animation, and camera movements, to signal violence without showing it; to showing animation to signify the violence; to a shocking shift to actual footage to convey that these events are real and that these films are true stories. This all allows for a further enhancement on information retention during traumatic events in which has occurred.

In the film Scared Scared by Canadian filmmaker Velcrow Ripper he used a number of different aesthetic forms such as black-and-white footage to display flashbacks of a merry-go-round; when Ripper said “he was having darker dreams” in the film we were presented with descriptive scenes such as a clown like character with a super imposed image of blood and death; there were different audiovisual cues to display gunshots, and war through the use of thunder and lighting; Ripper further used shots of a green night vision and smoke to indicate the gas leak, with the further use of showing men, women, and children running away in the street to run away from the gas. On the other hand of film examination, in the film Waltz with Bashir we are presented with an animation aesthetic and with the use of different camera angles, more orange hues, and an intense soundtrack to convey trauma. As it was said, in our readings for the film Waltz with Bashir “Animating Trauma: Waltz with Bashir, David Polonsky” by Joram Ten Brink:

>[This is] not a journalistic film, it’s not about the truth; it’s about the process of discovery of memories of war, which is something else. Of course the live sequence at the end is there to make sure everybody realized it’s true. That it’s not made up (Ten Brink 133).

>It’s a delicate balance between two different directions. One is to express yourself to the maximum and the other is to remain truthful. And the very simple way to describe this in drawing is to create naturalistic drawings (Ten Brink 131).

With this in mind we can state that when creating this film, Ari Folman, used the animation verses the live-action to convey the traumatic instances as an act to memorialize war and to do it in away that is easy to follow and have the underlining effect that even through this is all ‘an act’, it’s a real thing and that with having the ending showing the women crying out with animation in the beginning and then shifting towards real footage of her walking the streets and crying out while seeing these dead children and fellow women and men. This scene is to truly bring truth to the film. This scene really stuck in my mind and allowed the film as a whole to stick in my mind for many months after watching it for the first time. By, not exposing one to the live-action it allowed for people to be able to retain the information and learn the history of certain events. Through the use of repeated imagery such as the scene in which the character of Ari wakes up in the ocean with two other soldiers and they move towards the town, it allows for the viewer to see how to memorize something you need to keep replying something, be it something that happened or something that was a myth.

With in the film Waltz with Bashir the filmmaker used animation to enhance the audiovisual representation along with the representation of the information at hand by showing content that is real and of events that aren’t necessarily easy to watch on a psyche level. As it was further sated in the reading by Ten Brink in his interview with David Polonsky:

>With the use of the animation it was able to allow the viewer to connect and to empathize with the characters as it was made believable and that they were there even though … The main thing you realize that we are dealing with memory and inner journeys and the fact that it’s done through drawings. You realize that the voice is ‘real’ and that the image is fabricated (Ten Brink 130).

> … Drawing lets you look at what’s in your mind (Ten Brink 130).

Like mentioned in the above paragraph with the mix of animation and the ending live-action scene it does allow to the film maker to step out of their boundaries and to further represent the information at hand. As it was mentioned around 44:00 minutes into the film, that once the therapies was talking with a client and he was a photographer; however, his camera broke and when it did, he was able to see what the war was and that this was traumatic and that it upset him. However, looking at the war through the lens, a physical lens so to speak, he was able to go from this feel of that this isn’t real, to seeing that this is actually real. With the use of these different forms of animation and audiovisuals, it allows for an enhancement on the psyche and allows people to step out of their comfort zones in which are prevalent when showing content like displayed in this film and to allow like stated before, to learn the history behind certain events that are traumatic.

In the films Scared Scared and Waltz with Bashir, the filmmakers use different filming forms in which to convey serious topics such as gas leaks and the 1982 Lebanon war. These forms range from the use of camera angles, audiovisuals, animation, and more. These all are used in a way in which allows viewers to retain information that may be hard on your psyche and to further expand the information to a wider audience.

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Ten Brink, Joram, and Joshua Oppenheimer. Killer Images. London, Wallflower Press, 2012.

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"MEDI 311" has 3 posts in it's tag

Education

Film Diary: Digital Media; Creating an Intense Revolution?

Education

Film Diary: You’re Not Alone; GTFO

Education

Film Diary: Memory Can Be a Scary Thing