Lego Studios - the precursor to stop-motion Lego animations?

After the class discussion we had on fan filmmaking a few days ago, I remembered something from my own childhood that had to do with just that: Lego Studios sets. At the time the sets were released (early 2000's) my family and I weren't very computer-savvy, and so I never fully got into the whole 'film-making' concept that the sets were designed to promote - my brothers and I just played with them like regular Legos.


However, now that I think back on those sets, I wonder if they might have been the precursor to the vast number of stop-motion Lego animations online today, especially on sites like YouTube. Only in the last couple years did I discover these stop-motion videos online (and even then only because of my younger brother's interest in the subject), so I don't know how long they've been popular or even been around. 


But I'd be willing to guess that the Lego Studios sets, if they didn't completely inspire this phenomenon of Lego stop-motion animation, then at they least brought it to the mainstream media's attention and helped popularize it.


A fun fact about many of the sets: You could take off the Lego character's head and slip on a small, clear plastic piece around the neck pole that sat on the figure's back (like a backpack accessory). You could then insert a clear plastic Lego rod into the attachment and, holding the rod, move around the figure without having your hands in the way of the Lego camera. Pretty neat, considering these sets came out over a decade ago!

My childhood = TMS

Our recent class discussion about transmedia storytelling made me realize that a majority of my childhood was just that: becoming obsessed with a given franchise and trying to enjoy it by every means I possibly could. 


I was a huge fan of Disney animation in my youth, so each time a new movie came out, I not only had to see the movie, but I also had to collect the McDonald's toys, read the books, watch the TV series (if one came out), and once my family got a video game system, play the video game as well. Since I've always been creatively minded, I would also draw pictures of and write stories about the characters from my favorite films, long before I knew of such things as "fanart" and "fanfiction."


I remember being disappointed when a film that I really liked didn't receive the same franchise treatment as other Disney films had. I wanted to enjoy the characters' world further, but all the media industry had really provided for me was the film itself, and perhaps a video game if I was lucky. I think by that point, I had actually come to expect the full franchise treatment for all the movies I liked - expected to be able to expand my enjoyment beyond the film itself, a medium which was initially designed to stand alone.


So I found it interesting when we discussed transmedia storytelling in a way that made it sound like a relatively recent phenomenon, or at least one that really got going in recent years. But for me, it was a defining characteristic of my childhood. It's sort of funny to talk about the media industry targeting consumers by spreading a franchise across multiple media, and realize that they were - very successfully - targeting me.


Just for fun: The Little Mermaid at McDonald's

Zombies vs. Politics - what are YOU blogging about?

First of all, if you haven't read it yet, check this article out - it's about the prevalence of zombie attacks and cocaine on currency found in blogs during August 2009: "In Social Media, Zombies And Cocaine Are The Hot Topics"

Thank you to Lo and Professor Macek for bringing this article to light. I think it has both some serious and interesting implications.

To start, a zombie uprising is fictional. It's the stuff of popular culture, of horror films and video games - not a legitimate scientific concern. It may be interesting to consider, but it's certainly not a topic worthy of receiving mainstream attention. I feel the claim that the zombine study mirrors real-world epidemics is just an excuse to defend the topic's undue popularity. If someone wanted to conduct a truly useful study on epidemics, he or she would use real data from actually existent epidemics and the scientifically documented characterstics of real contagious microorganisms. 

The topic of currency and cocaine is definitely more relevant to reality, but even then it seems to have received a bit more attention than necessary. However, I would much prefer this to be a hot topic than for zombie studies to be. Talking about fictional things is all well and good, but it's somewhat disturbing when it rises to such a high position of popularity while seriously important issues (health care policies, gun usage, political status of the Middle East) receive significantly less coverage from bloggers.

Seriously, which do you think is gonna happen first:
finding this guy in a dark alley, or the next presidential elections?

This leads to the question: What are bloggers really expected to cover? Are they supposed to tackle the same kinds of topics that the mainstream news outlets do, or are they allowed extra freedom to go off on wild tangents about zombie attacks? Does it depend on the kinds of topics being covered by the mainstream news and whether they warrant public discussion or not?

The thing that worries me is that these bloggers are spending considerable amounts of time writing about zombies when they could be shaping political opinion to improve the status of our country. They might be missing out on important political debates about the selection of our next president while they try to decide how they'll survive a fictional apocalypse. I think that kind of thing should, for the most part, be saved for the movies and video games. If bloggers want to dabble in the unreal now and then, that's perfectly fine, but if they let it consume their attention to the point where they ignore real-life issues, then we have a problem.

To filter or not to filter...THAT is the question.

And I must admit, I do not have a particularly strong answer.

Looking back on my middle and high school years, Internet filters seemed more a way to prevent students from being distracted from their schoolwork by social networking sites, and less a way to protect them from indecent or obsence material on the web. When students around me would complain about the filters, it was always about not being able to access MySpace - not an X-rated porn site. 

In this way, the Children's Internet Protection Act (CIPA) seemed to be serving another purpose - promoting schoolwork in place of web surfing - instead of blocking inappropriate content. This may or may not have been intentional in the schools I attended. 

To really try blocking all inappropriate online content, a social networking site like MySpace would have to be blocked because the school administrators wouldn't want to be held responsible for the inappropriate content that any user could upload to his or her page. On the other hand, CIPA seems a very convenient excuse to get students off their friends' profile pages and onto their homework assignments.

Despite this secondary (and annoying) purpose that CIPA apparently served during my middle and high school years, I don't feel that filters need to be removed from schools, or that they're a threat to free expression. I don't strongly support them because the filters on school computers can only do so much; they cannot stop a child from viewing whatever he or she wants to in the privacy of home. However, while a child is in school, the primary focus there should be schoolwork, regardless of whether the other content the child wants to look up is appropriate or not. 

Using the filters is kind of like having an annoying teacher hovering over your shoulder the whole time you work, ensuring that you don't stray from your assignment. But since kids are generally 'free' to surf the web as they like at home, I don't really find a problem with this.

FINALLY - government regulation that does some good

I found an interesting article that relates to government regulation of media content that I thought I'd share with you all.


According to the article, the National Eating Disorders Foundation (NEDA) and the Los Angeles-based women's brand and movement Off Our Chests are partnering to rally consumer and congressional support for their proposed "Media and Public Health Act" (MPHA).

During a time when bills like SOPA are threatening freedom of the Internet, it's refreshing to see a bill that I believe could do some good for a change. And it wouldn't involve censoring material, but rather disclosing more information to the consumer.


If passed, the MPHA would require "truth-in-advertising" labels to be placed on all ads and editorial content in which the human figure has been altered by digital manipulation or other means. Sparked by the rise of eating disorders in the U.S., particularly among females, this bill aims to help address that problem by lessening the impact these damaging ads can cause.


The article states that the average age that girls start dieting dropped to age 8 in 1990, compared to 14 in 1970. Remember in class when we discussed the rise of advertising - particularly advertising targeted at children - in the 1990s? Although advertising is not solely to blame for this, I don't think anyone could deny that it does have a massive impact. Something is clearly wrong with our media industry here, and it's about time someone has taken action to fix it.


In my opinion, if the music industry has to slap "Parental Advisory" labels on albums with explicit lyrics and the movie industry has to slap a "Restricted" rating on movies with inappropriate content, then why shouldn't advertisers be required to disclose when they've digitally manipulated photographs of the human body?


As the article notes, this law would create no cost for the government, the advertising agency or the consumer. Disclosing that a dress model has been digitally altered in a photograph isn't going to influence my decision of whether or not to buy the dress. But it might help steer a young girl who idolizes that model away from the dangerous path of eating disorders.


Check out the full article here: MPHA Press Release

Blog Prompt #3: Underage users (and I'm not talking about drugs)

Yes, it does bother me that 'underage users' (like 10-12 year olds) have to lie in order to set up Facebook profiles. It's not just the illegality of it that bothers me, but the fact that kids are almost expected to lie because having a Facebook profile has become nearly essential to being 'cool' and accepted among today's tweens.

Honestly, the law prohibiting users under the age of 13 to join Facebook seems almost silly now. I understand that this falls under the Child Online Protection Act, but unless this law is better enforced, there's really not much point in having it anymore. It doesn't seem to be a deterrent to youth at all; they would rather up their status among their peers by joining the Facebook world than worry about legalese they may not even understand. Lying and disobeying the law in the name of popularity never was and never will be a good thing (like peer pressure to use drugs, join a gang, etc.).

Creating a profile for a fictional character doesn't bother me as much, as long as it's clearly stated that the character is indeed fictional. I can see something like this being an entertaining creative pastime for aspiring writers, for example. As long as the profiles are not set up with the intention to deceive and the accounts are identified as belonging to real people, I am fine with this.

I would personally like Facebook to better verify the ages of people who set up profiles, but unless there's considerable government enforcement, I doubt this will happen. I feel at this point, there are just too many underage users for people to think it worth deleting their accounts. These kids have already joined and created profiles, so why take it away now - especially when they'll be 'legal' Facebook users in a matter of a couple years anyway?