Media Meditation #5: Filmington, Vermont

This is a rough edit of the first 4 scenes of my Senior Thesis Film, be sure to click HD!

G is for Gangster from Jack Nichols on Vimeo.

A rough cut of my first 4 scenes.

I have been working on this film all semester and have encountered numerous problems ranging from actors dropping out, location problems and ultimately a serious lack of time.

One of my first issues was that one actor I had planned on using for my lead role dropped out the day before we had to shoot so I had to quickly scramble and find someone to replace him - thankfully my friend Chris Clapp agreed to fill the role and so far has done a fantastic job (he plays Tre, the younger brother). As for other problems, my most recent one has been trying to secure a hotel room to shoot my final scene in...tonight is the night its supposed to take place so hopefully everything goes well!

Barack Obama Revelations - The Fresh Pres of Bel-Aire

Barack Obama Revelation #1: Holy Crap! A Black President!



This is a piece of history in the making: one physicist in the Obama book stated that "If Obama gets elected President it would be a big - probably the biggest since the Emancipation Proclamation - step toward race equality in the U.S." (Street, 81)

A black president (or in this case: half-black) gave a fair amount of Americans - mainly white Americans the impression that they were doing something that would change the country drastically. I feel like most people only voted for him because of his race, in the Media & Society book there is a segment (pgs 279-281) that discusses how different races view the news with white people, generally speaking, accepting what they see on the television at face value while black people "seemed predisposed to questioning many of the assumptions embedded in the news coverage" (pg 280) challenging the accuracy of the newscast. Personally I always thought that what was on the news was accurate and what I needed to know, recently however I realize that the media has its own agenda and what is broadcast on the news can not be seen as valid nor relevant. If you want to really find out what is going on then you have to ignore corporate media and find your own answers instead of being force-fed from the media trough.

In my opinion Obama was the right choice (out of the options) as president, McCain is too old and conservative and Hillary...well I just don't think that America is ready to put a woman in the White House. Obama is in touch with the younger generation, so much so that it made younger people actually interested in voicing their opinions whereas they normally wouldn't have bothered to vote.




Barack Obama Revelation #2: Obama and YouthTube

Many theorists suggest that YouTube played a pivotal role in securing the presidency for Obama because he was that much more accessible to the youth of the nation.



Barack Obama expertly used internet marketing to win the election, the brilliance of his scheme allowed users to watch his videos anywhere, anytime resulting in an almost cult-like following. The way users acquire information about the candidates has drastically changed since the Lincoln days where debates would go on for hours and hours (Postman, 97) - nowadays viewers are much more sporadic and can rarely dedicate that sort of time so having the ability to watch these videos at their leisure really appealed.

"We Americans are interested only in the consumption of our products. We have no interest in how they are produced, or what happens to them once we discard them, once we throw them away." (Anderson, 228)

This quote from 'Feed' can be applied to presidents; I feel that Obama is a commodity and once he is gone, we will be right back where we started with another politician who promises change and hope.


Barack Obama Revelation #3: Self-Defense Attack



"We must also consider using military force in circumstances beyond self-defense in order to provide for the common security that underpins global stability - to support friends, participate in stability and reconstruction operations, or confront mass atrocities." - Barack Obama, Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics by Paul Street (159)

I was surprised to read this quote from Obama as he is basically condoning the attack of other nations if one of America's allies is in trouble - when I thought he was an advocate of peace. This doesn't seem like the most peaceful option however, the first step towards peace is not killing everyone. There is still this problem of insurgents who will continue to attack America purely for what it stands for and the people living within. There is no way to completely stop these threats so I feel like more effort should be put into defense of the country rather than the retaliation for attacks already committed.

As was mentioned in M.T. Anderson's book 'Feed' - "...which the President denied in an address..."It is our duty as Americans, and as a nation dedicated to freedom and free commerce, to stand behind our fellow Americans and not cast...things at them." While this book is making fun of Presidential hopefuls and winners the point still stands: All presidential candidates claim to be peace-loving purely because it is what the public needs to hear in order for them to be elected...


Barack Obama Revelation #4: Obama vs. Revelation




Obama is the Anti-Christ? This seems pretty thin. I stumbled across this earlier when researching this project, apparently there have been many devout Christians blogging about how Obama fits a description of the Anti-Christ as listed in the Book of Revelation - here is the email/blog post that has been circulating the web:

" According to The Book of Revelations the anti-Christ is:

The anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40s, of MUSLIM descent, who will deceive the nations with persuasive language, and have a MASSIVE Christ-like appeal.... the prophecy says that people will flock to him and he will promise false hope and world peace, and when he is in power, will destroy everything. Is it OBAMA??

I STRONGLY URGE each one of you to repost this as many times as you can! Each opportunity that you have to send it to a friend or media outlet... do it!

If you think I am crazy... I'm sorry but I refuse to take a chance on the "unknown" candidate. "

While many people believe this "prophetic" email there are just as many anti-Anti-Christ blogs which claim that nowhere in the Book of Revelation does it say that the Anti-Christ will be a man, in his 40's and of Muslim descent. Obama isn't even of Muslim descent but since the "2012" Armageddon theory many people have started putting pieces together that aren't there.


Barack Obama Revelation #5: Obama the Story of the President and the Pauper



This picture shows a young Barack Obama, it was quite incredible to see how he went from an Illinois state senator with dreams of becoming president, to becoming president, in just a few short years. The 'key' to his success was his keynotes (pun intentional sorry...) speech of 2004. In the introduction of his book Paul Street takes the time to explain just how this bizarrely convenient series of events landed Obama in the oval office. A lot of it was due to high-powered friends and Obama's ability to ask for what he needed in a way that was very hard to people to deny. The Democratic National Party keynote address was still the pivotal point for Obama and listed below are the series of fortunate events that landed Obama in the White House:

"A Series of Fortunate Events" Democratic keynote selection process.
- Freshness and youth.
- Midwesterner from a major industrial state.
- Increase its power in the U.S. Senate.
- Obama was running for an open Senate seat.
- Obama's main rival; Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm was not up for reelection.

The decision came down to the fact that Obama unlike Granholm was still trying to win an election...The balance in the Senate was 51-48 in favor of Republicans. 'We needed his Senate seat,' says a Democratic Party official. So Obama it was. (Street, xxii)

Barack Obama Revelation #6: Ooh, Barackuda: Obama the Rock Star?



In Neil Postman's book, 'Amusing Ourselves to Death', Postman talks about how politicians are like actors, they pretend to be someone or doing something to please the audience which is in this case the American public. In some ways Obama really stole the election from the other candidates due to his ethic background and youthfulness. On pg 125 Postman writes, "Politics is the greatest spectator sport in America." this is a statement I can agree with after seeing the hype surrounding the election, and The American public focused more on the candidates looks rather than listening to what they were saying - a fact we can thank movies and TV for by implanting ideological theories of beauty and intelligence.

I don't believe we would have ended up with the same election results if Obama had been an elderly black Republican man and John McCain was a young, white Democrat...do you?



Kinda creepy huh?


Barack Obama Revelation #7: Save Money with a Tube Pass!



A YouTube pass that is.

Obama was able to save millions of dollars in TV advertising by simply posting it to YouTube. Not only did this save him millions but also helped distribute his word much more effectively.

I was trying to remember where I had heard of this then I realized that Ted had spoken about it in class...I'm afraid I'm going to use the same link he did but the reason I am still writing about it is because it really caught my attention:

"The campaign’s official stuff they created for YouTube was watched for 14.5 million hours,” Mr. Trippi said. “To buy 14.5 million hours on broadcast TV is $47 million.”

This gave Obama an extra $47 million to spend on other areas of his campaign that might need more a little extra TLC



Barack Obama Revelation #8: Obama's Loading the Gun



After reading the Censored 2011 I was shocked to discover that Obama's decision to increase military funding "will result in the greatest administrative military spending since World War II." This instated policy freezes assets for "non-security" policies such as education, health-care and energy. At this time I think it would be much more prudent to worry about the energy crisis...but isn't that really what this war is all about - the oil in the Middle East?

“Here’s an American reality: the Pentagon is our true welfare state, the weapons makers are our real ‘welfare queens,’ and we never stop shoveling money their way.” Tom Engelhardt


Barack Obama Revelation #9: Divided We [still] Stand



Another interesting story in Censored 2011 is the article about Obama’s Charter Schools

"Chartering allows schools to run independently of the traditional public school system and to tailor their programs to community needs. While not every new school is extraordinarily innovative and some school operations may mirror that of traditional public schools, policymakers, parents, and educators are looking at chartering as a way to increase educational choice and innovation within the public school system." - from the Charter School home page.

What these schools are really doing is segregating students once again by race, social class and even language. Censored sees these schools as a way to enforce in-race relations and undermine the public school system. I understand what Barack was thinking when he made the Charter Schools a large part of his school reform policy but he still should have thought of this outcome.


Barack Obama Revelation #10: That's Obaminable!



This last revelation again comes from the Censored 2011 book (there's so much good stuff!) and concerns the Obama Administration allowing a wider spectrum of people's personal computers to unnamed government agencies. The Cybersecurity Act was proposed in 2009 and would grant the president the power to shut down the internet for the whole country presumably at the press of a button or flick of a switch. I strongly disagree with the need for government agencies to be tapping that much into people's private lives.