Jacob Stone

Mrs. Pomerantz

English 2 Block 1

May 22, 2009

The Future is in our Hands

            The documentary that we created definitely had some good parts and bad parts.  The good parts of the film consisted of very creative metaphors and in-depth interviews with regular people on the street and adults who study this topic for a living.  Another thing that we did well as a class was informing the public on different sustainable products, examples of ways to live sustainably, and the different statistics on animals dying and how much energy you can save by living sustainably.  An example of a thing we did poorly on was that some of the voice-overs for the film were cut off during the middle of it or they ran into another scene.

            Our film did a great job on informing people of the different ways to live sustainably and the things they can do to help the environment now rather than later.  Our statistics in the documentary were also an effective way to get people to realize the damage that they are doing now by not living sustainably or doing something as simple as recycling your paper or plastic bottles.  When Daniel’s group showed the answers of what people thought was sustainable living compared to what the real definition was it will really help people understand the right way to living sustainably compared to the wrong way.  Some of the visual metaphors in the film helped persuade the viewer to live sustainably now rather than later and showed the effects it could have on the world if we don’t do something now.  Julia’s group had an interesting visual metaphor with the two different light bulbs together to show how much they look alike but how different they really are in cost, light intensity, and length of the life of the bulb.  Daniel’s group had another great visual metaphor with the exploding Earth.  That will really help effect change to people’s everyday lives because it showed what could happen to the world if we don’t do something fast. It also showed what would happen and what we could prevent if helped the environment now rather than later.

            A lot of things in this film worked out very well.  The music in the film was put in great places and really flowed well with what we were saying.  The music also affected the mood that I was put in when the music played and it was put in the right spots to give me goose bumps.  The camera work for some of the shots was terrific as well when Curtis’s group zoomed in on the alternative to cotton and it gave the viewer a better look at the piece of material.  I also enjoyed the way the film flowed together in some spots.  When we switched to another group it wasn’t abrupt and all the groups’ topics came in casually with no break.  There was only one street interview that didn’t go very well only because of bad editing though. Other than that all of the interviews were great they flowed together, they gave us great opinions and facts about our topic, and the camera work for each one was awesome.

            There were also some rough spots in the film as well. Some of the voice-overs were poorly spoken whether it was the background noise behind the speaker of the voice-over or when some of the voice-overs cut out and then came back in.  A voice-over in one of the group ran over into an interview in their segment so you had the interviewee talking and the person doing the voice-over talking at the same time.  Some simple re-editing and re-doing the voice-overs could’ve fixed that problem.  There was great camera work all around but some of the shots that were taken were a little on the shaky side. Also, some of the lighting was bad as well when a group was in a dark room or when the camera person from a group stood in front of the sun so there was a glare.  Some of the different information and questions that were put on the screen either went by too fast or it was too long and got boring to watch at those parts.

            There were many things that I learned throughout this project.  The time and the effort it takes to make and edit a good film is a lot of work.  The research that was involved was also time consuming as well because you have to make sure that the research that you are acquiring is accurate, and relevant to the topic in your group.  There were also a lot of arguments before the film process even started when we had to decide what topic we choosing to do a documentary on.  The blogging took a long time too but it helped me learn a lot of new information that I never knew before and helped me stayed connected with my group.

            This documentary not only taught me the importance of preserving our world but that everyone should act now and not be so lazy.  I am definitely going to do more to help the environment by recycling and spreading the word around to my family members about the importance of living sustainably and the effects it could have on our Earth if we don’t.  I will also use what I learned by encouraging my parents to so their part in helping the environment by using energy efficient products like light bulbs, cleaning products, and recycled materials.  We only have one Earth let’s do what we can to preserve it.

I looked up online for an article on different ways besides recycling that would be considered as living sustainably and here is what the site told me:

• People can substitute behaviors that result in less energy and material use, waste production, and ecosystem degradation.
• For example: Saving grocery bags and re-using them for yourself or just using a cloth bag for your groceries, going to work by transit or bike can save you money and reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases, and proper disposal of pesticides and paints can greatly reduce the risk of those pollutants getting in waterways and and sanitary sewers.
• Also people can substitute more efficient technology or use more environmentally-friendly products that accomplish the same end.
• For example: Using fuel-effiecient automobiles and major appliances with the lowest energy consumption ratings, using a low-flow showerhead, using advanced wood stoves rather than conventional ones to reduse emissions of air pollutants, and replacing your old light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs which uses 75% less energy than the usual incandescent light bulbs and last 10 times longer.
• You can also work within your community to encourage planning of urban transit, cycling routes, and reduced dependency on passenger vehicles.

It may not be possible to eliminate all environmental impact but you can still make a difference by living more sustainably by just carrying out some of these ideas for a better healthier Earth.

• In a recent campaign GE (General Electric) used the word “ecomagination” to try and convince us that using clean coal is a better alternative.
• The particular tv spot (titled “Model Miners”) showcases GE’s cleaner-coal technology and suggests we use our ample coal reserves to solve the nation’s energy problems.
• GE used sexy supermodels on this tv spot to promote the use of “clean coal” but even if we do use the “clean coal” method coal still has to be mined and people will still get black lung but it won’t be the supermodels who get it.

Response: This article wasn’t very good in the sense of being eco-friendly.  I dont understand how GE thinks they’re being sustainable by mining more of our natural non-renewable resources.  Even if they do use the word “clean coal” just like the writer of this article states “that coal will still need to be mined”.  Does GE understand the idea of eco-friendly or “ecomagination”?  They just think that by putting sexy supermodels in a fake dirty coal mine and saying that coal mining is getting more beautiful everyday that people will invest in this “clean coal” but they’re not looking at the big picture.  Is what I’m doing or investing into going to help our environment and world or just promote GE even more?

Notes:

• Decision science focuses on the mental processes that shape our choices, behaviors, and attitudes.
• Humans have automatic biases-we are more averse to losses than we are interested in gains, for instance-and we make repeated errors in judgement based on our tendency to use shorthand rules to solve problems.
• Climate change is anthropogenic which means it is caused by human behavior and we should try and change humans behavior before we go into any engineering solution.
• Humans have different systems for processing risks: 1. we process it in an analytically way, often involving a careful consideration of costs and benefits. 2. the other experiences risk as a feeling: a primitive and urgent reaction to danger, usually based on a personal experience.
• Arguments over why climate change isn’t higher on Americans’ list of priorities tend to center on the same reasons: the doubt-sowing remarks of climate-change skeptics, poor communications skills from good scientists, the political system’s inability to address long-term challenges without a big precipitating event.
• About 98 percent of the federal financing for climate-change research goes to the physical and natural sciences, with the remainder going to the social sciences.
• Humans think about climate change as being distant in time and space but if you go to somewhere like Alaska you can see the melting permafrost, the insect-driven tree mortality, and the diminished glaciers and sea ice.
• Decision science isn’t just about structuring choices or finding the right idea to get a better outcome it’s about finding useful information that can be used for innovative products, policies, and scientific studies.
• If you make people think about the negative’s of something first then it doesn’t really give them a chance to consider the benefits because their minds are already pondering about the negative associations.

Summary and reflection: This article is basically about different studies conducted by CRED (Center for Research on Environmental Decisions) that see how humans react to different ideas and such.  For example a group of volunteers were forced to make a consensus on how to apply $5 billion worth of federal funds to wind energy technoligies.  Should they spend it all on wind turbines or invest some (or all) of the money on as-yet-unproven technology that would employ magnetic levitation to create a huge, long lasting, superefficient wind-powered generator.  It then talked about different ways to get people to make good environmental decisions as well as different experiments conducted on groups and how they reacted to different questions and different scenarios.  I thought this article was interesting and made me think alot about how humans think.  One thing made me wonder though is it just Americans that are acting so slowly to this envrionmental crisis?  Or are other countries reacting well to the climate change around us?  The climate change is becoming more prominent than ever these days with the amazing contrast of a glacier from 250 years ago to now and how much that glacier has melted.  It made me open my eyes more to all the climate change that is happening and the little that people are doing about it just because it’s too far ahead in the future and we shouldn’t worry about it until it affects us.  But that’s the thing it is affecting us more and more every day the more we don’t do anything about it and the way we live and the way animals are living is getting greatly affected whether we see it or not.

The street interviews I conducted with my documentary partner and I went very well.  It was a little nerve-racking at first going up to random people and disturbing their day to ask them a few questions.  But after we had a couple of people who decided not to take part in our activity our luck changed when we found a man who is very enviromentally-friendly and does a lot to help for instance he has a hybrid which he claims to only fill it up with gas 26 times a year.  Then we met a woman who uses lemon juice, vinegar, and baking soda to clean up some areas around her house instead of using the usual household cleaning products.  We also met a man who says that we are in a “throw away society” and he is an avid recycler of all sorts of products. I felt very good about the information we got out on the street.

The phone calls our group made went very well I thought.  Even though we only got a hold of one person that could help us set up an interview I have good confidence that they will call us back.  Although if that expert does not call us back we have ideas of other people we can contact.  We also need to get together as a group and set up expert questions for an expert.  All together I thought that the phone calls went well and we could not have done anything more to help ourselves.

This article talks about Austria is doing a lot to help out, not just with themselves but with the rest of Europe as well.  It talks about how Austria is using their 47 percent of land being forest to good use by turning it into bioenergy with all the wood they have.  Austria isn’t the only country who’s doing something either.  All of the European Union countries are being forced to increase their use of renewable energies by about 11 percent to boost Europe’s share in renewables in the energy mix.  Gregor Grill states that “The key to bioenergy effiencey is integration and multipurpose use so we can get heat and electricity at the same time”.  Austria has also decided they they’re going to expand the use of wood to heat private homes and businesses they are also planning to help anybody who wants to make the switch to wood-powered heating systems.  With all the biomass research that Austria is doing jobs for the biomass sector are set to increase by about 80,000 and the countries biomass exports are also set to expand.

Response: I think that it is great what Austria is doing to help not just themselves but Europe as a whole.  I wonder if they could ever come over seas and give us a few pointers to help get us started.  The increase in the biomass research is not only helping the environment but it i also helping creating more jobs people and I love that idea as well.  This article just helped me understand the importance of bioenergy a lot more and the great effects it can have on a single country.

In the movie we just watched it helped me understand the importance of camera angles and the difference betweent a poor camera shot and a good camera shot.  It also helped me realize the importance of the rule of thirds and the effect it has on the shot. It really does make the shot look more interesting if the center of attention of the shot is on the intersecting lines of the grid. In the rule of thirds you have three lines intersecting horizontally and vertically and you don’t want the center of the shot in the middle you want it on the intersecting lines.

For a visual metaphor I’m going to make a puzzle with all kinds of different ways to live sustainably drawn on each puzzle piece. This is supposed to show that in order to really live sustainably you can’t just preform one of the acts of the puzzle piece and think that you’re helping out a lot.  You should try to do as many as you can to complete the whole puzzle.

• First, extreme close-up on one puzzle piece with an act of sustainability on it.
• Second, another extreme close-up on another piece
• Third, just a close-up on 4 or 5 pieces of the puzzle with the same piece on it as the shot before.
• Fourth, a low angle medium shot showing the whole puzzle to show how small and insignificant that one puzzle piece of sustainability really is compared to all the other things you can do.

Wide shot: This shot could be useful when you want to look at the whole person and not just their face.

Medium shot: This shot shows a lot of their body as well as a good enough close up to their face.

Close up: You can see their whole face in this shot as well as most of their emotions.

Extreme close up: In this shot there seems to be more emotion than in just a regular close up.

Low angle: See the whole person as well as anything above them also looks powerful.

High angle: In this angle the person looks small and powerless.

Too much headroom: It looks as if the person in the shot is just a head floating in mid-air.

Too little headroom: The top of the persons head is cut off and looks really tall compared to too much headroom.

Too much leadroom: This shot makes the person look like they’re thinking or pondering about something.