ScanFood Endorsement

            There were many different products and ideas to choose from when picking a product to endorse in the class.  There were many ideas such as helping children from domestic violence to a machine that filled the air in your tires, but this product particularly stuck out to me.  This product, titled ScanFood, is a technological advancement that will take storm across electronic stores and will be installed in houses across the country.  ScanFood is a technological product that sits inside a refrigerator, pantry or anything with food and it literally scans the food as an individual puts the items inside the space where the ScanFood is.  The ScanFood will then process how much food you put in and take out of the refrigerator and pantry.  Based on how much food you take out of the space, ScanFood will then produce a shopping list according to what foods you running low on and what foods you are missing.  On top of all of this, ScanFood will also tell the owner what foods are on sale at the nearby supermarket. 

The product I have decided to endorse is ScanFood.  This product would be so convenient to actually have in my refrigerator because it would make my shopping lists for me!  This is a great product that I believe many families would be attracted to, which is why I decided to endorse this particular product.  I believe that this product can and will be very successful across the country with families who lead busy lives.  The product will be a household necessity that will be flying off the shelves across the country!

            The advertisements that Kristin presented were perfect.  She displayed one advertisement that was a commercial.  This commercial showed a woman walking in a supermarket with her child and rummaging through her pocket book in search of her shopping list.  The commercial then rewinds to where she has a ScanFood and she is back at the supermarket where she can access her shopping list from her phone because of the advanced technology that ScanFood has.  This commercial exhibits the convenience and pure happiness that ScanFood can produce.  Another advertisement that Kristin showed was a print ad shown in newspapers that will be circulated in many different newspapers and regions across the country.  This advertisement shows a picture of ScanFood and how it is used to better the lives of families.

            I see great potential in this product.  Over time, ScanFood can develop into a greater product that can and ultimately will attract more customers to buy this wonderful product.  This is a convenience that will help families in their shopping routines.  Hopefully a feature that will be produced is a screen that allows the user to enter in the product name and type just in case the product does not have a bar code or sticker, like fresh fruits and vegetables.  This product will develop into a household name over time and please its users each day.

Product Endorsement

There were many different presentations to choose to endorse, but one stuck out to me and that was Melissa's short story.  I was immediately hooked when she read her short, yet very descriptive pitch to the class.  Her short story is one that you would see turned into a movie and shown on Lifetime, which makes the whole idea even more appealing to me being that I love movies.  Her story was this big tornado of lies and affairs and it was just so interesting and intriguing that I just had to choose this to endorse.

Short stories tend to do really well when advertised in a small bookstore so that is where it should be first advertised.  Posters can be made up and put into the windows of these stores to lure possible audiences into loving this story.  Another possible advertisement that can be used to showcase this story is a commercial.  Typically, books are not advertised on television.  Audiences may find it a little unconventional to see a book advertisement shown during a commercial which may attract them to the story even more. 

In the near future, this short story should be turned into a book.  It will attract many women with its story plot and attention to detail.  There are so many twists and unexpected turns in this short story that a full length book will be even more exciting to read.  Over time, hopefully after the full length book is published and is successfully being sold, this brilliant story can be pitched to different producer and directors to be turned into a movie.  This kind of story can be seen anywhere from Lifetime to the big screen.  This story will definitely be a big hit with audiences across the globe. 

The reason I am supporting this story so much is because I see great potential.  I chose this product over the other 5 or 6 products because I saw room for growth and the possibility to be even greater than it already is.  So many different things can come out of a simple short story.  It leaves room for imagination and it is just hands down entertaining.  Melissa’s wonderful story will be a great novel or movie someday, I just know it.

Movie Pitch

Paranormal Activity

Based off of "real-events," this thriller enters the home of a couple who is harassed by a demonic spirit.  Throughout the movie, weird events happen to the young couple.  This evil spirit takes over the woman's mind, body and life.  In this extremely scary and real movie, audiences see the struggle of a young couple as they deal with an evil spirit taking over and ruining their lives.

Cinematheque- Enemies of the People

Enemies of the People

            This moving documentary is about the killing spree the Khmer Rouge performed in Cambodia.  The narrator of this documentary brought the audience on an emotional ride through the actual killing fields where these horrible acts took place.  Interviews were taken place with actual men who killed the innocent people of Cambodia.

            The main focus of this documentary was to find out exactly why these people were ruthlessly murdered in these killing fields of Northwest Cambodia.  Men, women and even children were victims of this awful killing spree.  The narrator meant for this documentary to be for the history of the world; not journalism.  Yes, he wanted to expose the truth about this awful even in history, but he did not want to point any fingers.  His main goal was to make the citizens of the world aware of this event and have them know that this is was an important time in our history.

            The scene that seemed to stick out most to me was when the narrator asked one of the actual men who performed these murders to give an example of how the innocent people were killed.  He explained that when taken to the rice field, the victims would lay face down on the ground with their hands behind their backs.  Then a member of the Khmer Rouge would lift their face up and slice or stab their neck with a knife.  Why use a knife instead of a gun?  It was explained by other men that the knife inflicted more pain and suffering than a gun would inflict.  Other stories included how fathers would be ordered to go to the fields to be killed while the children were forced to watch their father get murdered in front of their eyes.  Then the children were ordered to the fields where they would be killed as well.  One story included how a member of the Khmer Rouge threw a little boy up into the air, and when he came down, the member stabbed him in the stomach. 

            The narrator, Sambath, has lost his own family to these horrible murdering acts in the rice fields.  His objective was not to find out HOW they died, but exactly why.  He was able to get information out of some of them men about the killing sprees.  This award-winning documentary was the first film to expose this information after 30 years of silence.  The members of the Khmer Rouge that are still alive are embarrassed and feel completely guilty about the whole situation, as they should be.  I am utterly disgusted by not only the graphic stories that were told about the murders, but by the fact that these murders even took place.  There was no clear explanation in the documentary as to why these murders took place, which made me a little angry.  I watched a 93 minute documentary to learn about this and did not even find out why they were killing these innocent people.  I just assumed that there was no reason, and that it was a horrible genocide that occurred in Cambodia. 

            The narrator filmed the entire documentary, so there were not fancy camera angles involved in the filming.  When he was interviewing someone, he would zoom in on their face while they were talking.  The narrator would also have shots of the field where the killing would take place for dramatic moments in the documentary.  They way he filmed this made it feel as if the audience was in Cambodia watching everything happen right next to the narrator.  The only lighting he used was the day light, which made it feel even more real for the audience.  There were no actors, professional equipment or anything.  It was a real movie, made by a native of Cambodia with a camcorder camera.  The realness of the documentary made the emotions of the people even more real for the audience and touched the hearts of everyone in the audience. 

            I thought that the film was well done, considering it was made with a camcorder.  The fact that it seemed so real made me feel like I was there at the interviews, asking the men myself how and why this event took place.  Sambath understood to the needs of these men and it was truly inspiring to watch.  All in all, this documentary was a great depiction of the truth and suffering that the innocent people of Cambodia had to go through.          

Memento

            Memento, written and directed by Christopher Nolan, is a movie about a man named Leonard who has short term memory loss.  He is unable to make new memories so he writes down everything he needs to know.  He also has tattoos all over his upper body and he takes pictures of events, places and people that he needs to remember.  The audience watches this movie through the eyes of Leonard, who is just as confused as the audience is during the movie.  Throughout the movie, Leonard is in a frenzy trying to find the man who raped and murdered his wife.  The audience has no clue who the man is, when it happened and why it happened.  All the audience knows is that Leonard is after this man named “John G” who allegedly raped and murdered his wife at some point in time.  This movie is especially interesting because it is backwards.  The scene that you are supposed to see at the end to tie in all of the information was the very first scene.  This immediately confused me.  It was a struggle to keep up with this movie because the only information you know is the information that Leonard knows but he does not remember a lot of information because of his disability.  Although this movie is backwards and rather confusing, I would still say that it is a linear movie.  The scenes were not out of order; they were just backwards, therefore making this movie linear.  After watching the entire movie, I was still a little confused because you had to go back and think of what you saw and then tie it all together in the end scene (which would be the first scene if it was not backwards). 

            I personally really liked this movie because a like a little bit of challenge while watching movies.  I liked not knowing what was going to happen next.  Memento was definitely not predictable to say the least.  The audience had no clue what was going to happen.  It was almost fun to play detective along with Leonard because you are actively involved in the movie. 

            After the watching the 20 minute interview with Christopher Nolan, I was a little disappointed.  I thought that the interview was going to reveal some information that I didn’t understand in the movie.  Christopher Nolan literally just talked about the movie and how his brother thought of the idea three years prior to the actual movie idea.  Personally, I was a little bored during the interview.  It was monotone and not really interesting in my opinion.  The questions that the audience members asked were not even interesting!  I really just wanted to hear Christopher Nolan’s take on the movie and what the true story is.  Memento is one of those movies where the audience has to figure out the story plot for themselves.  I talked about the movie with some of my classmates, and we all had different opinions of the movie. 

            All in all, I really enjoyed the movie.  I liked trying to figure out what was going on, but I wish that I could have found out in the interview what the story plot actually was from the actual writer of the movie.  It would have been really helpful, but I am almost okay with it.  I like that I can keep my imaginative thoughts about this movie and now have them altered by the writer.

Final Project Idea

                Fashion is all around us.  There is no other way to put it.  Everyone has their own fashion sense and many love to show it off.  For those who don’t always love showing off their fabulous clothes, I have invented a product that will help the fashion inept people in the world.  I call it “My Personal Shopper.”  This is a product that shows the user different outfits they can wear using their own clothes.  All the user has to do is take pictures of their items of clothing.  Yes, this idea sounds like a ton of work, but don’t worry.  The customer is able to lay out several different items on anywhere that is flat and take a group picture!  Of course, the items will have to be under the same “category,” meaning that shirts have to stay together, and so on. 

            Once the customer has taken pictures of their clothes, My Personal Shopper goes to work!  This hand-held gadget is no bigger than your average cell phone.  It has a large screen showing you different outfits that can be put together with your own clothes.  There are many different settings such as day wear, outerwear and evening wear.  Another great feature is that you can select from hundreds of different clothing stores programmed into My Personal Shopper so if you like the fashions from that store, My Personal Shopper will try to put together outfits similar to those of the store!  This is a very smart gadget that will help those in need of a fashion boost.  This gadget is also very helpful for men who do not feel like picking out clothes to wear; My Personal Shopper does all the work for them!

            My Personal Shopper is mainly targeted for women aging from 17-30.  These women are typically more technologically advanced, but this does not mean that these are the only women who can use it!  My Personal Shopper is very simple to use.  It has a touch screen but comes with a pointer pen so it knows exactly what you are pressing.  It comes with an instruction manual so anyone is capable of using the item.  Advertisements will most likely be in fashion magazine and commercials on television.  We do not know how popular this item will be, so we plan on advertising it in a small way at first.  Teenage girls will probably be the first target mostly because they are the ones who watch the most television and read massive amounts of magazines.  An idea with Facebook might come up with advertising it on the sides of the pages.  We want this to be advertised for a long time.  If we get to a certain selling point, then we will cut down on the ads, but for now, My Personal Shopper will be everywhere!  My Personal Shopper will mainly be a North American product.  Once the product starts going viral across the country, we will introduce it in Europe and other continents. 

            As for the commercials, we want the advertisements on television to be tasteful.  We do not want it to sound like a “teen” product.  The makers of My Personal Shopper want this product to attract many different people in many different age groups.  We are going to limit the commercials to around 30-45 seconds; just enough to get what the product is and lure people in to loving this product.  My Personal Shopper will mainly be advertised on stations where teenagers are most likely to see it, such as MTV, CW11 and ABC Family.  I hope that this product will be appealing to many people across the country. 

Two Articles, Same Topic

            This week’s assignment was to take the same story, but find 2 different articles about it from different news sources.  Sounds easy, right?  Wrong.  I had a lot of trouble trying to find a somewhat interesting story in two different news sources.  Of course, I immediately went to the internet because I am always on the computer and I started to search.  I went to Google News, which brought me to NorthJersey.com, and The New York Times to find two articles of the same story. 

            Recently, there was a change with Cablevision and the channels we were able to view.  Cablevision as now “blocked” Fox 5 from viewers.  Many sports fans are quite upset with this decision because they are unable to watch a lot of the sports programs on television.  This change was only in the Tri-State area but it did affect approximately 3 million viewers.  This decision is really similar to the HGTV and Food Network decision a few months back.  Viewers were literally unable to watch anything on those channels, and the same situation is happening on Fox 5. 

            The first article I found on NorthJersey.com opens up with a short story about how Rich De Simone had to leave his house during a game to go to a Sports Restaurant to watch the game.  While he was at the restaurant, his wife called up the cable company and “game them a piece of her mind.”  Apparently, according to this article, Fox 5 was not the only channel that went “dark” on viewers.  My9, Fox Business Network, National Geographic Wild, and Fox Deportes were also dark for the 3 million viewers.  The viewers interviewed in this article, all male, were just concerned that they were unable to watch their favorite sporting events.

            The second article I found on The New York Times was about the same exact topic.  This article mentioned, just like the first article, the other channels that were affected by this “blackout.”  In this article, they writer mentions that the spokesman for Fox Sports just “asking for fair compensation for the value that Fox5 and My9 programming offers and the same negotiated rate that other cable operators have agreed to already.”  The New York Times article provided similar information as the first article.  They had their differences, but both articles offered sufficient information about the subject.

            These articles are about the same topic, but they do in fact have their differences.  The first article from NorthJersey.com gives opinions from actual Cablevision customers.  These opinions make it easier to see what the public thinks about the whole subject.  The article from The New York Times has quotes from the spokesmen from the companies which is also helpful because it shows the readers and customers the facts about the decision making process.  The New York Times article also gave more specific information about exactly what programs customers would be missing during the blackout.  The writer gave the times and teams that were playing on the station.   The NorthJersey.com article was pretty vague about the facts and was basically an overall opinion of the men who watched the station for sports. 

            Both of these articles are good articles and give the readers an overall feel for how the customers feel about the new decision.  This example goes to show you that different articles about the same topic can be very similar but really different at the same time.