My idea for a documentary

I think it would be fantastic to document the insider story of working at a major manufacturing plant, such as 3M in Hutchinson, MN. This is the world’s only maker of Scotch tape (betcha didn’t know that!). There are lots of T.V. shows about how food is mass-produced, but does anyone know how they make those neat little sticky-tabs for marking pages in books?
Intended message & key point: manufacturing plants are very cool places
Interviews & questions
· Plant supervisor: What is made here? What are the different manufacturing stages?
· Random consumer using Scotch tape: How often do you use tape? How many factories do you think make Scotch tape around the world? How many varieties of Scotch tape do you think there are?
· Several machine operators: What does this machine do? Where does this fit into the entire process of making the product?
· Tool & dye maker: How do you repair/replace machine parts when they wear down?
· Shipper: How many products are shipped daily? What is the process for packing and shipping?
Activities to include
· Close up on “Watch for robots” sign with footage of robots moving around the factory, delivering things from one place to the next.
· Employees moving around the factory on old fashioned bikes, complete with horns and baskets
· Footage of the machines producing, slicing, handling, and packaging the product.
· A shot of the sound-proofed room for unrolling 5 ft-wide rolls of tape.
Difficulties
· Obtaining permission to bring cameras into the manufacturing plant
· Showing the scale of machines and products since some are very large and others are very small

Local evening news analysis

Analysis of the 10 o'clock news on KARE 11 from Monday, November 12:
Only a few things surprised me after watching this news broadcast. There were about 5 minutes devoted to "news," 7 minutes for a feature story, and 4 minutes each for weather and sports. I expected that the "news," weather, and sports would get similar amounts of time, but I underestimated how much airtime would be devoted to the feature story.
There seemed to be a rhetorical appeal to adults that they need to limit/control their teenagers' driving. Interestingly, the next night's KARE 11 Extra story is also about driving, but this time it focuses on the inadequacy of the state to handle our road system. I liked that tonight's Extra did not blame the roads, weather, or alcohol. Often these are scapegoats when individuals simply make stupid choices. A couple of the teenagers' parents commented on how their kids should have been wearing their seatbelt. The editors also included interviews of mothers, fathers, single parents, joint parents, and classmates; this was a well-balanced approach to the story. However, the editors clearly supported a law to limit passengers for teenage drivers. They showed a brief interview with a senator who proposed the idea. He was standing outside and was able to at least say several sentences. The “balance” was an interview with an opposing senator. He was interviewed in a stuffy office and cut off after a couple statements. Even just the setting of the interviews made a difference: real-world/outdoor interview vs. artificial/indoor interview. This made him seem more out-of-touch with reality than the supporting senator. They immediately cut to one of the teary-eyed victim’s parents defending the law.
Another interesting piece was about the Athletes of the Week. The female athlete was described mostly in terms of her ability and motivation while mostly statistics were used to describe the male. This may simply be because volleyball does not lend itself to stat keeping in the same way that football does.
I think that KARE 11 did a good job of selecting the stories to present. I am okay with the fact that only 5 minutes were spent on “hard news” about crime, politics, and miscellaneous events. These are important, but I prefer that they choose one or two stories on which to focus. The Extra and Athlete of the Week spots covered the topics much more in depth and left me feeling as though I had learned something. If the entire show devoted equal time to all of the stories, I don’t think that I would feel the same way. Tonight’s features focused on teenagers, but I know that this varies from night to night.

TIMELINE

Lead in to the show - 15 sec. about injured football player Adrianne Peterson

News stories (5 min.)

· 2 min, 10 sec. - a local group’s protest that “your” right to free speech is in jeopardy. They sent a postcard that contained over 12 errors to citizens about Robbinsdale school levy & now face legal trouble

· 20 sec. - motorcycle/car crash

· 40 sec. - Wisconsin man gets max. sentence for killing girlfriend

· 12 sec. - Mankato’s proposed “Social Host” ordinance to limit underage drinking

· 10 sec. – semi-truck carrying turkeys tips over in Mounds View

· 10 sec. - 35W bridge construction to begin

· 25 sec. - “Consistency” in housing market

· 6 sec. - DOW Jones drops

· 22 sec. - Gov. Pawlenty’s Veterans’Proposal (new state cemetery, $51 million, study mental health needs, housing assistance when returning from duty)

· 8 sec. - Eagan Vietnam Veteran receives award

· 30 sec. - Red Cross gives out coupons for free coffee & doughnuts to WWII vets, who were overcharged by the government during the war

Preview - Mild weather ahead, Viking Adrianne Peterson is in pain, Kare 11 Extra about teen driving deaths

COMMERCIAL (3 min.)

KARE 11 Extra 7 minutes, 15 sec. - story about 6 teens from Princeton High School who all died in car accidents within 18 months

· statistics about the high rate of fatal car accidents among teenagers,

· interview with female victim’s mother

· interview with male victim’s mother & father (mom talks)

· feature on the male victim’s girlfriend, who died in a car accident 1 year later

· interview with more parents and students

· major cause: too many kids in the car at once (driver is distracted)

· legislative proposal for limiting passengers for drivers with provisional licenses

· 4 sec. with senator who opposes the proposal, followed by three more interviews with victims’ parents

· Suggestion for parents to put their own restriction on passengers for their teen drivers

30 sec. - Preview of the next nights KARE 11 Extra, which is about the 394/94 bottleneck in Minneapolis

50 sec. - anchors discuss tragedy of the Princeton teen driving deaths, looking forward to tomorrow’s Extra

COMMERCIAL

Weather – 4 minutes

· 50 sec. - Weather from news desk (good driving conditions for next couple of days, records of warm November days)

· 3 minutes, 10 sec. – moves outside to do the rest of the weather (summary of today’s high/lowàchanges on the way, cold front moving inàtomorrow’s weatheràtonight’s weatheràtomorrow’s weatherà5 day outlookàweekend “sneak peek”)

10 sec. - Preview of football highlights

COMMERCIAL BREAK (3 minutes, 20 sec.)

SPORTS (4 min.)

· 15 sec. - recap of today’s professional sports scores (with rap music in background)

· 45 sec. - Peterson won’t play in game on Sunday because of knee injury, 5 second statement by coach Childress

· 20 sec. – Announcement of MBL’s rookies of the year

· 50 sec. – Where are they now? Update on a 1987 high school Athlete of the Week

· 45 sec. - Shakopee volleyball player (this week’s female Athlete of the Week)

· 45 sec. - Minneapolis football player (this week’s male Athlete of the Week)

· 15 sec. – go online to vote for this week’s “Hot Highlight” of the week

Preview: ‘bladers take over the dome

COMMERCIAL BREAK (2 min, 50 sec.)

30 sec. - Rollerdome opens

10 sec. - anchors banter about Rollerdome & weather

Podcast reviews

Podcast: Youth Radio: Connecting Youth Voices to the World
Description: a website where students and teachers can post podcasts relating to their school curriculum; most of the podcasts are student voices, but teachers often introduce the content of the podcast.
Pros: able to hear students talk about their projects; an authentic "window" into classrooms around the world.
Cons: varying degrees of quality; some podcasts are very difficult to understand, either because of poor student voice projection or quality of equipment or environment.

Podcast: Ourmedia: The Roaring 20s
Description: a production by 10th grade English students in Georgia about the Lost Generation and the Roaring 20s, as wells as authors and literature that came from this era.
Pros: very well produced. Students project their voices well and the quality of the recording is good. These students produced several podcasts about this topic, so it is easy to listen to it in chunks. You can link to the other podcasts via The Education Podcast Network.
Cons: not many. I suppose that a transcript or index of what each podcast includes would be helpful.

Podcast: Hopkinton (NH) High School Library Podcasts
Description: podcasts created by school librarians about books nominated for awards.
Pros: opportunity to get a literature expert's review about new books
Cons: wordy; librarians seem to talk alot about themselves and their review gets dull

Advertising

Advertising is a fun medium to manipulate and often utilizes literary styles, such as persuasion and parody. Ads also sometimes use literary devices (i.e. alliteration, homophones, homonyms, etc.). One can have a lot of fun playing around with this type of media. I havecreated a couple spoofs of advertisements:

Save the landfills!

Visual: The top half of the page is an image of four water bottles with blue and pink labels saying "It's a boy!" and "It's a girl!" is below the text "Welcome the next generation..." The bottom half of the page shows the photo of a worker dwarfed by bundles of used plastic bottles and the text "by trashing their world." Small font in the lower right-hand corner indicates that the ad is paid for by the local chapter of Ditch the Bottles.
Intended message: to discourage people from buying and using bottled water because they are taking over our landfills
Audience: primarily middle- to upper-middle class people, as they are the most likely consumers of bottled water to change their habits
Concept: use an innocent, appealing image and contrast it with a stark, disturbing image. Use words to emphasize message.

Scary silhouettes!

Visual: An image of a woman with a frightened facial expression as she overlooks the silhouette of a person. A dialogue bubble indicates the woman saying, "I fear the evil shadows! Are they holding a detonator?"
Intended message: The silhouette is one of the famous advertisements for ipods. This advertisement is meant to poke fun at them and point out that they can look a little creepy sometimes.
Audience: The people most likely to "get" this ad are those who have some knowledge of the ipod and its advertisements. Furthermore, it pokes fun at people who don't understand this well-known campaign as well as the ipod product. The targeted age group is around 14-29.
Concept: The concept of the advertisement is to use humor to mock a well-known advertising campaign. What the woman says is meant to be funny and slightly absurd, exposing her naiveté about the product.