James Aronson Awards (☆)

Friday night I had the privilege of attending the James Aronson Awards here at Hunter College.  The James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism has been given since 1990 by Hunter College to honor journalism professor James Aronson.  Aside from being a beloved professor, Aronson was also a renowned journalist and founded The National Guardian, a leftist newspaper created in the late 1940s.

As written on the Aronson Award's official website, the award (in so many words) honors innovative and original U.S. media reports that shed light upon sweeping social inequities such as discrimination, exploitation, violations of human rights, etc.  The judging panel is made up of a prominent and reputable group of media aficionados including members of the Hunter College Department of Film & Media Studies and a select committee of various journalists and media critics. 

There are winners from 3 categories: journalism, documentary, and cartooning.  This year's winners for journalism included Jessica Bruder, Sari Horwitz, Jonathan Jones and T. Christian Miller, Andrea McDaniels, and various USA Today reporters.  For the documentary category, the winners were both Nathan Fitch and Sam Feder.  Finally, in the "Cartooning with a Conscience" category, was cartoonist Adam Zyglis.

Being in the same room as these winners and hearing their stories of simultaneous inspiration and struggle while creating and reporting their pieces was really quite moving.  Each piece dealt with topics that were really deep and disheartening but at the same time excruciatingly educational. While I can imagine that attending this event was most useful and stimulating for students who are aspiring journalists, I was so glad that I was able to attend.  Although I may not be a journalism major, baring witness to these people's hard work and seeing them be rewarded for it made me want to do great things and be the best that I can be at whatever I choose to be as well!

My MOMI Experience

I had actually been to the Museum of Moving Image in Astoria quite a few times before our trip with the class last week.  My family often looks for fun things to do on the weekends together, and since we all share a common interest of movies and television, we have spent several afternoons there.  With that being said, I was fairly familiar with the museum.  However, this was the first time that I have been there since I have been a MEDP160 student, so I was able to look around and experience MOMI with a greater educational perspective.

Overall, I thought the trip was a fun event.  I believe that it was very useful to have had us go around and be face-to-face with things that we have spoken about in class but would never be able to otherwise experience.  For example, the videocamera exhibit which displayed the evolution of the videocamera was really neat and interesting to see, because we spoke about it at length in lecture and would never be able to see those anywhere else today.  Things like that were really beneficial and educational.

My one gripe about the trip was that the museum has so many fun hands-on exhibits that we just did not get around to, be it because of time constraints or because these exhibits weren't deemed as necessary to visit.  Nevertheless, I think that we as students could have equally as benefitted form the "fun" hands-on stuff just as much as we benefitted from the more educational bits.

Although I have been to MOMI more times than I could count at this point, I would definitely go back again in the future.  The museum is always a good and interesting time!

Relationships Between Shots

For this assignment, I chose a clip from the 1996 movie Matilda, which has been one of—if not my most—favorite movie for as long as I can remember.  For a bit of insight, Matilda is about a sweet little girl with telekinetic powers that she uses to cope with her nasty family and evil school principle.   The scene that I have chosen to examine, though on the shorter side, is very important to the movie's overall plot.  This particular scene is where Matilda first discovers the full extent of her powers and exactly what she is capable of doing.

The first important aspect that this scene brings to us is its upbeat music.  We can conclude from this that this particular part of the movie is supposed to be positive and happy.  Next, we see a bowl of Cheerios and a spoon that is lifted out of the bowl all by itself.  This is significant because, since there is no hand visible on the spoon, we can see that Matilda is doing this all with her eyes.  The next shot shows the spoonful of Cheerios floating in midair before entering Matilda’s mouth.  The song gets more and more upbeat as the scene continues to play out.  We see Matilda moving by simply pointing a finger and snapping her fingers and dancing all around the room.  The shots are quick and sort of (intentionally) all over the place.  The scene ends with an overhead shot of things “exploding” all around Matilda.

This clip—and the entire movie, really—shows great editing.  Obviously, we know that spoons can’t float and lights don’t turn on by just pointing our fingers at them.  This is all the magic of editing.

Interview With A Hopeful Dancer

For our second project, I interviewed my classmate Lauren, who aspires to be a professional dancer.