Psycho – A 1960 trailer

  http://youtube.com/watch?v=EzAnE4zuYuA&feature=related

An old-fashioned trailer for the movie Psycho! For the uninitiated, Psycho is Alfred Hitchcock’s amazing classic thriller from 1960. Notorious for its sensational murder scene in the shower, this black-and-white film became an instant classic back when audiences were traumatised by the psychological horror of the movie. Some audiences were reported to have walked out of the theatres during the shower scene!

This reminds me of the Magic Bullet media theory, where audiences are seen as passive victims and unable to  defend themselves from media messages and reject what they see and consume. In this instance, the terrified audience could not withdraw themselves from the horror delivered to them through the Magic Bullet, and as a result could not subsequently differentiate between reality and make-believe. (Many reported not being able to shower after seeing this movie, lest they get murdered by psychos.) Audience of that era tend to be more susceptible to the powerful effects models of the media, being less equipped with skills to limit, reduce and /or reject its heavy influence, the way modern audience can.

Also, the film starts off with a sexy (By 1960’s standards) scene of the female lead having a post-lunch-time-quickie chat with her lover in a hotel room. (Both were scantily clad.) This was the first time a scene of its scandalous nature appeared on the then-conservative American cinema screen, hence creating waves of controversy.

The trailer that I posted above is something rather alien to audiences of today. I have no idea if that was the norm back then to have the director of the film guide the audience of the trailer through elements of the movie. Nevertheless, it is interesting to see an example of a trailer that doesn’t involve the typical format that we are so used to seeing in the cinema these days.

 Another point of interest is how the music in the background of the trailer is deceiving sweet and harmless. For a thriller, we would perhaps expect music to show off the sinister and suspenseful themes like its official main theme:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=j3QcS2iovss

However, the music in the trailer betrays the unknowing audience with its almost comical feel. This is a technique that is used in modern days – A trailer for a horror movie, for example, may start off with deceptive soothing piano music, only for this piano music to become sinister and warped at the point when the audience realises that it is actually a trailer for a horror movie.

 I’m not sure if that was the point in Psycho‘s trailer. It was probably unintentional, in my opinion. But another interesting point to note is how Hitchcock himself pretends to not want to reveal the most horrible and exciting parts of the movie, through a mixture of effective verbal and nonverbal cues. While showing the audience the scenes of the crime, he speaks in a sinister tone (Use of paralinguistics), and deliberately pauses at climatic points of his narration (Again, silence – Paralinguistics), and refuses to describe in detail the horror of the movie. His nonverbal facial expressions and oculesics reveal a lot about the horror that audience can expect from the film. Simple, suspenseful, and very effective. (Back in the days where there wasn’t Youtube or Google to provide you with sneak previews or to satisy your curiosity.)

The High-tech Classroom in the Age of Computer Mediated Communication

Hi all, I hope you guys are all having a great CNY holiday. It’s back to work and school this week – And what a hectic week it’s going to be for us students, with five tests in a week!

 My laptop very nearly crashed a few days ago. I was completely freaked out, scared and worried. It’s amazing how so much of our lives is stored in this tiny precious piece of equipment made up of chips and cables known as the Computer.

My number one concern when my laptop hanged five times in a row that night was that I wouldn’t be able to finish my academic work on time. Can you imagine my anxiety when the error messages started popping up on the screen and when I could’t even restart the system?

 Not only do all assignments somehow involve the use of the computer and the Internet these days, important things like communication between lecturers/students and Tests are also conducted online now. Basic things like course requirements, lecture notes etc are posted on the E-learning website. Call me old-fashioned if you must, but I think I am not the only IT-idiot in this day and age who doesn’t miss the traditional pen-and-paper approach to learning, and secretly wishes that all these annoying technology would just crash one day so people learn not to rely too much on it.

 Technology has invaded the classroom. People are earning degrees online; lecturers are posting videos of their lectures online.. It is simply quite impossible for one to not own or have access to a computer and the Internet.

Computer Mediated Communication (CMC) has invaded almost every aspect of our lives, and education is one of the influenced aspects. Despite its many advantages like speed, ability to transcend physical boundaries, and effective and flexible communication to/from groups or individuals, there are nevertheless issues involved as well.

Ongoing debates on ‘wired schools’ warn that CMC threatens traditional educational norms. In the age of increasing influence of CMC, students lose much of the most important experience of learning- face-to-face learning. Instead, arm-chair learning encourages students to take a complacent attitude towards being creative and proactive. As a result, students are better able to get away with tardiness and procrastination, qualities that interfere with good learning habits.

 I am (contrary to popular belief), not someone who is anti-CMC. I do have a strong faith in how CMC can make the world much more effective and globalised. There are two sides to any coin/equation, therefore everything has its pros and cons. Too much of something may or may not be a good thing. In the case of how technology has taken over the pen-and-paper in the classroom setting, I believe that this was inevitable. However, I must still point out that an over-reliance on CMC may produce many problems, because we all know that technology is not only fast and effective, it can also be highly cranky and unreliable.

 (Oh, look, and in case you clever readers haven’t already realised, this blog is actually a large component of my course requirements for the COM101 module.) I’m not sure if such an idea would work well, but then seeing how blogging is second-nature to so many these days, perhaps it was a natural progression to make blogging an assignment. Besides, yours truly has been keeping a personal blog since 2002. Heh – Perhaps I’m not such an IT idiot after all..