Medium vs. Medium

"The book is much better than the film."

Have you ever wondered why people always say that?

Partly it is because it makes the person saying it feel more intelligent because books are seen as more of an intellectual medium than films. Similarly, books require a lot more time and effort from their audience than your average film does... people will often feel more rewarded by something that has kept them amused for 10+ hours and required them to use their imaginations over a 90-minute jaunt at the cinema.

Ultimately though, can we really ever compare books to films? They are two different types of medium with completely different purposes.

Consider how much money it takes to create a film... millions and millions of dollars. If the film wasn't able to keep hundreds of thousands of people happy and entertained then it would lose a ridiculous amount of money. Books, on the other hand, cost far less to produce and are therefore able to appeal to a smaller audience.

Twilight, Harry Potter, The Da Vinci Code, Where the Wild Things Are, Pride and Prejudice, The Kite Runner, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Devil Wears Prada, Jurassic Park, Bridget Jones's Diary. These are all examples of films which you may well have enjoyed, but run the risk of someone patronisingly turning to you and saying 'the book is much better though!'

At the end of the day though... the films are trying to do much different things (aside from make money).

You can't invite a few friends over to read a book like you can with a film.

You can't include enough multi-layered humour to keep both adults and young children fully entertained in a book the way a lot of films do.

You can't show a tiny half-smile between two friends in a book without writing a good long paragraph about the whole thing , whereas a film can do this in less than a second.

You can't have a massive action sequence in a book without having to somehow dress it up with engaging language and metaphors... but a film can simply show whatever the writer wants to show you.

Books can't give you something visually beautiful like a piece of art, but have to rely on you to do all the work in your head... but a film can make every single frame look like a beautiful painting.

By no means am I trying to tell you that films are better than books... I am simply making the point that it is not easy to compare one medium to another. You will however, be doing exactly that in comparing the websites that you have made with your horror movie posters!

Activity:

Once you have pasted the evaluation of your horror movie poster and the evaluation of your website front page into one word document, I would like you to answer the following questions in full sentences underneath.

1. Imagine you are seeing both your horror movie poster and your website for the first time. Which of these do you think is the most likely to persuade you to see the film and why?

2. How would you make sure as many people as possible got to see your website?

3. How would you make sure as many people as possible got to see your poster?

4. Do you think it is easier to get lots of website visits or to get lots of people to see a poster?

5. Internet Advertising or Print Advertising - which do you think is the most cost-effective and why?

6. Websites need to be constantly updated and have someone making sure that they work. They can also be changed and redesigned whenever you want. How does this give them a disadvantage and advantage over posters?

7. Think of the age-range you are advertising to... are they more likely to be persuaded by a website or a poster?

*Extension Questions*

8. What genres of film do you think are best suited to using internet marketing and which genres are better suited to print?

9. If you wanted to create a weird or 'viral' marketing campaign for your film to capture people's imaginations and get them talking about your film... what might you do?

10. Do you think we will still have printed advertising in 10 years time and why?

Evaluating Your Website

A quick 4-paragraph guide to evaluating your websites...

1. What is your website for? Who is your audience? How have you appealed to them?

2. What other websites did you look at and what ideas did you take from them?

3. What do you like about your website?

4. What do you think needs to be improved about it?

Some Website Examples

Check out these website frontpage examples from some of your talented classmates:

John

Jess A

Shelly

Hannah

Web Quality

During the 'Cross-Media Studies' modules we have to look at a variety of different communication methods. One of the most influential and exciting new means of communication is through web-sites. In the 21st Century, we all spend countless hours browsing the internet, seeing what interesting, unusual and entertaining things we can find on websites. Here are a few of my favorites:

Internet Movie Database:

IMDB is by far one of my most visited websites. It is full of information about pretty much every film ever made and also provides a message board forum where film fans can discuss their favorite / least-favorite films and compare opinions. It is an incredibly useful resource for whenever I am considering watching a film but don't know if it is worth my time and it also has an outstanding database of film-trailers.

If I were to make a criticism of IMDB however, I would suggest that the design of the site looks quite dated and the graphics look very basic and uninteresting. If I were to redesign the site I night suggest a slightly more interesting colour-scheme and perhaps a new sleeker logo for the site, as the current logo looks very 90's.

Kottke.org

Whilst it is more of a blog than a proper website, kottke is one of my favorite places to go on the interenet. Put simply, it is a regularly updated blog where the site's owner posts interesting things that he has found on the internet. This is a useful resource because there is so much information and different websites available, it is very hard to find what's good and what's not without wasting hours and hours. With kottke however, you can be guaranteed that he will find something a little bit unusual or cool to show you.

The fact that it is updated very regularly is a big plus as well - websites which constantly offer you new content are always going to be a lot more successful than less frequently updated ones because people will keep coming back for new updates.

If I were to improve Kottke however, I might include an easier way to browse through older entries (as there have been hundreds and hundreds over the years) and perhaps make a 'Best of Kottke' page where you can find the bits of the site that people enjoy the most.

We Feel Fine (give this site a decent amount of time to load... I promise it's worth the wait)

I like this website purely because I think it is a beautiful idea. The site basically scans every blogpost in the world in the entire internet and creates a weird and beautiful map of how people are feeling on that particular day. You can do all sorts of lovely things with it like find out how people in a particular country are feeling, or find out how people are feeling where there are certain types of weather.

To rearrange the data into lots of different patterns then click on the words at the bottom of the screen in this site (murmurs, madness, mobs, etc.)

Activity

Your task is simple... list your 3 favorite websites. For each one I want you to write 3 paragraphs explaining why you like the website, what makes it better than other websites, and what you might do to improve it.