Science Fiction Genre

The genre of science fiction has been around alot longer than you would expect, way back to the 1900's films were being produced that showed what the director believed was futurisic at that time.
And nowadays the genre is growing increasingly more popular, reaching new levels and showing so many different ideas within sci-fi.
In the beggining sci-fi was consided to just be about things like robots, flying cars, space and aliens etc. These things are still true today, but now there is a much broader spectrum of what science fiction can be.
And with the ever advancing world of tehnology, incredble things are becoming more possible, new worlds and stories for the audience to get lost in and be a part of.
Sci-fi is a genre thats usually one that guys seem to be more interested in, but the good thing is that over time the opposite sex have been able to relate more to this genre, and it has almost become something that doesnt have a specific audience.
James Camerons epic AVATAR is a good example of this. Its a sci-fi and a fantasy, and one that combines alot of original ideas and new elements, and shows what you can do with sci-fi when you think outside the box.
I could list all of my favourite sci-fi films but really there are so many that the list would be too long and not really relevant much.

New Media

This weeks lecture was about new media, and how in todays culture things in this area are quite different from that of a decade or so ago.
Ill talk about a little about the vidoes games aspect.
Back when games started there wasnt really any stroy, no narrative. Looking at games like pong, pac-man and space invaders will tell you that.
As time went on though, this changed, and games started to have much more to offer that just shooting aliens for some reason.
There was a reason for what was happening, 'cut scenes' were formed and integrated with the gameplay, and reallly made the whoile gaming experience much more rewarding.
This is such huge factor nowadays that without a narrative games would just not would do as well.
Its good to balance it though, showing whats happeing with the plot then switching to the action gameplay.
Though in th 21st century a lot of games now combine these 2 aspects with 'realtime' events.
Youll be watching a cutsence and and then the game will ask you to press a button or move the contriol stick to try and futher your involvment with the stary. Games like Heavy Rain are based soley around this premise.

Structuralism

Things aren't always black and white.
Though for some categories there are clear meanings- like Life and Death, you can only be either one or the other.
With good or evil though, theres a grey area; you cant be purely good or purely evil, most people can be mainly one or the other, but its natural to have a little bit of opposite within you. Its oine of the things that makes you human i guess, and the whole yin-yang idea applies there too.
There are games nowadays that actually replicate this whole idea; giving you that choice to do be one or the other, and like in real life you there are consequences for whether you are good or bad.
Games like fable, GTA or infamous for example, you actually change in appearance, and characters react differently to you depending on what you do.
So Structuralism is how we make meaning in the world,

Intertextuality

This weeks lecture was the most interesting so far in  my opinion, i guess mostly because i understood it well, and could relate exactly to what was being said.
Intertextuality is basically certain lines/movements/scenes or sounds that appear in different media (films and games mostly), that are actually from something else; intensionally put in,  and that some people will pick up and laugh to themselves, as they realised something that others might of missed or didnt know about. I also call them easter eggs, theyre sort of known as that too.
Things like this often occur in kids films, where characters say something that the kids just miss as they arent old enough to realsise what the ceartain line is from. Like the clip ivan showed us from madagascar.

Thinking about it this has happened seriouisly contless times to me, most recently in the awesome movie Scott pilgrim VS the world, which is filled with awesome bits of music, sound effects  and so on right from the get go,straight out of certain video games, that really made me and most of the cinema (as they were all gamers) chuckle.

like this, the 8-bit universal theme, the first thing you see. pure genius- (below)

and when Scott gets a life, (above) another classic reference to pretty much every game around.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOWbWpNKS6s

Seeing and knowing these little things makes you feel clever for some reason, and its very cool idea that developers have to throw them in, as its something that they find funny themselves too, and hope that people will discover.

Annother film i saw recently was Flushed Away, which has loooads in it too, here are a couple of pictures as examples -

When Roddy is trying on clothes, he flicks past a Wolverine and a Wallace suit - wolverine because roddy is played by Hugh jackman, star of the x-men films, and wallace because the studio behind flushed away - Aardman, is responsible for the famous wallace and gromit stop motion series.

There litterally are many many films i could list here that use intertextulaity, but i'd be going on forever!

Still you get the idea, and i just think its awesome how the developsers do it, its adds a ceratin somthing, and makes you feel smarter ( or just more nerdy ) so thats always good :)