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                MTV's The Real World: “The Responsible Party”

Yes, I'm still watching MTV's [1] “The Real World [2].” And there were only
two things that stood out in this week's episode [3]: Katelynn [4] and Ryan
[5].

Katelynn, honey, I understand that Scott [6] isn't your father, brother or
boyfriend, but still, he is your roommate and it would behoove you to at
least clean up your mess in the common areas. You do not come across well
here (heck, none of the girls come across well in this episode). I'm just
saying …

And second, Ryan. It wasn't Ryan per se, but his film class. I was amazed to
hear that the film school was having the students film in 16mm (millimeter),
which I didn't agree with, and lead to a large discussion between Bunny and
me (and became an extention of our art discussion [7]).

I felt that the use of 16mm was a stupid choice as it's clear that everything
is going digital. Standard commercial photography is pretty much all digital
now, leaving Hollywood the primary user of 35mm film. I argued that yes, you
still need to concern yourself with f-stops [8], color balance [9],
composition, story (in the case of film) and editing, why bother with
celluloid strips when it's clearly on the way out?

Bunny argued for film—don't you learn more about the craft by learning how it
was done? And Hollywood still uses film, so why not learn about how it's
currently done? And (to shift the argument away from things artistic)
wouldn't learning assembly language, which isn't generally used any more,
make one a better programmer?

She had a point. I countered that argument with the fact that assembly
language is still there—regardless of the language used, the computer
eventually executes machine code (for which assembly is just a thin
abstraction) whereas digital filming replaces the celluloid strip for a CCD
(Charge-Coupled Device) and a huge bank of memory, yet everything else
(lenses, f-stops, focusing, color balance, editing, story) remains the same,
so in that case, why learn something that won't be used any more? I don't
know how to drive a car with a manual transmission, and in the twenty years
I've been driving, it's never been an issue for me.

My point was further made when Ryan was shown editing his film on a computer
and presenting a DVD (Digital Video Disc) to the instructor. So, obviously,
the 16mm film he made was digitally transfered anyway. Bunny then said that
the school probably had a ton of 16mm cameras, so why spend the money on
digital cameras?

Other than those two points, the episode was there. The girls are slobs. The
boys got upset. Furniture was broken. Phones thrown into the water. Angst.
Angst. Angst.

[1] http://www.mtv.com/
[2] http://realworld.mtv.com/
[3] http://www.mtv.com/ontv/dyn/real_world_brooklyn/episode/episode.jhtml?episodeId=148947#bio
[4] http://www.mtv.com/ontv/dyn/real_world_brooklyn/cast_member/cast_member.jhtml?personalityId=10603
[5] http://www.mtv.com/ontv/dyn/real_world_brooklyn/cast_member/cast_member.jhtml?personalityId=10601
[6] http://www.mtv.com/ontv/dyn/real_world_brooklyn/cast_member/cast_member.jhtml?personalityId=10602
[7] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2009/02/25.1
[8] http://www.uscoles.com/fstop.htm
[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_balance

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