The major transition from high school essay to essay written in university was understanding that I can be subjective. I remember my high school english teacher banging her head on the wall (literally!) because she did not want us to really tell her our opinions. High school essays are constrained to very strict criteria where as in university, all the lecturers and tutors care about is original arguments and a strong opinion. with the introduction of the video essay, I came to realise that in university no one cares how you write an essay, as long as you clearly explain what you think and why. In the case of video essays, it is similar to written essays but is accompanied by visuals to support the arguments. Brian aswell as the video essay we watched during the lectorial, reinforced the importance of our individual voice in an essay. We must make clear what we think of the topic and explain our reasoning. For our group project, we decided to focus on Sean Parker’s Screening Room for the audio essay and cinema going culture for the video essay. Mimi and Alex are both doing cinema studies and love the subject, while I do not know much about cinema as an institution, I am intrigued by the topic and eager to learn more.Brian was also on board with our vision for this project and told us to focus on one area rather than cinema as a broad topic.

From what my group and I have researched we have learned that Sean Parker, most commonly known as the former vice president of Facebook, is in the works of a new project where films that are only released in cinemas can be streamed through this system. You would have to purchase a box for about one hundred and fifty dollars and then purchase a film for fifty dollars with a forty eight hour screening window. We thought that it would not take long for someone to come along and learn how to jail break the system or the very obvious method of piracy would be to set up a dslr camera infront of the television and record the entire film in high definition. We discussed the technical side of things but ultimately decided that this new age of digital technology might be a threat to cinema. With the increasing production and quality of online series, for example netflix original series, where does that leave cinema?

For this week I will reflect on my cinema going experience and why I personally love or hate it at times and I hope with more research and discussion we can have an insight into the future of cinema.