Study Abroad Trend

This week I have been looking at the trend of studying abroad! Unfortunately during my college career I did not have the time to take advantage of studying abroad programs, but according to students who have studied abroad it is nothing but one good experience after the other. Studying abroad has been gaining popularity over the past few years. An independent non-profit organization, Institute of International Education, which is among the world’s largest and most experienced international education and training organizations, has conducted research that concludes that more students are choosing to study abroad.  According to IIE in the year 2012 the number of study abroad students increased by 9.8 percent and is at a record high number of 283, 332 student in one calendar year. Their research also shows that 86 percent of those students studied abroad during their time as an undergraduate. Ana Vintimilla is a Salisbury University international student from Cuenca, Ecuador who works as an international program advisor with CEDEI International Programs.

The New Cathedral of Cuenca
Photo via backpackers.com

She says that winter and summer semesters are usually their busiest time of year.  With 59 percent of students studying abroad short term IIE research confirms that short term sessions, sessions taking eight weeks or less (usually in winter or summer) are the most popular time to study abroad.  Next are mid-length sessions with 38 percent of students spending either, one or two quarters, or a whole semester abroad.  Where should you travel if you’re planning on studying abroad? Well leading destinations include the United Kingdom and Italy as the top two countries followed by Spain and France.

Photo of NYC taken by Ana Vintimilla
Photo via Ana Vintimilla

Vintimilla with one of
her groups in Cuenca, Ecuador
Photo via Ana Vintimilla

When she chose to study in America, Vintimilla said it was to follow her passions in music. "I wanted to follow my dreams", says Vintimilla, "I was studying something that in my country was not really available at the time, which was music, so I wanted to come to do something better with that". Money can be a factor when deciding whether or not to study abroad.  Vintimilla says that there is no better way to spend your money, "If it's about money, there is one thing I gotta say. There is no better money spent than studying.  Studying abroad is bigger, studying abroad is something really cool. You get to learn and see inside from a different culture". Vintimilla explains that by studying abroad in America she not only has learned new American cultures but has also educated her friends with her own culture. When coming to America she says that "people who have no idea where your from they are willing to know you and give you the chance to know their culture but at the same time as we start growing together then they start to get interested in knowing my culture too". Traveling and living in another country for an extended time can be intimidating but Vintimilla encourages other students to take advantage of these opportunities, saying "its an experience you'll never forget". I had a chance to talk with the Education Abroad Advisor at Salisbury University, Noel Habashy, to learn more about the study abroad programs offered at the university. Habashy says that there are a total of 198 international students at Salisbury University. he also explains that studying abroad can be great experiences for students. Students can gain knowledge about their "own culture and understanding of other cultures and understanding of culture in a workplace environment. It helps people really with this perspective of taking the blinders off and realizing that there is a big, bright, beautiful world out there, and we live in a significant part of this world, but it's just a part.  There are other parts of the world where things are going on and it can be very appealing to employers by putting something on your resume". Salisbury University offers an English Language Institute where "students come here as full time SU students to study English and then continue their education at SU or other universities within the United States, so it's kind of like a toe in the door to come and study in the United States and based on that the numbers have grown considerably". CNN reports that there has also been an international push from the White House. First Lady Michelle Obama has been working on efforts to promote international traveling stating that “the benefits of studying abroad are almost endless. First of all, it is going to make you more marketable in the United States.” Studying abroad gives students an advantage while applying for jobs after graduation.  Michelle Obama explains “more and more companies are realizing that they need people with experience around the world.”  Studying abroad offers students numerous benefits and experiences and are encouraged to take part in these programs before they graduate, I definitily wish I had. 

Lions, and Tigers, and...Zombies?

Forget everything you know about vampires or werewolves because zombies are what you need to be aware of. If there were a zombie apocalypse would you be prepared? Do you even believe in zombie apocalypse theories? Film and television alike are indulging in zombie trends, which have been around for a while but have been recently gaining popularity over the past few years. Even in books and video games the concept of zombies and the apocalypse are everywhere. Movies such as Shaun of the Dead (2004) starring English comedians Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, and Zombieland (2009) starring Jesse Eisenberg and Woody Harrelson and most recently Warm Bodies (2013) and World War Z (2013) starring Brad Pitt are examples of different styles of films spanning across the past ten years demonstrating this growing fascination with zombies. 

                       

                                                                                          

                  

                                                                        

Photo via IMDB

Photo via IMDB

AMC’s show The Walking Dead is one of the biggest shows on television in recent years. Premiering in 2010, The Walking Dead is about a police officer that leads a group of survivors in a world overrun by zombies. This show has been successful season after season and has a huge following with over 27 million likes on   Facebook and 2.46 million Twitter followers.  This is not the first mega successful show for AMC, their show Breaking Bad, which just ended this past year, also received the same amount of success, dealing with the unusual subject of a high school chemistry teacher who sells top line crystal meth.  Just like Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead deals with a different and unusual topic, this time being about the zombie apocalypse, which draws people in immediately.

Photo via Amazon

Zombies are included in books and video games just as much as any other medium.  Books and video games reach an entirely new audience than that of television and film. The book Deck Z: The Titanic: Unsinkable, Undead by Chris Pauls, took the infamous story of the Titanic and combined it with zombies making a completely new story just from the concept of zombies. 

                                                         

Before World War Z was a movie it was a novel with the same title written by Max Brooks and released in 2006, seven years before the film was made.  A video game called “World War Z” soon followed based on the novel and movie furthering the magnitude that is zombies. 

Photo via Amazon

There have also been a number of zombie survival guidebooks released in recent years, one of the most popular being The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead published in 2003 was also written by Max Brooks. According to Amazon, the book is “fully illustrated and exhaustively comprehensive [and covers] everything you need to know, including how to understand physiology and behavior, the most effective defense tactics and weaponry, ways to outfit your home for a long siege, and how to survive and adapt in any territory or terrain”.

One of the most recent well-known video games “Call of Duty”, published by Activision, is a first and third person shooter game and has grown in popularity over the years and has several installments.  In 2012 it was stated that there would be a ninth instillation of the popular game titled “Call of Duty: Black Ops II”.  This game would be the first game in the Call of Duty franchise to feature sci-fi settings and weapons. This game featured an entirely new game separate from the regular live Call of Duty shooter format, they now included zombies; you could now play against zombies, by yourself or with friends, in a post zombie apocalyptic world in different map locations. The game proved to be popular and successful, with its biggest success being the new inclusion of zombies.

Photo via steamcommunity.com

My roommate is interested in all things zombie. She watches the movies, the TV shows, reads the books, and plays the games.  She was the one who introduced me to Call of Duty zombies when she was looking for someone who would play Xbox with her. She likes to believe in the idea of the zombie apocalypse and thinks that by absorbing all this zombie information she is now, some how, better prepared for when the zombie apocalypse occurs, if that ever may be.  I know she is not alone in feeling that way and that is what draws people’s attention is their already existing interest with zombies.

Photo via nazizombieplus.wikia.com

I personally do not obsessively watch anything that deals with zombies, purely for the reason that I don’t like horror genre anything. Even if the story is not scary, like the comedies Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland I mentioned before, the make up of the zombies is unpleasant to look at, just because it is so realistic it freaks me out and I find myself looking away from the screen for most of the movie. Shaun of the Dead was the first movie I saw dealing with zombies, but not I did not watch it willingly. One of my best friends who just graduated from NYU wanted to watch a movie and chose Shaun of the Dead and told me it was about zombies but that it was comedy and I did not believe him but he made me watch it anyway. Of course after watching the movie I did in fact like it, but zombie or horror movies are never my first choice when choosing a movie to watch. It is clear that fascination with zombies and the apocalypse have been around for years and is continuing to grow in popularity and will be around for more years to come. So if you want to be prepared for any zombie apocalypse that may or may not occur, pull up a chair and start watching, reading and playing anything with zombies that you can get your hands on and study up!  

Binge Watching

Binge watching. Let’s be honest we’ve all done it. “Binge watching” is now observed as a cultural phenomenon and has become popular with the rise of online media streaming services, such as Netflix and Amazon Prime, that allow viewers to watch television shows and movies on demand and commercial free. The term binge watching has been used since the late 1990s when people would watch several episodes of a particular show in a row, usually through DVD sets or TV marathons. In 2013 the term “binge watching” was runner up for Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year, coming second to the popular term “selfie”.  The Oxford Dictionary has defined binge watching as “watching multiple episodes of a television program in rapid succession”. The term became mainstream in 2013 when Netflix started releasing episodes of its original programming simultaneously.  In February 2013 Netflix rolled out all 13 episodes of the first season of their original show House of Cards and did the same thing one year later in February 2014 when they released the second season. 

House of Cards
Photo via IMDB

The show has received high praise from fans and critics alike and has earned actor Kevin Spacey a nomination for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a drama series for both an Emmy and Golden Globe award during the 2013-2014 television season. Netflix has a number of their own original series such as House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and Derek.  When they release their shows online, they do not release one episode a week like a regular on air television program does, they release the entire season, making it very difficult for viewers to stop watching. This is where and how Netflix has made a name for them when it comes to the concept of binge watching

Derek
Photo via IMDB

Orange is the New Black
Photo via IMDB

Netflix executives say they have found a consistent pattern in the pace of which people binge. They say that generally, about half of their viewers that they studied finish a season (up to 22 episodes) within a one-week period. In a survey conducted by Netflix 61 percent of survey participants said that they binge watch regularly. In the same survey 73 percent of people define binge watching as “watching between 2-6 episodes of the same TV show in one sitting”.  As of September 2013 Netflix has a reported 40.4 million global streaming subscribers, 31.2 million being in the United States. Ted Sarandos, the Chief Content Officer of Netflix states that “viewing data shows that the majority of streamers would actually prefer to have a whole season of a show available to watch at their own pace”. I too have been guilty of binge watching, whether it is by myself or with friends.  Over summer and winter breaks I find myself with a lot of free time and I take the opportunity to watch television shows that I never had time to watch. I have watched four seasons of the AMC drama Breaking Bad in the matter of about two and half weeks, six seasons of the CBS comedy How I Met Your Mother over the course of only a couple of weeks. 

How I Met Your Mother
Photo via IMDb

Once you have completely finished binge watching your show you find yourself going through withdrawal. You have to wait until Netflix adds the next season of your show to watch new episodes, so you just move on to the next show you end up binge watching.  I have even found myself binge watching a show that I have already binge watched two years ago, with the same group of people. In most cases, especially in mine, people find themselves binge watching a show in order to catch up on the show in order to watch the season that is currently on the air. They do not want other people ruining a show, so they want to catch up with everyone who are able to the current season. With spoilers everywhere, it is almost impossible to go on the internet, or specifically any social media site, and not accidently ruin a show for yourself. For example, this past week, on Monday, “How I Met Your Mother” had their series finale, and if you didn’t watch you were going to find out what happened anyway because it was already all over social media before the episode was even over.

Netflix seems to encourage binge watching behavior, which has now become a social norm in today’s society. When you watch a show on Netflix, Netflix will automatically continue to the next episode, so you don’t have to lift a finger. They will also end up skipping the “previously on [insert show title here]” opening of a show and the theme song as well so you can get right back to watching your shows back to back with absolutely no interruption.  If you watch enough episodes of one show continuously Netflix will eventually ask “Are you still watching” to know whether or not they should continue streaming the show you are watching.

Breaking Bad
Photo via IMDB

Binge watching seems to be a trend mostly among the younger generation but that does not mean the older generation doesn’t binge watch too. Older members of my family have their own Netflix account and find themselves binge watching just like the younger generation. My roommate, who is my frequent binge watching buddy, has also expressed that her parents, who are not the best with technology, find themselves binge watching, that is how simple and easy streaming shows is. A couple weeks ago I got my mother her own Netflix profile on my account after telling her that she should watch the show ABC drama “Scandal”, which I already completely binge watched earlier this year. She’s hooked. She cannot help but watch several episodes in a row because they are available at the touch of a button. She was even upset with me that I didn’t introduce her to Netflix and online streaming sooner.

Scandal
Photo via IMDB

Netflix is the leading force when it comes to streaming shows online, even though you have to pay for a membership, it quickly becomes worth the money. You can even binge watch your favorite show on your phone with the free Netflix application, that you can also get on your tablet, gaming console, and of course on your computer. Apple Inc. is currently in talks with Comcast about teaming up to deliver a new TV streaming service to compete with online streaming companies like Netflix. According to the Wall Street Journal the service would “encompass both traditional cable offerings of live television and on-demand content, which are delivered digitally over Comcast’s Cable television service, as well as access to digital video from the cloud”.  With advances in technology and increases in amount of available show content it seems we will continue binge watching for years to come.

Film Technology

The world of film that we once knew is drastically changing.  This year studios are beginning to stop the distribution of 35-millimeters films and will making the official and permanent switch to digital filmmaking.

35mm film has been used in the industry since the early periods of film. However, with advancements in film technology movies that use digital technology are able to present brighter and clearer picture and sound over that of 35mm film, offering a better experience overall for moviegoers.

           35-millimeter movie camera
           Photo via www.sandiegoreader.com

 Even though the studios have made the executive business decision to stop the production of 35mm film, a debate still remains among many famous directors in Hollywood about the use of new digital technology versus original 35mm film.

35-millimeter film reel
Photo via entertainment.msn.com

Christopher Nolan with a 35mm camera on the set of The Dark Knight Rises 
Photo via TIME

Director Christopher Nolan, who’s well known films include Memento, Inception, and The Dark Knight Trilogy, is a firm supporter of preserving the use of celluloid filmmaking.  Nolan’s film and box office success The Dark Knight Rises was filmed on celluloid. 

           Memento Trailer (2000)

Inception Trailer (2010)

    The Dark Knight Rises Trailer (2012)

According to The University of California Institute For Research in the Arts (UCIRA), Nolan had invited many film directors such as Michael Bay, Duncan Jones and Edgar Wright to an exclusive first look at the first six minutes of the film before the film was released but had the ulterior motive of making a case for the continued use of 35mm film. Nolan pleaded to his fellow directors about what 35mm film can do. Nolan says, “The danger comes from filmmakers not asserting their right to choose that format. If they stop exercising that choice, it will go away”. Director James Cameron started the movement to digital filmmaking in 2009 with his film Avatar distributed by 20^th Century Fox.  The blockbuster could be only be screened using digital projectors resulting in the first wave of many theaters quickly upgrading their projection technology to that of digital. Recently, Paramount Pictures has followed in footsteps of 20^th Century Fox by releasing The Wolf of Wall Street the company’s first all digital motion picture. According to Ars Technica, a technology news and information website, Anchorman2: The Legend Continues was the company’s last film released on celluloid.

Avatar Trailer (2009)

The Wolf of Wall Street Trailer (2013)

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues Trailer (2013)

The switch over to digital not only affects the studios and the filmmakers but also the movie theaters that screen the films. Now, theaters across the country are going to have to upgrade to digital projection, if they have not done so already, if they wish to continue films that come out of Hollywood.

Director Martin Scorsese on the set of Hugo with a digital camera
Photo via creativecow.net

The Clayton Theatre in Dagsboro, Delaware
Photo via GoogleMaps

I recently made a trip to The Clayton Theatre, a small local movie theater located in Dagsboro, Delaware to visit owner Joanna Howe who just upgraded her theater to digital projection this past week.  Howe explains that the switch to digital has been a long time coming, she says “the studios came to us about a year ago and announced that after this, the end of 2013 they were going to start to phase out 35-millimeter film completely”. How had started raising money in February of last year in order to switch The Clayton Theatre over digital, knowing that if she upgrade her business would suffer. She states that “it was on us and other small theatres across the country, that if we didn’t go digital we would go dark”.  It took Howe one year to raise the $65,000 she needed to upgrade to digital projection and took three days to install the new projection system.

The movement to end the production of 35mm film will completely change the industry especially when it comes to distribution costs.  UCIRA states that digital technology is a cheaper and faster than 35mm prints making the switch to digital beneficial to both the film creator and distributor. David Johnson, a film professor at Salisbury University located in Salisbury, Maryland says, “it simply costs more money to manufacture film, to process film, and to screen films…all those things cost money than digital technology”. Joanne confirms this explaining that “it cost the studios quite a bit more, about a thousand dollars a film to send a 35-millimeter print, where as now that’s dropped to about one thousand dollars a film to send it out”.  Studios no longer want to pay to physically print and ship films. In 2010 the former chairman of Universal Pictures told Variety that studios “stand to eliminate billions of dollars in costs in coming years without spending very much”.

In the very near future, 35mm film will be a thing of the past and the new digital technology will change the production the films in the industry.

Superhero Movie Trends

It’s a bird, it’s a plane... no it’s Superman pretty much all superheroes! Superhero action movies have been trending for the past several years in the film industry, and they only continue to grow in present and upcoming years. In 2012 Christian Bale reprised his role as Batman in The Dark Knight Rises, the third installment in Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. 

Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne in The Dark Knight Rises
Photo courtesy of www.altfg.com

In the same year Marvel released The Avengers with actors such as Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, and Chris Evans reprising their respective roles as Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America.  Each of these actors has also starred in several of their own films featuring their lead superhero character. Dark Knight Rises grossed over one billion dollars worldwide, and The Avengers grossed over 1.5 billion worldwide. 

The Avengers
Photo courtesy of www.sentientonline.net

Also in 2012, Marvel released a remake of the Spider-man trilogy that starred Tobey Maguire in 2001. This new installment is titled The Amazing Spiderman and stars Andrew Garfield. In 2013 theaters saw the familiar faces of Hugh Jackman as Wolverine in The Wolverine, Henry Cavill as Superman in The Man of Steel, Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man in Iron Man 3, and Chris Hemsworth as Thor in Thor: The Dark World. 

Hugh Jackman as Wolverine
Photo courtesy of www.uinterview.com

 

Andrew Garfield as Spiderman in The Amazing Spiderman
Photo courtesy of www.flickeringmyth.com

There are many highly anticipated superhero movie installments coming up in 2014. Both The Amazing Spiderman 2 and X-Men: Days of Future Past are set to release this May. The biggest superhero news of the year is surrounding The Man of Steel sequel that will feature a storyline with Batman, as played by Ben Affleck. At this time the project remains untitled but it’s expected to be released in 2016. This superhero trend will soon begin in television as well. 

Henry Cavill as Superman in The Man of Steel
Photo courtesy of www.totalfilm.com

The television network FOX is currently in the works of their Batman series Gotham starring Ben McKenzie as young detective James Gordon. With extreme audience interest and advances in digital technology, superhero movies are not going to go anywhere any time soon.