The Social Network

Here is a link to the preview of the movie “The Social Network”: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=53OUHupfqws

I suggest you all watch it. If you don’t have time to see the movie, I highly recommend you at least watch the trailer. For one thing, I think it is extremely creative, but also very relevant to our class. In 2 minutes and 31 seconds it captures the triumphs, destruction, and controversies, that could be potentially caused by social networking sites; in this case the creation of a SNS site, Facebook. In my blog, I am going to focus on the effects of the preview, rather than on the movie itself because I don’t want to spoil it for anyone!

As soon as I saw the preview, I became immediately convinced to go see the movie. The preview for “The Social Network” did an excellent job at captivating it’s audience to go see the movie without spoiling any of the plot--which I feel a lot of movies fail to do these days. The graphics of facebook were familiar to me, the remix of the Radiohead song was creative and relevant, and I was also attracted to gaining knowledge about  what led up to creating this site that took up so much of my time. I soon realized that I was not the only one who shared this enthusiasm for “The Social Network” preview. Some face to face communication with friends illustrated they had a similar liking for it as well, but when I went to re-watch it on YouTube I became aware of some CMC communication that demonstrated the same thing. One individual was perhaps more enthusiastic than I was about it, saying “Perhaps the best trailer ever. I watch it over and over there is something hypnotic about it.” I also agreed with another person’s post and thought they worded their favor of the rendition of “Creep” in an eloquent manner: “Several of us have said that the rendition of Creep has thus been offed. I disagree. I watched this trailer a few days after seeing the film and I find it moving. The choice of any other set of lyrics may have jeopardized the obvious aim, which was to paint Mark's success arc as emotionally driven, whether or not this is entirely true.”

The advancements in technology make previews like this available to anyone with access to the internet. I personally went to the movie, saw this preview, went home, googled it, was directed to the YouTube link where the video was posted, and have watched it several times since. I was not alone in engaging in this act clearly, because as of today, the video has 1,878,562 views. The advancements in technology, and the accessibility of the internet make it possible for media companies to market their products--in this case movie producers utilized the internet to promote their film, a prime example of convergence culture. This also serves as an example of participatory culture: consumers of the media, those who watched the video on YouTube, actively engaged with the process by giving feedback. They also engaged in computer-mediated communication by bouncing ideas off of each other and agreeing or disagreeing with each other’s posts. Most of these posts shared my same take on the preview/movie in that we thought it was brilliant. The movie itself I felt had great acting, film techniques, story line, and ending. In conclusion, everyone go see the movie!