Right off the bat, two things mentioned in Marshall (2004, chapter 6) made me pause and reflect. The first is that film is actually a series of still images that give the viewer the effect of motion. I knew this already, but sometimes, movies can be so compelling that it is very easy to forget. Secondly, I thought about the way Toy Story made me feel when I first saw it in theaters. Digital animation was unlike anything I had ever seen before – it looked so real! It’s true that most animated films are now assisted by computer imaging and while I think it’s visually very appealing and realistic, I have to say that I am happy that I knew a time before digital animation, so that I can better appreciate how far filmmaking has come.

It’s interesting that The Blair Witch Project cost only $45,000 to make, but made $145 million at the box office, while Titanic cost $250 million to make and generated $1.3 billion at the box office. The handheld camera techniques used in The Blair Witch Project were unfamiliar to many viewers at the time, yet it captured the essence of the storyline well. However, if filmmakers had tried to produce Titanic on a small budget, it wouldn’t have been worth it. The special digital effects, the digital animation, and – let’s face it – James Cameron, are what made the movie great and did justice to the dramatic story.

Marshall (2004, chapter 7) connects new media with the evolution of television in an interesting and succinct way. As he points out, “new media is very much connected to the development of something beyond the active audience into various forms of cultural production.” Television has attempted to embrace this new media culture by incorporating the audience into television programs – thus, reality television shows were born. If anything, the popularity of reality television shows indicates that new media and prosumption are, indeed, what interest many consumers.

von Lohmann (2012, chapter 12) clearly distinguishes between the ways that traditional media and Internet intermediaries handle copyright laws. For traditional intermediaries, the expectation is that permission must be obtained for every copyrighted work that appears in a video. On the other hand, Internet intermediaries do not have to be consulted before a video is uploaded; they only need to get involved if complaints arise. In this way, von Lohmann likens traditional intermediaries to “doormen minding the velvet rope”, while Internet intermediaries are like “bouncers at the bar.” This is a great analogy that represents the differences between the more bureaucratic ways of traditional media and the faster-paced ways of new media. As traditional and new media stake their claims and evolve in modern society, it is certainly an exciting time to be a scholar or practitioner of new media technologies.