Amer 2009 Documentary Film

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Amer Al-lozi

English 2

Mrs. Pomerantz

5/22/09

Pros and Cons of “The Future Is In Our Hands.”

The film had many positive things to talk about. The message was clear to the audience, street interviews gave many different opinions on the topic of Sustainable Living, and many of the groups have learned new things that they could use to improve their way of living. Although, their some areas of the film that could have been improved to create a better way of making the message more understandable. Overall the film had some positive factors about it, but there were also some negative things that could have been fixed or improved.

The best parts of the film would be the metaphors, the facts, and the questions. The metaphors were creative, and had different approaches to the audience on getting the message across. For example, group 2’s metaphor in the beginning had shown a sad and hungry boy sitting next to someone eating a snack, which gave an appeal to pathos. The questions that were used had given good opinions from the average person living in St. Louis, and had given great facts from the experts that were shown. Mixing up the street interviews and expert interviews, or putting them in a specific order had also given an appeal to ethos. The facts that were used were interesting and had given awareness to the audience. Things that were used had generally appealed to logos, but in some of the facts that were given had used pictures and music which had also given an appeal to pathos as well. Even if these were the best parts, there were other things that had made the film interesting as well, such as camera work, lighting, and voice over.

Although there were very good factors about the film, there were also some things that could have been improved. In group 1, there was some mixing over voice over and street interviews, which had given an unprofessional view to the class. During a street interview in group 4, the lighting was too dim, which could have been avoided by moving to a light source, and in the first street interview for group 4, the camera was shaking a little. In the beginning metaphor for group 3, the audience was a bit confused on what the metaphor meant, when they could have zoomed in to the pot which says “Time Machine.” Overall, the class should have worked together in this film rather than working in 5 groups of 4.

Despite the fact that the class had some errors in the film, there was still some pride in the hard work that they had achieved. The film has potential to show that anyone could take part in any problem. The audience had enjoyed it, and the class had also learned some new things about sustainable living. Despite the fact that there were some negative things, the film had turned out successful and enjoyable.

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Toronto’s high lit towers may be a luminous sight for us to see, but is also deadly for most birds. While the bird migrate to the north, they could be easily distracted in by these buildings and leaving them crashing towards their death. Overall, more than 10,000 birds are killed because of their distractions towards the buildings. Some of the birds may survive, but may be left with broken wings or severe blows to the head. The birds that do survive are taken by wild life volunteers for aid. In response, those that own the buildings decide to use special glass that doesn’t reflect, and to move trees away from the buildings so that birds don’t go their in the first place. During the migrating period, they have also agreed to remove any unnecessary lighting, which also helped them conserve energy and save money.

It doesn’t seem likely that some buildings are causing birds die, but it was surprisingly shocking when the article. It’s not only in Toronto, but in any area that has tall buildings. If Toronto had claimed that more than 10,000 birds have been killed by their buildings, who knows how many birds have died worldwide? Overall, it doesn’t seem that we are living sustainably if we are impacting the environment in this way.

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Stelle is a small rural town in Illinois that is also know as the “Solar capital of North America.” They had received this name because of the renewable resources they use to power up their homes. They use solar panels to power up their Internet and phone service, and a wind turbine to power up their 300 foot well. Even some of the products they use are recycled, which helps them live a little more sustainable. For things like cooking and heating their homes, they use propane, but they treat it like a “solar enabler.”

it’s pretty interesting that a small rural town is using renewable energy for most of the things used at their homes. Although, it is a small town, so it would be hard for bigger cities to follow their ideas on using these sources of energy. However, since Stelle seems to be doing fine with using these renewable sources of energy, any other rural towns could do the same.

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In Vermont, a utility had achieved in creating cow manure into energy, giving a reduce in energy and an economic boost for dairy farmers. In order to process the manure, they put it in concrete tanks and heat it to 101 deegrees Fahrenheit, or 38 deegrees Celsius. Customors can pay about 4 cents per kilowatt-hour surcharge and about 20 dollars per month. This method is benificial for improved air and water quality and reduces greenhouse gas emissions, and has been voted one of the top 5 sources of renewable energy.

This method is very benificial for a new source of power, but it also seems that choosing this method would have us dependent on cows. What would happen if the population of cows were to decrease, and we would have to pay even more if we would choose this method? it seems that we would need to keep seardhing for more sources of renewable energy.

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Inspired by the do-it-yourself movement, companies have created a solar backpack, which is sold in an electronic store in Brooklyn called Dijitalfix. the backpack contains about three solar panels and is able to charge any electronic product: cell phones, ipods, etc. Although, the backpack costs about 200 dollars. The person who has visited the store in the article had believed that he could make one himself with the help of a couple of his friends. Overall, they saved about 40$ creating their own.

The idea would be great to have portable things that can conserve energy, but not everyone is able to create such technology. Hopefully as technology progresses, we would be able to purchase such items at a cheaper price that could be beneficial.

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Today, cities need to balance the demands of people, conserve water and other resources, and be able to reduce the amount of waste we create. In a town in South Africa, called Ivory Park, although it is a place of poverty, it is able to promote sustainability. Deep in the city are a group of Eco-towns developed from Western ideas for experimentation to improve the life of people, and the planet as well. An example of a sustainable building in Ivory Park is their community center, which made by polystyrene blocks for insulation and a soil roof, with grass growing from the top. The temperature inside the building always remains in an appropriate temperature because of the insulating properties of the soil.

The idea of the Eco-town is pretty creative with the materials they have used. The soil roof provides something similar to an air-conditioner, which saves energy at the same time. It would be great to see more Eco-towns spread throughout the world in order to keep the world more sustainable.

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The article talks about research done in behavioral labs to figure out the choices that people would take on “green” topics. For an example, one of the labs in Columbia had given the subjects a choice to invest 5 billion dollars on wind energy, or on un-proven technology that could be morde efficient. They had continued to argue about which one to invest on, thinking that choosing the wrong one would give a great deal of negitive feedback. This shows how generally the mind works when given some choices that could help out an important topic.

We had gone on a field trip for interviewing the experts at Alberici and interviewing random people at the zoo. What i had learned about interviewing are the small things that can happen during the interview. I had learned that having full eye contact on the person you interview, and speaking clearly about your questions helps with creating a good interview. I have also learned that sometimes, the person you interview has a lot of trouble understanding the questions I had, so at that time, I had helped the person by explaining my question, but I could also provide simpler questions in the future.

What i had learned about creating questions for the interviews are the differences between questions you would ask for experts and questions you would ask for people on the streets. For the experts, the questions are supposed to lead to a fact, and can also be followed up by another question. With the average person, you would ask questions based on opinion, and the questions would be more simple for no confusion.

I had also learned how different it was to interview an expert, and to interview someone on the street. An expert would seem more simpler, since the expert would know details about the topic they are being interviewed about, the interviewer would also ask his/her questions in a professional approach. With an interview from a person on the street, you would usually expect confusion in the questions he/she had been asked, so you would have to explain it with more detail. you would also have a more friendly approach to give some comfort to the person on the street.

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Soon, will we switch our T.Vs to digital broadcasting, but the T.Vs that most people have right now are going to be disposed, which concerns the Environmentalists. Many people are also concerned on how their old T.V’s will be recycled. Companies such as Samsung, LG, Sony, Panasonic, Sharp and Toshiba had formed a recycling company to make recycling consumer products a possibility. Many of the companies have also put in state law that encourages people to recycle their products instead of throwing them away. Although, recycling old TVs isn’t the only solution in preventing a mass amount of trashed TVs. People could also buy a converter box that allows TVs use the digital broadcast.

Facts

1. Tube television carries about 4 to 8 pounds of lead in the glass, which makes extracting the lead even harder.  They also carry cadmium, beryllium and other chemicals that could damage your organs and nervous system.

2. About 99.1 million TVs will be out of service according to the Environmental Protection Agency in America, and 6.3 million TVs out the previous number had been recycled.

3. A survey was done in 3008, saying the 25 percent of 43.5 million TVs will be recycled

It seems that we face another problem in recycling. Trashing these TVs, or using poor recycling methods would release the chemicals into the environment, which would harm anything living around the area. If more electronic companies were to participate in recycling old electronic products, then this would help reduce the amount of trash that most of the TVs will become.

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The article talks about how to use wind as a source of energy without disrupting the environment. Both Canada and the U.S. are spending more than a billion dollars to promote the green energy producers, with the U.S. spending 4.5 billion dollars for the producers to have access in the electric company, and Canada spending 1.58 billion dollars to give these producers 1 cent involved in the ecoENERGY program.

Facts in the article

1. One megawatt of capacity can provide electricity to between 300 and 1,000 household over the course of a rear, depending on how much wind is blowing.

2. The turbines could possible kill birds and the blades could also possibly throw ice.

3. Canada’s biggest problem in using wind energy is selling the product that creates the energy.

It’s nice that the U.S and Canada are getting involved in green energy. Although it seems that a big problem in using wind energy is getting the products onto the market. In order to get the products across, the U.S is funding on a smart grid so the renewable energy producers can have better access in the market, which can help the marketing problem. However, their are still other problems with the wind farms, like impacting the habitat surrounding them in a negative way.