Questions for Gasland and CI

Gasland


1) We you at any point afraid that someone would stop you from making this documentary because you were getting to involved?


2) Were there more people interested in talking to you or afraid of talking to you?


3) What role do you think your documentary will play in the passing of the Fracturing Responsibility and Awareness of Chemicals Act?


4) What restrictions if any were you given by your executive producers in terms of what you could investigate and how deep?


5) Did you have the chance to interview any CEO's or executives of any major gas companies?


Crude Independence 


1) Why did you choose to start the documentary with a talk about aliens?


2) What is your opinion on what is happening in North Dakota?


3) Where are you from?


4) If your film could clearly convey one message about the drilling what would that message be?


5) Why did you choose to show the parade?


This is the link to my source that I forgot to put into my last post:
http://www.opensecrets.org/

Political Action Groups Corrupt Government

The oil and natural gas lobby influence state and federal legislation by forming Political Action Committees or PACs. These PACs contribute funding and donations to certain candidates in order to gain power in the government. Companies like Chevron and Exxon Mobil, which ranked 73^rd and 74^th biggest donors respectively, have a lot to gain from paying for candidates campaigns. If elected that candidate would remember what and more importantly who got them to their current seat. They would vote in order to further help the companies which helped them.

For instance in the documentary Gasland major companies were able to influence the government so that their process called hydraulic fracturing would be exempt from laws like the Safe Drinking Water Act, Clean Water Act and other important acts that protect our water and air ultimately keeping us safe. Because hydraulic fracturing was exempt from such acts, water in places like Colorado, Texas, Utah and Wyoming is contaminated with natural gas as well as several of the 257 chemicals that are in the hydraulic fracturing liquid. As shown in Gasland reports ranging from animals hair falling out to actually being able to light water on fire straight from the tap.

                These companies are able to corrupt our government in ways we cannot imagine and until a law is passed where these companies cannot provide funding for candidates we will not be able to escape this corruption. Getting this law passed would be nearly impossible because more than 50% of the people voting on it are the ones who are corrupt.

Fable is more historical than fact, because fact tells us about one man and fable tells us about a million men.

Movies do far more good than harm when it comes to our understanding of history when you take into account that they are products that are usually stretched in order to add value to the finished products. The viewer must take into account that it is a movie and movies are designed to entertain but more importantly make money which does mean stretching the truth in order to create drama and excitement. After this is taken into account the viewer is able to get a somewhat accurate depiction of the past because films do incorporate true facts, where else would they get the story? Great examples of this are the films In the Heat of the Night and Birth of a Nation. Both of these films are based on true stories but are tweaked here and there to create excitement and a pleasurable viewing experience for the public.

                These films can be used as a primary source as long as a warning is given that it is a film and films do stretch facts, followed by an accurate explanation of the situation shown in the film and if possible inform the reader of the true facts compared to the movies stretched version.  Otherwise the reader may take the instance from the movie literally and either miss the point or believe a false truth shown in the movie.  

                When movies say in the opening credits, “Based on a true story” viewers tend to believe since the movie was based on actual events that all of the events in the movie must have also happened. This is a key mistake and can do harm to our understanding of history when not taken into account. Therefore viewers must be careful when seeing things like this that they acknowledge that not everything the viewer will see is true. On the opposite side when a viewer does not see this statement in the beginning of a movie they tend to not believe any of the events even if they did happen.

                Movies add to historical inaccurateness in a couple of ways but there is one major way. When an audience sits down in a theatre most do no attempt to separate true facts from wrong. They solely want to be entertained which is the main purpose of a movie.  This causes that audience to tell people about the events in the movie and in turn those false happenings become fact and common misconceptions. For example the movie Troy is based off the Iliad. Despite historians having little to no evidence on the happenings of the Iliad this example is still effective in that the movie is very similar to the epic however there are slight differences. These differences were apparent in my English class where we are reading sections from the Iliad and they were key differences between the two that cause many errors in class. This is the same in movies and real life in that people talk about the movies they saw which in turn becomes the new truth due to massive popularity of the movie. This can all be prevented if the viewer knows that not everything they see is factual.

                Films add another dimension to history, a dimension that textbooks can’t come close to touching.  Movies are able to create feelings and display ideas that are not possible to portray in textbooks. For example textbooks talk about the civil rights era and go into in depth analysis and provide graphs and statistics but hearing an African American living in the Ghetto talk about his/her experiences is worth much more than a statistic in a book. It touches people and motivates them to act more than textbooks can. Textbooks educate where movies inform and motivate.