How colors are important in our lives

By: Ella Tabor

Colors may be a more influencing factor in our lives than we realize. The way your brain reacts to color can affect our minds, bodies, and mood.

A color’s tone, tint, shade, and brightness all affect the way colors can affect emotions. Let’s look at how warm colors can have an effect on how you feel.

Warm colors such as red, orange and yellow can evoke feelings of optimism, energy, joy, and happiness. These colors also have an attention grabbing element. Think of hazard signs; they are designed with colors like red, yellow and orange because they’ll attract your attention. Red also has the ability to increase hunger.

Cool colors like green, blue, and purple have a typically more calming effect. They can be used to express feelings of calm and sadness as well. Purple is a mixture of blue and red, which makes it a mixture of calmness and intensity. Purple is used to spark creativity.

Think about it; color importance is seen almost daily in fashion. We wear dark or black shades to a funeral to symbolize our grief. A typical wedding dress is usually white which can be associated with purity or innocence.

Companies use the fact that colors can speak to us as a way to market their brand’s core values or manner of business. For example, companies may use cooler colors to represent health, beauty, or security.

Jon, a graphic designer at CityGro says, “Color is one of the strongest non-verbal forms of communications that designers can use.”

Color even has been known to help with memory and attention. Sandra Rief, author of ‘ADHD and LD: Classroom Strategies at Your Fingertips’, writes about the use of color to help children stay attentive. For example, using different colors to highlight in math.

In ‘The Encyclopedia of Memory Disorders’, the authors, Carol Tarkington and Joseph Harris, note that colors can be used to aid in the development of memory.

Which is another reason why companies rely on graphic designers to use the perfect mixture of color and design to get everyone to think about their brand or product.

Perhaps you may use different colors to highlight notes, or use bright highlighters to help you remember the big ideas. Maybe you want to dye your hair into a color that feels more like you.

These are examples of how the importance of color plays into our daily lives.

The multi trillion dollar competition for the streaming service throne

By: Reed Morris

Image created by author

The Background

Netflix has become a household name for most of the western world. With almost 200 million subscribers worldwide, it’s no surprise that the company is leading the world in paid video streaming. Recently however, Netflix’s throne atop the mountain of the streaming giants has begun to teeter. More and more of Netflix’s market share has started to slip away to other services such as: Amazon’s ‘Prime Video’, Disney+, Apple TV+, Hulu, and HBO Max. This shift of market share was expected, but Netflix just might not be able to keep up.

The Paradigm Shift

Image taken from: https://www.netflix.com/

While Netflix has been in the lead for years now, the content that consumers are looking for has started to change. In the past, most streaming services focused on recycled content. Netflix and other streaming services have focused their money and resources on licensing and advertising, which in itself cost a lot of money. The problem for Netflix is that this model of streaming is becoming more and more outdated. Most new content seen on streaming services is shifting towards original productions.

Netflix has seen many large successes in original content such as shows like ‘Outer Banks’ and ‘Squid Game’, but those were extremely viral outliers. Most of Netflix’s original content goes mostly unseen or ignored. The biggest problem for Netflix, regarding original content, is the cost. The cost to write, produce, and finish a TV show or movie well exceeds the amount of money needed to buy the licensing rights to a TV show or movie that already exists.

The Competition

The main reason Netflix doesn’t have a huge chance at staying atop the streaming throne is due to who they’re competing with. While Netflix is currently valued at a market cap of $166 Billion, it’s competing against global tech conglomerates such as Apple, valued at $2.8 Trillion, and Amazon, valued at $1.65 Trillion, as well as entertainment superpower Disney, valued at a more manageable $253.9 Billion. Netflix does not stand any sort of chance against companies with such unimaginably deep pockets.

The Rise of Amazon Prime Video

As of March 2022, Amazon has struck a deal with the massive production company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to purchase the company for $8.5 Billion. This buyout brings up a lot of questions about anti-trust, and extreme monopolistic behaviors in itself, but that’s a problem for another day.

This buyout by Amazon is a huge threat to Netflix and every other streaming platform out there. Not only does the acquisition of a professional and self sustainable film studio give Amazon a huge advantage over other services, they also carried over all of the intellectual property owned by MGM. This includes franchises such as James Bond, Rocky, and Stargate. Similarly, a myriad of other iconic films and TV shows were acquired through the buyout. Amazon, a trillion dollar company, can now produce large amounts of quality original content for both streaming and theaters, cementing Amazon’s place as a future leader in the streaming industry.

The Future

Like most other massive corporate buyouts, a lot of ethics and legalities are brought into question. Even though the FTC has yet to rubber stamp the acquisition, based on similar (questionably monopolistic) buyouts earlier this year, they won’t have a problem in doing so. If it does go through, Amazon will start to pump out more and more original content for consumers to watch. Unless Netflix can pull off something similar, their throne at the top will be toppled, and Amazon Prime Video will take the throne as the new King.

‘Say Anything’ movie review

By: Eva Olson

Image taken from:
https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/
say_anything?scrlybrkr=ddb56d26

‘Say Anything’ is a late 80’s rom-com starring John Cusack as Lloyd Dobler and Ione Skye as Diane Court. This movie is about Lloyd and Diane’s journey and the struggles of having Diane’s possessive single father always on their backs and doubting them.

This movie was very funny, mainly because of Lloyd. He found a way to make jokes during even the most serious scenes. One of my favorite scenes was when Lloyd had dinner with Diane’s father and his friends.

I really liked Lloyd and Diane’s dynamic and how Diane was kind of hesitant at first about Lloyd, but he was so persistent and eventually won her over.

All the characters were super funny too, including Lloyd’s friends. I really liked the cast and thought it was cool that both Joan and John Cusack were in the movie and played siblings (because they’re siblings in real life).

The plot was very entertaining because of all of the conflict surrounding Diane’s father. It was interesting to see how their relationship changed throughout the movie, because at the beginning they would tell each other absolutely everything but in the end, Diane finds out her father has been hiding something huge from her.

I loved being able to finally watch the famous boombox scene that has been referenced in so many other shows and movies. In this scene they are broken up and Lloyd stands outside Diane’s window blasting music while she’s trying to sleep.

Overall, I enjoyed watching this movie and thought it was really good. I recommend this movie to anyone who’s a fan of 80’s movies and rom-coms. I really liked how they ended the movie making it so you could imagine what was going to happen. I would give this movie a 4⁄5 star rating. You can watch this movie on HBO Max.