Hello, yes, please can I order a spaghetti bush?

1st April 1957


Some people would identify this date straight away as being April fools day but that didn't stop the BBC fooling the entire nation that Spaghetti grew on trees/bushes. See:




An article on the BBC's website (recently added) concerning this documentary reads:


"The BBC has received a mixed reaction to a spoof documentary broadcast this evening about spaghetti crops in Switzerland.
The hoax Panorama programme, narrated by distinguished broadcaster Richard Dimbleby, featured a family from Ticino in Switzerland carrying out their annual spaghetti harvest.
It showed women carefully plucking strands of spaghetti from a tree and laying them in the sun to dry.
But some viewers failed to see the funny side of the broadcast and criticised the BBC for airing the item on what is supposed to be a serious factual programme.
Others, however, were so intrigued they wanted to find out where they could purchase their very own spaghetti bush.

Exotic delicacy
Spaghetti is not a widely-eaten food in the UK and is considered by many as an exotic delicacy.
Mr Dimbleby explained how each year the end of March is a very anxious time for Spaghetti harvesters all over Europe as severe frost can impair the flavour of the spaghetti.
He also explained how each strand of spaghetti always grows to the same length thanks to years of hard work by generations of growers.
This is believed to be one of the first times the medium of television has been used to stage an April Fools Day hoax."

Above I have highlighted some reasons given by the BBC as to why this probably fooled people, however here are 5 reasons why I believe this documentary fooled the nation :

1. Television was used for important announcements, this would have been seen as something serious to many people.
2. The narrator was Richard Dimbleby who was a distinguished broadcaster.
3. Dimbleby remains calm the entire time and has a very serious tone, he talks in detail about the crop, the process and the problems they face.
4. Their is actual footage to accompany Dimbleby's speech, it shows Swiss woman reaching to pick the crop and laying in in baskets and they look fully serious during the entire film. 
5. This was a feature of 'Panorama' a prestigious British program which was always very serious so people had no reason to believe this was a false broadcast.

Personal Susceptibility (Cantrill, 1947)

How susceptible a person/a nation is to believing something is real (when it is fake) is said to be down to these seven things:

1. Social insecurity (unemployment, political oppression.)
2. Personal phobias.
3. Amount of worry.
4. Lack of self confidence.
5. Fatalism (belief in fate, destiny).
6. Religiosity (belief in faith).
7. Frequency of church attendance. 

This could be applied to this incident in that:

1. Social insecurity - not much, Priminister of this time Harold Macmillan actually said that most people in Britain had "never had it so good". There could have been personal problems at home however for many people and of course there would have still been unemployment.
2. Personal phobias - I wouldn't say that phobias would come into this incident so much but a lot of people were unaware of where Spaghetti came from and as it said in the BBC Article a lot of people saw it as a 'foreign dish'. So I guess it could play on peoples fear of the unknown?
3. Amount of worry - if people believed it was true and then spoke to other people who believed it was true it was more likely to confirm peoples beliefs. This wasn't something with a high level of worry which could have possibly made it more believable? 
4. Lack of self confidence - People with low self confidence may be more susceptible to believing things because they have a lack of faith in their own judgement?
5. Fatalism - if people believe in destiny then they may not see that people are making jokes and believe that this information is being given to them as part of their journey and they have no reason to doubt it.
6. Religiosity - it could be said that if people believe in God they would also believe highly regarded things such as news broadcast to them.
7. Frequency of church attendance - as stated in above points, if people are religious and believe something to be true (that a lot of people would have seen) then when they go to church it is a chance for people to discuss it which encourages the belief. If you don't attend as frequently you may not talk about it with as many people.

So, according to Cantrill these are the reasons why people may be susceptible to believing things that are untrue. This can be applied to the example I've given in some respects so it would be fair to say that his theory has points that are quite frequently proven true.

And now to finish this post... a fun, short video that I found that highlights 10 hoaxes that have successfully fooled large amounts of people:

More posts shall be coming shortly, most have been saved as drafts for a while and just need tweaking then shall be up! Apologies for the blog traffic to come in the next couple of days!

Ed Sheeran copied me.

So, when I first got in contact with Steven a few months back we joked around saying that if anyone was going to play him in the music video it should be Rupert Grint (The ginger man who plays Ron Weasley to anyone silly enough to not know who he is). So, you can imagine my surprise when I find out that Ed Sheeran stole our idea and made a music video with Rupert Grint in it.







Now, even though I'm not Ed Sheeran's biggest fan I do actually like this song (amongst his other stuff). I also really like the video and think the narrative is funny but also has meanings within it. The messages I picked out is that there is now more widespread 'acceptance' of ginger people due to wide spread achievement and strong liking of the two very popular male's in this video. I know that there has always been this notion that ginger people were different to some people and their hair colour has always been something people have made fun of them for so I think a very underlying factor of this video is celebrating them both for their success. The main story does seem to be Rupert Grint stalking Ed Sheeran... this could show that people often confuse them, mix them up? It could also show that people try and change themselves to become their idols (like in Eminem's Stan, even though Ed Brown totally done this before...) as Grint does seem to be wearing very similar clothing to Sheeran in this video. I think it also pokes fun a bit at society for how they've radically all changed their opinion on ginger people mainly due to these two people, I'm sure they appreciate their fame but their ginger hair is still something that singles them out where as we never talk about how much we love Beyonce's brown hair or Reese Witherspoon's blonde hair. 


Very quick lyrics analysis:

I'm gonna pick up the pieces,
And build a lego house
When things go wrong we can knock it down

My three words have two meanings, three words, I Love You? Two meanings? what is the second...
There's one thing on my mind
It's all for you

And it's dark in a cold December, but I've got ya to keep me warm dark and cold in his heart/mind
And if you're broke I'll mend ya and keep you sheltered from the storm that's raging on

I'm out of touch, I'm out of love
I'll pick you up when you're getting down
And of all these things I've done I think I love you better now

I'm out of sight, I'm out of mind
I'll do it all for you in time
And of all these things I've done I think I love you better now

I'm gonna paint you by numbers
And colour you in
If things go right we can frame it, and put you on a wall like in the video where Grint puts a frame on the wall in time with this

And it's so hard to say it but I've been here before
And I'll surrender up my heart
And swap it for yours

I'm out of touch, I'm out of love
I'll pick you up when you're getting down
And of all these things I've done I think I love you better now not loving properly before? "I'll do better"... promises?

I'm out of sight, I'm out of mind
I'll do it all for you in time
And of all these things I've done I think I love you better now

Don't hold me down
I think my braces are breaking and it's more than I can take

And if it's dark in a cold December, I've got ya to keep me warm romantic relationship? warmth shared indicates intimacy.
And if you're broke I'll mend ya and keep you sheltered from the storm that's raging on

I'm out of touch, I'm out of love
I'll pick you up when you're getting down
And of all these things I've done I think I love you better now

I'm out of sight, I'm out of mind Lost sight of what is important, confused.
I'll do it all for you in time
And of all these things I've done I think I love you better now.

Do you take this woman of death for the rest of your unnatural life?

WARNING: This song & video contains content some people may find unpleasant. I am analysing it though because I find the animation aspect of it to be incredibly good and interesting.


URL: http://youtu.be/VurhzANQ_B0
(Avenged Sevenfold - A Little Piece of Heaven... Embedding disabled by request, sorry!)

To summarize the video:
Man and woman are together, man proposes, woman laughs in his face. Man gets angry and stabs woman to death and rips her heart out, literally. He then has intercourse with her corpse, dances with her corpse and sews her up and stands her up in his house. He eats her heart, literally. Woman comes back to life (as a zombie) and rips heart of of mans chest, literally. Man spirals into hell and also becomes a zombie. They then go on a massive church masacre and kill everyone at a wedding. They then get married and live happily as zombies. Throughout the video there is a band of skeletons. THE END.

I feel the animation is incredibly detailed and very well made. The animator has paid attention to aspects such as light, shadow, texture and depth in the entire animation. As the image on the right displays there is great detail in the texture on the walls and the fog in the background. You can also see her shadow on the wall and on the stone in the bottom right. I feel that to include these factors in an animation is incredibly clever and it's something I think me and Katherine will try to consider if we make another animation for our music video.

Update.

Inspired by 'Honest - The Dirty Goods' we were hoping to record some footage, use a projector to project that footage then re-record.
However...
Projector Idea = BIG NO.
Unless anyone fancies giving us £100 to hire a prjector for 2 hours?
We're both students and the price is completely unfeesable so unfortunately this idea is probably going to have to wait until we're rich and famous.
We still feel our other ideas are strong enough to work with and will focus on them/look at ways around it.

First Draft Rough Trail SSFS :)

Inspired by 'Home - Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes' me and Katherine wanted to try and film clips (as if they were a home video) and then put them together in an interesting way. We did want to try and capture an essence of a romance in these clips which was slightly difficult as the girl I was primarily filming was one of my closest friends and her boyfriend was unable to make it. I feel it worked okay considering the setbacks and also seeing as it's a first rough trial. 

I'm now going to create a survey as I did for the animation trial we did and gain feedback on what people feel works and doesn't work with this video and to see what improvements can be made in any further versions created.

Due to Katherine being quite ill recently I have filmed & edited all of this. This was obviously another slight setback but I'm sure that in the future it will have input from the both of us! :)


UPDATE: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TLWK9KB


Here's the survey, fill it in if you haven't already please! :)

We edited it a bit :)

We edited the end of our animation slightly. We prefer the ending now as we felt previously the ellipses was too quick and we also faded the text out. We will try and get some feedback on the new end but will probably not create another survey until more drastic changes have been made.


Please comment with any feedback if you're reading this!! :D