If you think your home has what it takes or you’d like to nominate a home, visit HGTV’s casting website to fill out an application.

But if there is one thing the reality moms do best, it’s making the real moms look good! So for Mother’s Day, I want to share a few clips that always make me appreciate the woman who didn’t dress me up like a creepy doll and put me on TV. Thanks, Mom!!

Besides just “looking cool,” tilt-shift photography can serve to change the way the audience perceives the image. Photographing very large scale events and landscapes with tilt-shift photography persuades the viewer to look deeper into the scope of the image. The eye almost can’t help but focus on all the tiny, intricate pieces. Pushing focus to these smaller components enhances the overall scale of the entire picture, something that may be overlooked in a normally shot photograph.

I recently watched a video, titled The City of Samba, that demonstrates this advantage better than any I had seen before. To create the video, filmmakers Keith Loutit and Jarbas Agnelli employed tilt-shift techniques to miniaturize Rio de Janeiro’s Carnival. Taking 167,978 photos during the five days of carnival, the duo found a fresh way to utilize tilt-shift techniques to their full advantage and make a big festival larger than life. I wonder how this use of tilt-shift might make its way into film and television in the future… after watching The City of Samba, I’m definitely a fan!

A coworker sent me a link to a Huffington Post article about the new 48 frames-per-second technology making its debut in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit. For those of you who may not know, 24 frames-per-second has been the standard frame rate since the dawn of cinema. So this is really a pretty radical step. But judging from audiences’ reactions, it might be as short lived as the New Coke (of course, I was wrong about smart phones catching on, too, so there you go).

The problem with adding frames is that it makes the image seem much more fluid…which isn’t necessarily a good thing. Video cameras—at least until the advent of variable frame rate HD—shot almost exclusively at 30 frames, and we all know what the “video look” is. It’s, well, video-like. Good for soap operas, live sporting events, and YouTube videos. But movies? Not so much.

When you add frames—especially when you double them—you’re really tampering with that strobing, filmic look we’ve all come to equate with cinema. “Too clear” is how some people are describing the 48 FPS experience.

But hey, you have to admire Peter Jackson for pushing the envelope. Or being an unfortunate guinea pig—one of the two.

In fact, just recently, I watched a great film on Independent Lens called Being Elmo: A Puppeteer’s Journey that profiled Kevin Clash, the puppeteer who developed and performs the character of Elmo. According to Colorlines.com, Clash is, “One of the busiest African American actors working in television today, but very few people would recognize his face.”

While working for the legendary Jim Henson, Clash struggled to find a character that would stick until, while watching children in his mother’s home-based daycare center, he developed Elmo, a character full of love and kisses that embodies the essence of a child. Clash spent more than 20 years performing the most beloved Muppet and became the most requested character for sick children to see, but he regretted missing out on much of his own daughter’s childhood. “Making a puppet doesn’t hold a candle to making a human being,” he said.  Clash’s story, combined with rare archival footage of Henson’s workshop and funeral, made the film a beautiful and bittersweet journey.

I’d like to say that you can also see this film, but both POV and Independent Lens are in jeopardy by the very system that purports to support them.  The series have been bumped from their critical nationwide timeslot on Tuesday nights to Thursday nights when stations can broadcast any primetime program they want. That means that 349 public television stations don’t have to air these ground-breaking documentary series that tell the meaningful, sophisticated, and compelling stories that mainstream media rarely touches, and many have not, as evidenced by the 39% drop in ratings for Independent Lens this season. This does not bode well for the 25^th season of POV, which is slated to begin in June. And it’s not a wise choice for the series that have garnered 13 Oscar nominations and 54 Emmys between the two of them. According to IndieWire, PBS has agreed to reconsider its decision after letters poured in from Kartemquin Films, Bill Moyers, the Center for Social Media, a Twitter campaign, and hundreds of disgruntled filmmakers.

I can only hope that PBS decides at its annual meeting in Denver on May 14-17 to program the two series in a slot that guarantees national, primetime carriage. Where else will 76+ million households, including the US Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa, get to see the behind-the-scenes magic of the shop that created Elmo, a furry red monster who teaches millions of children how to be gentle, kind, and loving?

You can make your opinion known at #PBSNeedsIndies.

But while some opt to stay home, others use this superstition to build franchises. Opening May 9, 1980, the original Friday the 13th film would go on to become an incredibly influential and profitable entertainment franchise. It now consists of 12 films (we’re still waiting for lucky 13!), novels, comic books, and collectibles. Plus, it carries one of the most recognizable film icons: Jason’s hockey mask. In 2006, IGN ranked Friday the 13th seventh in the top 25 film franchises. Judged by three senior editors, the editor-in-chief, and IGN’s entertainment editorial, the panel’s general consensus was that, even though the Halloween franchise started the slasher genre, Friday the 13th became one of “the most influential franchises of the 1980s.”

So how will this Friday affect you? Maybe you’ll remark about it on Facebook and drive a little more cautiously on your way to work. You may even counter with some good luck charms or you might forget what day it is altogether! But no matter what you do, just remember, there’s another Friday the 13^th in July!