Sibba's piece

Sibba, you did a really good job in giving to the piece a 'dreamy' feeling and I really liked the general paste of the movie. You had some really good shots and I really liked the part where the girl is taking off the dirt from her hands. I think that Simin's suggestion of having the beginning shot of the girl looking at the book, also in the end, (as a sort of conclusion and beginning-end thread) would have been a good idea. I think that you did a good job in terms of editing and I think that a piece flows well. Good job!
~camilla

Dan's Video

Juicy and Delicious.  I have had relationships start off as such only to become dry and bitter.  I enjoyed the metaphorical fruits and veggies.  I being a fruit over veggie lover myself, really enjoyed the visual analogy.  The story was easy to relate to with a humorous tone to it.  The angles were great and the shot selections flowed very well.  If he tightens up a couple of shots (editing-wise), and straightens out the sound, it would be almost perfect.  Dan is very creative, both visual and narratively.  I think he has many great videos ahead of him.

Jova's Video

I enjoyed this video very much.  Jova presented to us the perspectives of queer women of color on camps and how racism at Hampshire plays into their lives.  I feel that this video was needed, especially at a time when we need dialog amongst ourselves to grow from the events of the past few weeks. The interviews were shot very well with many interesting angles, close ups, and lighting. The editing was straight forward and the subjects were honest and thoughtful. Jova has presented videos on the issues of race, gender, sexual identity, and culture.  She has great vision for how to use video as a means to communicate powerful messages. 

Final Treatment

As a combination of my self portrait project and my most recent project I would like to create a video that is based on experience and my own identity. I haven’t been able to experiment with everything that final cut has to offer so I would like to make my sequences a bit more complicated. This video will be partly autobiographical because I will be reading from my journals but I also want the experience of watching it to invoke some type of emotion. I am choosing to film it outside because nature is a universal location—its not really tied to a time, place, or a particular group of people.

Style/aesthetic: My favourite shots are the free flowing ones, not to fast but move in a way that the camera gets blurry sometimes as it re-adjusts its focus. I want to have two layers of images, one still and one moving so that one feels like a closer examination of another. I want the moving shots to be an extension of the hand or thought. I want the imagery to have a particular emotion in so I am going to shoot it at dusk and dawn.

Location: There are several locations that I have been visiting over the course of this year, various fields, outlooks and forests. Places that seem removed from human impact or places that are off the beaten path. I am going to re-vist them to shoot my video at sunrise and sunset to add a melancholy tone to the imagery.

Sound: I really liked the sound of the pencil on the piece of paper from my last piece because it flowed and it was very textured. I think to make that better I want to whisper my journal writings as well as ideas that I have been living with this semester. I want it to sound like words sometimes and then just be a sound. I want the whispering to be on the fine line between knowing and not knowing what the viewer is experiencing. Here is an extraction from my journal that I could possibly read:


“Direct experience comes from nature and man interacting with each other. In this interaction, human energy gathers, is released, dammed up, frustrated and victorious. There are rhythmic beats of want ad fulfillment, pulses of doing and being withheld from doing” John Dewey

I need to approach it from all angles and I still feel like I don’t know everything and the possibilities are limitless. Ultimitely it is my decision to see what I see and to make meaning of it, but there is constant tension surrounding that because it could always change.

These experiences and interaction reflect my own identity

In absorbing the images and the emotions that are revealed in its content, something can be revealed about ones own self, in terms of personal boundries and emotional state.

That I am collapsing, yearning, caving in, surrendering, giving up, and overwrought with feeling

The spark of imagination that carries you away, or the never ending question that becomes stuck in your mind, or perhaps just the opportunity to move someone so much, as I am by Man in Window

I see it as a push and pull- a back and forth motion between knowing and just a raw emotional experience

Julie Dash- Daughters of the Dust

I cannot help but think about Toni Morrison and “the other” while I watch this film, specifically her novel "Beloved"At the beginning a character is created and we do not get to see her face; she is the other existing outside of the margins with the freedom to see other people and private conversations. At the same time it creates a mystical and spiritual affect. She almost seems to be there t validate an existence and the need for change in their small culture. The language and stories told by the characters also make it have this spiritual affect. We realy are given access to a private world but its very hard to understand it because I don’t feel like I have a great access point. It feels as if I have just happened upon this culture. I feel like an outsider in their world—as they do in mine. Dash does this through the use of cuts in her scenes, conversations that enter midway through. Also through her portrayal of individuals, we are trespassers on their thoughts.

Cries and Whispers

The silence is deafening in this film, like there is an elephant in the room. The closeness of the shot is very uncomfortable, I don’t want to be there but I have to. In the opening scene it is quite scary to watch the woman as she writhes in pain in bed. The silence gives it sense of immediacy and a desire for me to answer the questions myself. Makes it dynamic and creates more visual interest. As a result we also pay attention to the details in front of us instead of reading into speech and what someone is actually saying. It actually makes the language more memorable when it does happen.

Marlon Briggs- Tongues Untied

This documentary really interests me because it gives a voice, a strong one, to an underrepresented group of people but it does so in a way that not only reveals who they are. It contains humor and andecdote and all of the language seems so strong and forceful. The hatred that it discusses is so negative but I think by filming with found footage, interviews and voices it has created a wonderful layered affect that seems to embrace being outside the margin. During silence or when visuals are cut off it seems very lonely and distant. The film uses emotion as a guide to its language instead of following a story line. It also appears to be following a train of thought, which actually can be confusing at times but I think ultimately successful in generating a response from the viewer.

Mona Hatoum-Measures of Distance

I like this film by Hatoum because it reveals a relationship very carefully. It is loaded with emotion. What her mother is saying suggests that this is a new kind of relationship for the pair and its having to blossom over a large distance. Hatoum is having to understand her mother and their relationship by looking at letters and photographs. The set up of the film suggests this examination. At first its really close up and then it moves away. What can we understand from looking closely and looking from farther away. Different perspectives. Identity/Identification can be found in different perspectives/views. I like how Hatoum limits the visuals and also the senses: at the end the screen is black, all you can hear is her mothers voice. Do we pay attention more to specific details when one of our senses is cut out/ suddenly change techniques away from what we expect?

Treatment

For my final project I would really like to explore Final Cut further since I have only used it for the last two projects. I thought it would be effective to create a dream sequence to do this so that I may investigate interesting editing techniques and effects. The video is going to be fragmented also, since most dreams do not follow a linear pattern and often do not make sense at first. That way I feel that I would really be able to take liberties while editing. I want to convey the feeling one gets after having an odd dream when they may feel a bit confused and unusual.

Style/Aesthetic: To make it a little more surreal I plan on having it mostly, if not all, black and white. I feel that this will help the mood of the film since it is supposed to be a creepy/weird dream. I hope to find some effects on Final Cut also to propel this idea. I also plan to have the camera angles from the main character’s (the person who’s having the dream) point of view although her face will never be shown.

Location: I will be filming a lot outside in the woods at Hampshire, possibly Amherst, and some indoors

Sound: There will be no dialogue in this piece. The only audio will be a song entitled “Short.” I hope that this song will give an eerie vibe to the dream sequence.

Timeline:
4/18 – 4/23: Shoot video
4/23 – 4/28: Edit! Edit! Edit!

"Theme Song" - Vito Acconci

The first thought that came to mind after viewing Vito Acconci's "Theme Song" was how uncomfortable I felt while watching it. Though, I do believe that was the feeling Acconci was trying to express and translate through the film. He achieves this by actually talking straight to the audience, mostly begging them to get close to him. He says “I have no idea what your face looks like, you could be anybody out there... Theres gotta be somebody watching me. Somebody who wants to come in close to me.” What I took from this video was that these words, juxtaposed with the pop love songs in the background, demonstrate how impersonal these songs really are, no matter what the lyrics are. The composition and framing also play a big role in this. Instead of him sitting on the chair in the background talking, he is up in the front on the floor with his face taking up about half the screen as if he is about to jump out.

-Sibba

Tongues Untied

This film is a powerful mix of poetry, video, sexuality, and the human form.  What better way to untie your tongue.  This film speaks on the struggle, pride, and celebration of being a gay black man.  With voice-overs you get a certain black box theater feel to the film.  Very artistic and beautiful.

Daughters of the Dust

This movie did a great job in creating it's uniqueness.  The setting, plot, and visuals are well suited and gave me the feeling of a place and people untouched by the ills of the mainland.  The story had some very deep meaning within the plot and many visual metaphors to put them into perspective.  The Peazant people  had a members that represented the roots of all African Americans in todays time.  The Peazant family deal with progress, tradition, heritage, religion, racial mixing, slavery, prostitution, and freedom. An absolutely remarkable film with a deep meaning between the lines.

Project Treatment

Synopsis:

Rap music is known to most only by what is seen or heard in popular media.  Since it’s inception, Rap has always had a strong an live underground movement.  Many of those who embrace Hip Hop as a culture, Rap. Not for the fame and money, but for the love of their culture.  This documentary is about the creation process of a song, by a beatman and an MC.  What drives them to make Rap music? How has Hip Hop played a major role in their lives? Who will listen?  Rap is part of the Hip Hop culture as much as some want to separate the two and will live forever.

Theme:

This is a story of two guys trying to keep Rap music alive in their own way.  We’ll see the work it takes to make a song from scratch.  From conceptualizing to recording and everything in between.  Like building the projects, first you need bricks.

Style:

The two main people in the story will be shot with with different camera angles and lighting. The lighting will be a mix of ambient light with video light plus an assortment of gels and reflectors.  The editing will be at a rhythmic pace corresponding to the soundtrack.  All of the music in this film will be original.  Much of the music for the soundtrack will be in progress, and documented as such.  From the beginning of the story until the end, the progression of the featured song will be edited into the soundtrack from it’s conceptual stages to a finished product.

Length and Shooting Format:  Length 5-7 min, Format MiniDv

Daughters of the Dust

I, too, just watched Daughters of the Dust, and I am wowed. Aesthetically, the movie was positively sumptuous. In terms of subject matter--well, I sat down in front of the screen expecting something significantly *less* fascinating. A family member had warned me that the slow pace was snore-worthy--boy, was he WRONG. I guess that's a matter of how inured one is to Hollywood's lightning-paced editing, but in truth, no one can deny that "Daughters" is splendid in its use of color and its "character development" (by character I guess I mean the Peazant family, in collective, as a sort of "character.")

I remember reading somewhere that Julie Dash wanted all the costumes to be pure white--but the actors' skin was so dark that their light clothing didn't show up properly onscreen. Eventually the snow-white garments had to be replaced with pink-tinted ones in order to make the clothes look really "white." The white-on-black contrast throughout the movie accentuated the beauty (and the implications) of the characters' ultra-dark skin--and the purple tinges (specifically on the hands of Nana Peazant, as a result of the "poisonous blue dye") added a whole new dimension and symbolism to the film's color scheme.

The sea was a recurring theme I also found intriguing--particularly via the contsant, semi-facetious reference to "salt-water Negroes." Since the film took place on an island, the beach was almost a perpetual setting--and the foam swirling in and out with the tide, coupled with the image of the African statue bobbing upon the water, seemed to symbolize a mixing of past and future, of African roots with the new "American" identity of the turn of the century. One of the characters told a story about how African people who first stepped off colonial slave ships onto the North American coast took one look at the new land, turned around, and walked straight back into the water again, drowning themselves. The fact that the Gullah people are probably the closest Afro-American link to those African ancestors infuses this story with a new and multi-faceted meaning within the movie's context.

I could go on and on, because I loved "Daughters of the Dust" for many reasons--but I'll just end by saying that this film truly inspired me as a would-be filmmaker and gave me all sorts of new ideas for where to take my final project in this class.

treatment

A zombie is defined as a “will-less and speechless human capable only of automatic movement who is held to have died and been supernaturally reanimated.” The idea of the resurrection of the dead and the inevitable creation of an inhuman manifestation has been a part of voodoo folklore for centuries. A voodoo shaman would control a zombie, and command it to wreak havoc on those who did not favor the controller. The creature was reanimated to server the only his leader, and answer to no one. But defines this “manifestation”? Is it the horrible creatures depicted in Hollywood films? Or could it encompass something a bit more contemporary?

The cultural industry seems to “zombify” the average American. Although they promote a “democratic” mindset amongst their citizens, this industry has been able to cripple the average citizen’s ability to think freely. This is surely not democratic. When did we lose the right to choose our own opinions? From the politicians, to the massive cooperation, to our television sets; we have all lost.

An average American consumes five to six hours on media a day. This form of media is exclusively controlled by six major companies: Disney, TimeWarner, and Viacom are just a few. Most people just stare at the television mindlessly, while advertisements and idealized sitcoms tell them how to think and act. We are discouraged to question this phenomenon because this same system shuns those who disrupt its efficiency. The system has made Americans in particular “will-less and speechless”. The only difference between its take over, and that of a zombie horde, is the nullification process that it promotes. The consumer willingly and knowingly engages in a practice which, in the end, corrupts his own inhibitions and freedoms. This industry inherently feeds consumers their idea of “ethical” ideology so as to maintain control over consumption itself. This process exists only to ensure that the viewer always returns to the source of consumption: the television set.

The line between fiction and non-fiction is blurred and lost through mass media’s strangling hold over our ideologies. This cliché is what separates zombie films from most other horror films. They are a supernatural species which is controlled and willed only by the same surroundings that led to its demise. The zombie does not separate reality from fiction nor does it differentiate sanity from insanity, instead he/she acts upon a type of supernatural “control mechanism.”

This film is meant to be suspenseful with fast cuts and moody lighting. The audience should have to work to understand exactly what is going on throughout the film. This affect should make the scenes with the zombies more intense. This will also help to eliminate any biases in setting.

Certain audio techniques will also be used in a surrealistic manner. Some of these techniques will include a lack of tangible dialogue throughout the film. There is so clear beginning, middle and end in terms of a literal plot line. However, other techniques will be used so that the audience recognizes patterns, and in turn connects scenes together using mostly their subconscious. The only tangible dialogue will come from the television set. This creates a specific thematic device: the inability to voice an opinion, or convey meaning, without the direct influence of mass media. There will be found footage of old news reels to juxtapose the zombie take over. While those not infected try to communicate the immensity of the invasion, only clips from news stations and other forms of media will be heard. This is meant to agitate the audience. A strong goal I have is to create a sense of surrealism and vagueness around the protagonists, and each individual in the film. Individualism has vanished; the consumers are the infected, they are the horde of viscous zombies whose ability to formulate reason is lost.

Rough Scene by Scene/Screenplay

Scene 1: -Open with blank T.V. (Black background, strong highlights on sides of T.V)

-Cut to same T.V with static screen, audio slowly increases to static/ambient noise.

-Camera slowly pans around television, once we are completely behind T.V, three people come into view watching T.V. (didn’t know they were there before)

-After about 3 or 4 seconds of back of T.V, cut to pan across subjects faces

Cut to T.V with static, cut back to faces, cut to T.V with news playing, back to faces, back to T.V with different news station (found footage)

Scene 2: Montage of found footage and people watching T.V. Will be fast cut and hard to grasp each image separately, will make sense as a whole. (20-30 seconds)

Scene 3: Two people talking, faces never show, so as to eliminate the idea of the “individual”. Dialogue is computer generated voices, with different pitch voices.

Actor 1: What do you mean “takeover?”

Actor 2: Well…something is happening.

Actor 1: Something? Please elaborate.

Actor 2: They are, well… it seems they are gone.

Actor 1: Gone? Where did they go?!

Actor 2: Gone from reality. They have changed. Consumed.

Actor 1: PLEASE be a bit more specific, these are our friends, our family members, everyone we know.

Actor 2: They are gone, okay?! I don’t like this any more than you do. But they are gone. They are not how we remember them. They are something else. Something manifested.

Scene 4: -Cut back to same people watching T.V from the first scene. Same shot as before.

-Cut zooms to their faces. Slowly zoom out

-AFFECT: All three actors stand up and move towards the T.V (STAYING SQUARE WITH CAMERA) and turn into “zombies.”

- All three start to climb onto T.V.

- Cut back and forth to show different angles of them climbing on T.V.(x5 shots)

Scene 5: -Get as much footage as possible of people (not just three people from last scene) turning into zombies.

-Show zombies running through Amherst center, terrorizing. Found footage of old movies with people running through streets. (Try and get one shot of their faces, then mostly shots of their back’s, so as to eliminate special affects work)
- Time-lapse of Amherst/Northampton. Try and use as much footage without faces as possible.
- Cut to found footage of media news reels throughout chaos as much as possible.

Scene 6:

Actor 1: Why haven’t we changed like them?

Actor 2: Isn’t it obvious?

Actor 1: No?

Actor 2: I guess it makes sense. We consume it everyday. It all makes sense. It is the perfect plan. No one would ever suspect…

Scene 7: -Cut to static T.V. Audio levels are all over the place. Vague sounds of news reels, mixed with ambient noise and screams of people.

-Screen goes red. AFFECT: dripping of redness down screen (blood)

-Fade in chaos footage with low opacity over red dripping screen.

Scene 8:

Actor 1: SUSPECT WHAT?

Actor 2: Media. It is everywhere, how would we ever escape. They tell us how to think, it was only a matter of time before…this. Individualism has vanished; the consumer is the infected, we are the consumer. We are now the horde of viscous creatures whose ability to formulate reason is lost.

Actor 1: I don’t believe it. We would never let this happen. How could we?

Actor 2: Not a day goes by when we are not bombarded by media. We cannot escape. How would we?

Actor 1: You are right. How could we?

Daughters of the Dust.

Daughters of the Dust presents an interesting cultural perspective through the vehicle of narrative film in a fairly novel way. The narrative arc of most American cinema is completely foregone. American cinema tends to focus on a psychologically driven protagonist who goes through an amount of ascending action until the climax of the film, after which the film just trucks along until it’s conclusion. Daughters of the Dust defies this formula in a variety of ways. There is no protagonist; the viewer is not given the opportunity to relate to any one member of the family. Instead the viewer is shown the whole island, the whole family and how it is held together.

The cinematography follows this theme. Close ups are used very sparsely in the film. Actually, two of the most common devices used were the pan and the dissolve. These were used heavily in a way that seemed to emphasize the family’s interconnectedness with the island, each other and their spirituality. The large pans would often sweep across the scene, not emphasizing any specific character, even when someone was talking. Frequent pans force the viewer to take the surroundings into account just as anything else. The dissolves had a similar role, but instead in relating the family to its diverse spirituality. For example, while the grandmother is talking about her ancestor’s spirits, a dissolve shows the girls who were previously dancing merrily moving as if they were somehow possessed.

These techniques come together with to give the viewer the impression that the narrative of the film is not based on the family splitting apart. Instead it portrays the family and its culture growing and spreading to new places.

project treatment

Final Project Proposal

Synopsis: For my final piece I want to do essentially a fictional narrative study on peoples lives stagnation. It will center on a couple who lives off campus. The piece will be littered with images of them living with an emphasis on mundane routine. The couple will be juxtaposed with images of fruit, living out their exact situation. The fruit will be used as a heavy handed metaphor to comment on the lives of the couple. (I’m even considering having the fruits turn into vegetables to be even more over the top with it) I haven’t been able to exactly determine the overarching narrative because it entirely depends on what the actors I have in mind are willing to do. There will be little, if any dialogue. The important part of it will be creating an overall mood to the piece. I want the couple to create a stifling atmosphere whereas the fruit to display some kind of furious passion that is trying to escape from the couples life.

Basically I know a lot of people who seem to be in this kind of stagnant situation and I’d like to address that head on through this video. And fruit.

Aesthetic: As the emphasis of the project will be on the mood the style of the piece will play a big part. I plan on trying to give the piece a slow pace even though it will be covering a long span of time. To do this I want to use a combination of muted colors, still or slow frames and smooth editing. I expect I will need to tweak in post production a lot of my footage to give it a unified feel. The fruit would then be hyper-saturated and visually stimulating to emphasize its purpose in the film. It would be put to motion through stop motion animation, which I think would fit in with the fruit aesthetic still.

Sound: I want the sound to be mainly a slow violin piece in a minor chord (that I am going to try to con my friend into helping me with) and small bursts of dialogue. The music will be slow and have a strong melody set to the rhythm of the rest of the piece to keep with its mood. I may actually increase the pace of this and increase the pace of the film slightly just to keep it interesting as 5 minutes of slow paced video could get dull. Or I could have two versions of the same theme that would alter depending on if it was centering on fruit or the couple.

Characters : The two members of the couple and their child, who will be alluded to visually rather than actually shown (I’m not sure where i’d be able to get a child for my shoot). They would both get fruit counterparts. It would be great.

Time line/

By April 14 –con people I know into being involved, the two actors and one camera person

By april 22 – have all shooting done

- Then edit until my eyes pop out.

a little inspiration?

so in light of our latest assignment, i just wanted to share this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=y9ClsOQdlUE

and this shows how they matched the original shot-for-shot:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=DjMhb94xOJY

enjoy...

Final Project

Oops- late posting. My bad- I mean, I've alrady written the script and cast this piece... and now I finally post the proposal... copy/paste?

Proposal: For the final project I am planning to create a film noire centered around the concept of free improvisational jazz, with music performed by a group I am involved in. It will be a narrative piece, but at the same time, very "experimental" in it's being. I have already planned a cast and crew (including two camera men, actors, musicians, and my own work on lights/editing.) The main theme will be, by using the free jazz, that life should be lived by trusting the gut, and one's own personal intake on a situation- to be entirely an in the moment artistic being.

Style: The video will be very "film-noire" esque, with exaggerated costumes for the main characters including cardboard body parts, top hats, and steam punk looking attire. The music, as before-mentioned, will be very experimental, yet acoustic, and the musicians themselves will make appearances between pauses in dialogue, making the actual video be, in essence, two scenes: a dialogue between the cardboard machine and his lacky, and a group of musicians performing.

The sound is pretty self evident- it will follow he dialogue and be underscored by the music being performed.

The lighting will be very "dramatic" and dark, bringing up high levels of contrast, meaning I will most likely film at night with some powerful lights to create the perfect contrast.

The locations will be: the music building's stage, and whatever building or outside location I can get to look as though everything but the characters is enveloped in darkness.

Final Project Proposal/Treatment

Proposal: For my final project I plan to create a documentary that focuses on the challenges of starting a small farm.  The struggles and the benefits of starting a small farm will be told through the perspective of a Hampshire faculty (Ben James) and alumna (Oona Coy).  They recently bought land and are implementing their plans for creating community shared agriculture.

Location: I will interview both Ben and Oona on their farm.  Throughout the film I will inter-disperse footage of their farm and them working on their land.  I also hope to use text to tell their story and some statistics and facts about small farms.  I will us footage of a talk/lecture that Ben gave as part of the No Place Like Home series at lemelson.  Also I am planning to shoot footage of a party they are having for their farm.  Another possibility is that I may shoot footage of grocery store vegetables to show the contrast of how most people get their produce.

Sound: I am considering using music to set the tone of the piece and possibly make it more dynamic.  I also would like to use and highlight natural sounds such as wind and the sounds that are made by their chickens and goats and perhaps the tractor that is used to care for the land.

Lights: Besides the artificial lights where the talk was given, I plan to shoot most of the footage outdoors in natural light.

Schedule:  Shoot- April 15th to 19th.  Review and shoot more footage if necessary April 20th to 24th.  Edit footage April 19th to 28th.

Final Project Treatment

For my final project, I want to expand on some of the basic ideas of my self-portrait piece, which showed me typing at a computer. This project will not be a self-portrait, but instead will deal with questions about the shifting boundary between the creator of a story and the audience, and the way a story gets recreated when it is read/viewed/heard. I will not show anyone’s full face, but will rely on using extreme close-ups of the eyes and hands of at least four different people to create the feeling both of an audience and of a collective group of people producing a story.
The story being told will be a single sequence from a TV show in which a woman shoots a man. I want to look at how images of women with guns are often used in mass media to show women as powerful and dangerous while simultaneously objectifying them, and how this recurring “story” is understood by a female viewer. Therefore, all of the actors in my video will be women. The actual story will be a literal but poetic description of what the fictional viewers are seeing on the TV screen (the TV will not be shown). The text will refer to the viewers as “you” and document the experience of viewing the scene. It will be told through text on the screen (and occasionally through extreme close-ups of letters on the keyboard). I plan to experiment with font, size, and color, as well as the shape of the text on the page, to create a rhythm that mimics the rhythm of watching television (fast cuts, flashy special effects, etc.) but also questions it because it is text and not images.
To emphasize this rhythm, I will use the sound of the keyboard typing, which may go faster or slower than the letters appearing on the screen. This will be the only sound except for a few others, such as the sound of the television turning on and off and also possibly the sound of a gunshot or something symbolizing a gunshot.
In terms of lighting, I am imagining pretty sharp lighting with a lot of contrast, especially when showing the keyboard and the eyes and hands. The lighting on the computer screen will probably depend on what makes the text easiest to read.
I have already written most of the text, so my schedule will be the following:

4/10/08-4/15/08 Finish working out the text, storyboard, and arrange times to shoot with actors
4/15/08-4/22 Shoot video
4/22-4/29 Edit

Strategy for Getting Vids off You Tube

Hey, ok so the program I use for getting videos off you tube is super simple. Its alot easier to use this with you tube, although if you are trying to get videos off any other source then you probably want to find another program because it is formatted for you tube specifically.

Heres what you do:

go to http://www.chimoosoft.com/products/tubetv/#downloads
download tube tv

When you want to rip a video:
go to the youtube site in your browser
launch tube tv and click grab URL
when the page loads into the tube TV window click save in the upper corner of the window

this will download the video and then you have it in a quicktime file...

Final project proposal

Pieces:

Proposal: For my final project I will be working on a documentary partially inspired by the work I did last semester and partially inspired by an animation I am making for my animation class. The documentary will deal with the theme of how women are portrayed in the media mainly television and magazines. I am working now rounding up interviews to be part of the documentary and in addition to this I have a number of powerful images that I think will help to move the piece while illustrating the point. For this piece I am focusing on finding adults and experts to speak about these magazines and I will possibly bring in some of the youth from the program I work with to interview and discuss this issue with as well.

Style: This will be shot as a traditional documentary, although I will play with the color and exposure a little in post-production. In addition when I am editing my interviews I plan on isolating parts of the screen so that those are the only things you see. For instance, creating a matte so that all you see of my interview subject is their eye and mouth.

Sound: The sound will follow the video footage for the most part although I may incorporate some beats created by independent artists. In addition I might capture a spoken word poem made by some of the youth I work with that deals with this issue and use that as a beat to move along the piece.

Lights: My lighting will be determined on an on location basis. If possible I will try to bring light kits to the interviews.

Location: In terms of the interviews they will be done wherever I can get my subjects to meet me. I will also likely do some in front of the green screen in the basement.

Schedule: April 7-15th: Find interview subjects
April 15th-20th: conduct interviews
April 20th- 24th: review footage, shoot additional as needed
April 20th-29th: edit

-Hannah

final project

Proposal: For my final project I plan to create a dreamscape. I was inspired by the concept of an Oneironaut, a person who explores dream worlds. Some of my influences for this project so far are Maya Deren, Richard Kelly and Michel Gondry. I want to explore on the ways in which real events become distorted in our dreams. In a way the film will be like a lucid dream (where the person is aware that he or she is dreaming while the dream is going on). Over the next couple of weeks, I am going to pay special attention to remembering and writing down my dreams and have been asking people I know if they’ve had any interesting dreams lately. I hope to draw on images from my mind as well as theirs and re-create them on film in a style that captures many of the strange distortions of time and place within the dream state. There are a few standard “reality tests” that can indicate whether someone is lucid dreaming, and I want to play with those concepts: light switches, reflections in mirrors, clocks, etc. I plan to have a circular or overlapping narrative rather than a linear storyline, with re-occuring characters and themes.

Style: I hope to shoot either on 16mm film or on video, or possibly both. If I end up only using video, I would still like it to be in black and white. I feel that the visual aesthetic I am looking for would be conveyed well on film (which I would then transfer to tape and edit it with Final Cut)

Sound: I have a couple of sound clips/songs that I am planning on working with

Lights: To be determined

Location: Also to be determined

Schedule: April 7-14 Dreaming/brainstorming
April 15-24 Shooting
April 24-29 Editing

final project proposal

For my final project I would like to explore a sector of activism that is pretty much new to me, but in which I have been particularly interested lately: women rights and, in specific, abortion. I was inspired in making a documentary about abortion by two main events: the CLPP conference that took place here at Hampshire and recent attacks that have been made in Italy on the law n. 194 that legalized abortion (law established in 1978 after a referendum).

I would like to start my documentary exploring abortion as a global issue touching on very ‘statistical’ facts (abortion is not legal in many parts of the world, many women die because of illegal abortions, lack of services, a high percentage of women would have an abortion in their lives, etc). Afterwards, I would frame the time of my documentary in the present and the places that I will focus on will be the United States (in particular Hampshire) and Italy. I will use two different ‘methods’ to talk about abortion at Hampshire and abortion in Italy. For Hampshire I will interview a student working with CLPP and some girls on campus (i will then select just one among the interviews) and give a very short introductory historical background, while for the part about Italy I will use still images, found footages (from demonstration in the 70s and demonstration that are taking place right now connecting two different generations- the mothers and the daughters), a telephonic interview with a doctor and one with a woman activist. My aim is not to make a comparison between the United States and Italy but to give two different faces and two different places to this issue. My main questions will evolve around contraception, education on sexuality, freedom to choose and religion (a very ‘hot topic’ especially in Italy).

The style of the documentary that I have in mind will be an intersection of different voices, texts, interviews, pictures, found footages (from the internet), phone interviews and visual elements tied together by a narrative voiceover (mine). I would like to shoot the interviews both in the student’s room and around campus. The phone interviews will probably be on skype with a web camera (so that I can also have some visually ‘interesting’ elements) and those interviews would be in Italian subtitled in English.

The ‘voice’ of the documentary will be layered by many different voices. My voice will be the narration (mostly me learning about this issue as the documentary goes on) and the voices of women, students, activists and experts on abortion (I’m trying to get to talk to a doctor who is also the minister of public health in Italy, who is Catholic but I’m almost positive supports the law) will be the other voices. However, I feel that my voice is going to be the one that will 'lead' the topic into its development and I'm still not sure if it's going to be a very emotional or mostly descriptive voice (it will probably, eventually, be emotional). The editing will be very "traditional" and narrative-oriented, I'm not going to use effects, but the cuts will be very straight-forwarded with cutaways and some fading in-out. I'm not going to use music; the only sounds, except for the voices of the people interviewed, will be slogans from demonstration in Italy.

I will use this week (4-8/4-13) to contact all the people that I want to interview and to gather the still images and the internet footage. I will set up interviews times for the week that follows (4-14/4-20). I will then edit (4-21/4-28)

The main aim of this documentary is to raise more awareness on this issue and, even though, I think that I cannot tell yet what the ‘intonation’ of the documentary will be (because I don’t have any interview yet); what I’m trying to depict in these five minutes is the activism that exists around women rights and a call for society to educate itself around issues of contraception, sexuality, right to choose and to create more support and less stigma on women that decide to have a conscious abortion. My documentary will mostly be on activism regarding women rights and the voices will be predominantly women pro-choice.

Proposal

Synopsis: Moving through real space and real-time is the only constant character: An Awareness, a set of curious eyes played by the camera. Only capable of existing while in the residence of a human body, the Awareness jumps from body to body, entering and exiting experiences involuntarily. A consciousness with no free will, the Awareness does not see, hear and feel what it wants to. It is wordlessly summoned and must endure whatever the next body directs its attention at. The single pleasure in the chaotic life of the Awarness takes place during the fleeting moment when, upon entering a new body, it may see through a new set of eyes the body it previously inhabited. In this moment, the Awarness fantacizes of itself and dwells in the illusion of self-consciousness.

Style/Aesthetics: The video will consist solely of point-of-view shots. I hope to avoid the hand-held camera look, so I’m considering a couple different ways of mimicking the smooth movement of our own vision. The first alternative that I’ll experiment with is a head-mounted camera. With the attachment of an external monitor I’ll be able to watch what’s being recorded, but that is basically the extent of my control over the camera. This method will also require that sound is recorded independently of the images, which will undoubtably inform the aesthetics of the final product.
Lighting and sound will not be heavily stylised, but both will be manipulated to more closely represent human-perception, not camera-perception.
The editing style will be very straightforward. Because every image is someone’s P.O.V., I can only cut at the moment where a new P.O.V. is taken on. This doesn’t mean that a scene won’t be observed from various angles, but a new angle must be justified as the result of us entering a new set of eyes.

Characters/Elements: I have not decided how many different people I want to use as actors. This will most likely be determined during filming as the improvised dialogue may give way to what will follow. I do however have a number of scenes in mind which will provide an overall structure.
I plan to shoot both interior and exterior locations, using natural as opposed to fabricated, environments.

Timeline/Production Schedule:
April 13: P.O.V. technique to be chosen and experimented with.
April 16-24: Shooting, collecting audio, editing
April 24-28: Editing.

The system that this project is based on came to me recently, and when such ideas arrive they are sorted either into the “unrealistic; save for the future” pile or the “half-exciting, but doable” pile. In this case, I have something that feels doable, exciting and unrealistic at the same time. I plan to challenge my assumptions concerning what’s unrealistic by doing my best to actually make the video that I see in my head. This will not require a large budget or even a rigid schedule, so the only thing stopping me is laziness.

Final Project

Proposal:

The project idea I have in mind is, admittedly, still hazy around the edges. I want the piece to be abstract and meditative—a defiant contradiction to the stream-of-consciousness stress of everyday life. Most contemporary Hollywood blockbusters, for instance, are riddled with swift cuts and vacuous dialogue (because too much talking and thinking gets in the way of the plot). I want to turn that formula on its head: sacrifice plot for the sake of slow-moving contemplation, rather than vice versa. The Marlon Riggs video ‘Tongues Untied,’ with its skillful use of storytelling, inspired me a bit here—as did the short film we watch during our second class, involving the relationship of a mother and daughter from Lebanon. Both of these videos fixated on the quality of image, sound, and substance, leaving room for intellectual interpretation and aesthetic appreciation (which few blockbusters ever do). What a viewer should take away from the video (perhaps a five-minute piece) is the sensation that he or she is missing something by “living fast,” so to speak; that there is something to be said for exploring questions, sights, and sounds to their full extent rather than just incidentally.

I plan to work the storyboard out as I go along; I want to experiment with shooting first, and pick and choose the order of scenes later.

In terms of style, I would really like to make the video aesthetically beautiful. Working with lighting kits and camera angles this semester has piqued my creative fancy, and I’d love simply to play with cinematography. Again, meditative is the goal here: with the sound will come the “substance,” per se. I plan to work in close-up, especially with people—but also with scenery, unless a faraway landscape proves particularly striking. The style will be whimsical, because part of the project’s point is finding the remarkable within happenstance.

Regarding sound: poetry, or anecdotes, or passages from literature—any and all of these will definitely be incorporated. Subversive stories, or expression with a political twist is particularly welcome. If anybody wants to tell a family yarn, or knows of a terrific anti-war poem, or wants to read something they’ve written, I’d love for them to participate in my project. Musical accompaniment depends on the overall content; I might not use any music. I want the video to be reflective—but the audio, which will be primarily non-diegetic, can be vibrant as all-get-out. It all depends on who’s doing the talking.

Concerning lighting: experimenting with light kits will be a key part of the project, especially if I interview. However, I’d also like to see what I can do with natural lighting.

Five readers/interviewees (one minute each) might be nice.

Location: Smith Campus (ideal for pretty vistas), Amherst countryside, and wherever the people who read/interview want to set up.
April 15 – 20 – shooting & recording
April 21 – 29 – editing & exporting
Taping will be mostly outdoors, and “beginning, middle, and end” will be irrelevant—(again, the sacrifice of plot for the sake of rumination).

~ Cassie Jensen
:-)

Secret Daughter

This documentary was very well made.  It had an honesty about it that made me feel comfortable while watching.  June is honest about her emotions and the difficulty she has searching for answers.  The Storches have a unique, loving family.  What I enjoyed most is the issues of race and identity that this film presents.

Final Project Proposal

(This piece has yet to be titled)

Synopsis: For my final project I am going to explore the life of student activists of color on campus, specifically focusing on issues of racism and oppression and those whom have organized recently around action awareness week. I want to know what drives people as activists to do the work that they do. How do people stay in the movement and keep doing work when all the odds are against them? I plan on using footage from the most recent walk out as well as interviews, piecing together the interviewees words to creative the narrative weaving together a story that is built on the voices of many students not just one. Similar to the movement which also came out of several peoples stories and struggles. My piece will be about identity as it effects social actions, and the personal struggles with doing work that is so closely tied to identity. I want to show the faces and voices of a movement that has been happening here since Hampshires creation.

(In terms of exact story board this will be worked out more once i have completed my interviews)

Style/Aesthetics: I want this to be a serious but uplifting piece that sheds light on each persons story, even if there is only one moment of the story. I plan on having extreme close ups of the person i am interviewing. As well as focus on different body parts of the subject such and hands, arms, mouth, eyes hair, face. Each person will fade into the next person so that the characters mesh together to convey that these stories although unique are apart of a larger experience that many students of color go through on this campus. I want to experiment with light and use it to show the different extremes of emotion. Such as bright lights against a dark background with the subject in the center, so that you cannot avoid their faces and emotions.I want to use some of the camera techniques that can be found in 'Tounges Untied', for I think it inspires me to use the camera (angles/effects) as a tool to show emotion within my subject. This will read as a clip from a larger documentary about the lives of students of color on this campus.

Sound: I plan on having the spoken word poem "the revolution will not be televised" in the background. There will be some voice over inccoperated in this project and so the song will be playing very softly getting louder towards the ending.

Lights: I plan on working with a light kit to get the extremes that I am looking for in this project.

characters: Voices from source, i intend on getting 5 voices minimum.

place: Their personal spaces, my room in some circumstances.

Timeline/production:
April 14-21 shoot
April 21-28 edit

I am doing this project because I want to celebrate those of us who do activist work around issues of racism and oppression. I the audience to see that we each have a story or reason for doing it that is so personal and so connected. I want my audience to see that this work does not stop or end with one person that it is built upon student after student. And I am interested in it because I am personally effected by the isms that exist on this campus and that I am not alone and I want other students involved in this work, to know that they are not alone either.

TREATMENT

TREATMENT for The Magic Chalk
(an adaptation of a short story by Kobo Abe)

Synopsis: Argon is a starving artist who finds a piece of magic chalk. When a picture is drawn with this chalk, it becomes real--but only if there is no sunlight. Argon decides to board himself up in his room and live in a world of his creation. It starts off as a world in which he can have anything he wants--as a way to escape starvation and his difficult life. But he draws a window in the wall, and it does not become real. He realizes that without a world behind it, it is not a real world. So he contemplates how he wants to create a new world. After four weeks of contemplation he gives up in a fit of frustration and draws a door, thinking that he will leave it up to fate and the chalk to create the world behind it. But when he opens the door there is nothing really there--just a barren world, a barren sky, and a horizon line. He closes the door depressed. Then he finds a newspaper from before he closed off his room. He sees a picture of a woman and gets the idea to start over from Adam and Eve, and so he draws Eve--who also happens to be the woman from the newspaper (Ms. Nippon). She believes she is Ms. Nippon and thinks Argon is crazy. She tries to get out, but when she discovers that Argon has magic chalk, she becomes interested in using it to advance her career. She tells Argon that she deserves half of the chalk because she is equal to him. He reluctantly gives her half of it, and she draws a gun and shoots him. Then she smashes open the door to the real world, and everything turns back into drawings on the wall. This includes Argon, who has eaten so much chalk-food that his molecules have become too infused with this magic. It ends with him "saying" " It isn't chalk that will remake the world."

Style/aesthetics: This video will be a fictional narrative. I want the focus of the video to be on Argon and his two worlds. I want the real world to be a dirty, gritty, bright world, and the magic world to be slightly fantastical. I want to do this by having both worlds well lit, bit the real world a bit more yellow and brown, and the magic world bright with slightly more saturated colors than might normally exist. I want to explore different editing styles to show the passage of the four weeks--fast shots of tableaus that communicate how Argon is passing the week without him saying anything, or even moving very much. I also want to pass the four weeks in a very short amount of time. I want the tone of the movie to parallel Argon's emotions.

Elements:
Chalk drawings into real objects: Cross-dissolve: To materialize the objects Argon draws, I plan to simply cross-dissolve a shot of the picture into a shot of the real object keeping the camera in the same place.
Place: My room (emptied of everything). Possibly a short montage of Argon looking for food and begging.
Characters: Argon: a starving artist. Intellectual, dreamer, idealist. He is the main storyteller and should convey through both speech and movements the dilemmas he puts himself through trying to create a new world. Eve: A materialistic, caddy girl, but with just enough intellect to comprehend a situation and put herself in an advantageous position.
The door to the fake world: Bright light shines in through the door, then into the camera. Haven't determined how to make the blank world.
Lights: I plan on doing them myself, experimenting with the light kit and whatever else I have.
Sound: I have not yet picked a soundtrack, but I would like there to be music underscoring most of the scenes. I also want to have a few sound effects--for the objects appearing (I think a scraping sound), and the blank world (loud wind and possibly a ringing sound that sounds kind of like a one-note echo).


Production Schedule:
April 6: Sent actors script.
Now-April 17: Prep work with Actors and gathering any props I will need. Storyboard difficult scenes more precisely than script.
April 17-April 25: Shooting
April 22-28: Editing

"Tongues Untied" by Marlon Riggs

What I found most interesting about "Tongues Untied" were the components of the video compared to the message it was relaying. "Tongues Untied" is about speaking out for change and not silencing oneself. That is why I found it particularly interesting that not only did they speak out in the film, but they spoke so eloquently and poetically. A main aspect of the film that stood out to me was the use of voice overs. Most of the film is a voice over images that do not match, whether they are of a man sitting or found footage. There were also parts where the voice overs would overlap, which further proves the point that one should not silence themself. I also found the repetition in the video to contribute to this idea. There were repetition of images (close ups of faces) as well as of words ("anger unvented becomes pain unspoken becomes rage released"). Those repeated words encompass the main message I got out of the documentary.

Chef! (Chief)

What I found really interesting about Jean-Marie Teno's film Chef! was that it's a documentary film on a topic that truly unraveled itself.  Jean-Marie said that he didn't have any set plans or intentions only to follow his interests within Cameroon where he was born.  The interviews throughout the movie gave a strong interwoven structure that was especially impressive since the direction of the film was unclear when he conducted the interviews.  The film was 1 hour long- cut down from only 10 hours of footage which seems extremely small considering the various and dynamic images within the film.  All the shots really set the scene and always depicted several angles.  The strength of his filmmaking eye becomes very clear because he was able to create a very complete story even without a set plan.  

Chef! by Jean-Marie Teno

Chef! dealt with the patriarchal system in place in Cameroon, both in cities and in rural societies. The film is an look at the role of the chief as a model in all spheres of society. One of the first things I noticed, just as Teno’s voiceover narration pointed it out, were the European beer ads which stood out against the straw huts of the Cameroonian village. When a young boy is caught stealing some chickens from a neighbor, a group of men gathers around him to decide the best form of punishment. Most suggest beating him, but one man steps in to prevent him. Interestingly, he wore a bright pink and blue striped scarf over a traditional, tribal-patterned shirt. I think, perhaps without meaning to, the man's clothing and the modern beer advertisements definitely highlighted the rise of globalization and the permeation of a mass consumer culture. The film also highlighted political corruption, and the ease with which one can buy freedom with money. I thought that the emotional climax of the movie was when a former prisoner described the conditions inside a Cameroonian jail. He described their one meal a day, which was a handful of corn, and pictures were shown of row after row of emaciated bodies, of thousands of men with visible rib cages and swollen bellies lying on the floor packed tight against each other. It was extremely powerful, and for me almost reminiscent of images from the Holocaust. During a wedding scene, we learn that one of the marriage laws in Cameroon directly define the man’s role as the “chief” of the family. Another states, “If the husband strikes the wife while visitors are present, she must smile and pretend that nothing has happened." Teno asks, in a population of 14 million, what happens when 7 million are chiefs? Who is the chief of all of these chiefs? I thought this was a poignant, poetic look at a country dealing with its “awkward heritage” and many of the sad truths that are a result of that.

Tongues Untied Part II

I think that 'Tongues Untied' is a great testament to the queer black male. The way this piece was created reads to me as a series of short delicate plays tired together by spoken word and an intensity that each viewer cannot avoid (for example the super close ups). I think it is perhaps the rhythm and movement of the bodies their relationship to the camera that makes me feel as though i am watching a dance piece. I like the way that Riggs is able to bridge the new civil rights movement to the new LGBT movement, specifically within the lens of the queer BLACK male. I appreciate the respect and careful way he put together found footage from the civil rights era marches and footage from what seems to be a gay pride parade, revolutionary movements. The way the two social movements coincide, and the way he bridged the footage together for me signified the importance of intersectional identities--Black and Queer, man "Brother to brother; brother to brother". I also liked the way spoken word was used in transition periods; for example when the dancing body transitioned to a man on the screen speaking to it. How important it is that words were there to help the feel and slow of the piece. I also appreciate the way the interviews were set up so that the piece felt like more of a collaborative effort; on a subject that often goes unspoken or unheard of.

So I believe we are supposed to post our videos, here is mine: