Music Video

As director of our group's music video, I was both honored to have the chance to direct this, and also immediately concerned that I was supposed to be the one who had the main idea for the concept of the video. Luckily we were able to get the rights to the song that I wanted to use, thus the ideas came more easily. The song "Welcome Home" was one that I've heard in a few different films, all accompanied by varying visuals. As I've listened to it over and over, several different ideas came to mind.

My original idea was more story based, a man obsessed with material wealth and losing a significant other, only to come home to their dream house, but without what he should've cared about the most. I'd like to show that success does come with a price often. For this video however, I still wanted to show the roving eye for material wealth, but in a more abstract way. To examine mechanical devices that liken themselves to the human mind, their gears turning are just like the thoughts that run through our own heads, and depict this nostalgic feeling that the song projects. Showing a transition from golden hewed antiques to an open field, a flashback of sorts and to show a world that "might've been", two lovers by themselves, a light and airy field, isolation. 

I know this is a lot to accomplish in a short amount of time, and hopefully we'll be able to pull it off. I've got a very specific vision both thematically and visually, and nothing would delight me more than to see this being brought to life. 

Music Video

For our group's music video, we received the rights to use the song "Welcome Home" by Radical Face. The talent we will be working with are Drew Grey and Tommie Boltinghouse. The locations that we will be filming at will be Old Wilmington Antiques, Greenfield Lake, Elaine's Antiques, and Maggy's Antiques. 

Art House

This was quite the reading. Being the strapping young lad that I am, I had never really known anything about these small art house cinemas. I come from a very small town. We had a $3 movie theatre that had four screens and only played blockbusters. Even the bigger theatres that were farther from home in Winston-Salem and Greensboro only played big blockbusters. This was my film experience and exposure while I was growing up. Then this thing called the internet came along. Suddenly I was exposed to an entire world of movie watching. Personally, I feel this is the wave of the future, but there is still something so simple, beautiful, and intimate as the theatre environment. This is not to say that all big budget movies are the devil, but with film, as many other things in life, if you don't keep an open mind, this can be extremely limiting to your experience. 

The article itself seemed kind of sad about the death of these small, art house theatres. I was saddened to hear about the dying off of these places that I previously didn't know existed, but it's not a surprising thing. The general public doesn't really appreciate higher art films. This isn't to say that it's a good thing these places are dying off, but maybe just outdated. It's a great thing however to see these micro cinemas popping up, and the mobility, and ability to adapt is important if smaller films are to survive. This transition into the 21st century, has got to be the way to go. Sad though it may be, this might be the future of art house and small films in the U.S. 

Lastly, I had to watch both Passion of the Christ and An Inconvenient Truth in high school. It was quite humorous to hear that both these were considered independent films. They are... an experience. I'll leave my critiques of these films to that for now...

The Film Community

Looking back at the filmmaking community that we've studied this far in the semester, I'm both impressed at the works created, and the vast differences in the people that participate in this sensibility of experimental film. Having such diverse personalities converge and work in the same art is both incredible and strange all at the same time. The filmmakers that we've covered, seem to put their own lives into their works, and are almost as interesting to study as the films that they've produced. 

The work of Aaron Valdez seemed especially intriguing to me. In addition to being a dead ringer for Joh Stewart in my opinion, he seems to work in a mode of film that is both comical, and satirical, using very simple editing devices, and yet his work is a collage of different media forms. This combination produces quite distinctive works, and a coherent message and direction. It's quite strange and yet somewhat refreshing, its as if Mr. Valdez is able to see the puzzle pieces that comprise other works and forms of media, extract them, and place them together to make an all new puzzle that is totally different, but is reliant on the sum of its parts. Astounding. 

Michele Gondry's music video works really spoke to me as well. While most music videos are either pointless, "hey lets put the camera here and watch someone lip-sync for 3 to 4 minutes", he tries to turn it into a more sophisticated art form. And he succeeds. He blends different worlds together that are loosely tied together with music, a unifying bond that so loosely binds reality and fantasy. I also admire him for trying different modes of filmmaking, including refusing to settle for just one genre, and working on projects that others wouldn't expect him too. Green Hornet wasn't as bad as everyone says, you know. 

Shooting on Film

This assignment was another departure for me from what I'm used to. However, I consider it a very good thing that continually this class is pushing me to think of things in more abstract ways. Before this assignment, I really had no interest in touching a film camera, it was antiquated technology to me, more of a novelty than anything. While I'm not a total convert, this was a lot of fun (technical difficulties aside). There is something different than working with celluloid against pixels on a computer screen. Somehow it's a more organic experience. 

I was really hesitant to even touch the camera to begin with. I somehow viewed it as being fragile, and my uninformed oafishness would be its undoing. While we did have some very unfortunate technical difficulties, I was still pleasantly surprised with how this photos actually turned out. There is a depth and dimension to this that I feel can't quite be matched by digital. I can almost feel the textures reflected in some of these shots. 

I have no real revelations after doing this assignment, no huge conversions to a new way of thinking, but rather a quiet understanding that there is something very special and different about shooting on film. I've never really tried to tell a story with photos in this sort of way, but there is something organic and fresh to this dying art, unmatched in the sometimes staleness of digital. Maybe digital is too perfect, too much of a good thing. Maybe that's the point. Life isn't perfect, and if we didn't have imperfections to balance out the good things in life, we might also find that stale.