addition to last post

So I didn't really talk about how I was going to tell this story. It is going to be a combination of interview with my brother, interview with me, shots of my brother, shots of his dog, shots of both, and a lot of VO of me telling the story. I'm a little worried about doing this project because I am going to make vocal some things I feel about my brother that would offend him greatly if he ever hears them. I want to convey that I am disappointed with the way he is spending his life at the present time but I am struggling with the choice to be blunt about it or be polite. I keep trying to censor it so that he would be able to watch it without being extremely depressed that the only person he looks up to thinks he is a pile of trash right now. But it takes away from the piece if I censor it like that. It has to be completely honest if I want it to impact the viewer in the way that I'm seeking. But I can't crush my brother like that. So maybe I will make it and just never, ever, let him see it. Part of the reason I want to make this piece is because I feel conflicted about it. But I can never let my brother know that I am disappointed in him so that is making me feel my idea is even stronger. . . the fact that I may hurt someone I love by making it, that is what is going to make the film so intense. At least in my eyes. Obviously I don't want to hurt my brother, he is my best friend and I love him more than life itself. Which is why I'm so disappointed.

2nd Project

So I am going to tell this story about my brother and his dog. Which is really just a small part of the bigger story about my brother and his irresponsible attitude and the way he does nothing with his life. He claims that the dog is why he does nothing. The dog came from a family of hillbillies that were probably going to drown it if my brother didn't take it. The dog is a really rare white (called a blue) pit bull but the rarity of his breed also means he is suffering from years of inbreeding, which may or may not be the reason that the dog is deaf. I think blue pitbulls have a history of being deaf. There is also a theory that if a dog is hit by a car he/she can become deaf from it. And the dog was, we assume, hit by a car once when he escaped my brothers house, as he injured his right leg when he was very small. We don't really know what happened but the vet seems to think, because of the severe damage, that he could only have been hit by a car. My brother thinks he got hit by the car because he was deaf already. I think he was hit by the car because my brother is irresponsible and that made him deaf. I have some more research to do on pitbulls before I decide what I really think, I suppose. So my brother has this pitbull with a lame right leg that will never heal, he's deaf, and partially blind because of an incident the dog had with my cat -- he couldn't hear my cat hissing at him because he is deaf so my cat got him really good in the eye. The dog almost lost the eye, my cat got through the first two layers of his cornea. I paid 150 dollars for the dog to go to the emergency vet. I paid it because my brother has no money and I felt horrible because it was my cat. My brother doesn't have a job, he claims, because he has to stay home and take care of the dog. So he sits at home and plays online poker to pay his rent. I disapprove of this lifestyle and what my brother has become. Which is the larger context of this film.

For my second project I am thinking about a piece that is done in the style of La Jetee' because that is one of my favorite films of all time. I want to do a short story using only still images that were derived from a film that I actually shot, and then possibly add a voice over for the narrative but of someone speaking in a different language so that you can tell that the story is being narrated but you can only understand the pictures. Commenting on the idea that ideas can come across through only images and can be added to with tone of voice. Many more ideas on what the language would be commenting on. . . the idea that I myself am frustrated that I do not know any other languages and seeing them used, in something like a film, where I really really want to be able to understand, inspires me to learn another language. . . commenting on why someone would like to learn another language

Critique of project one

Well I'm moderately happy with the way my piece went over in class, as well how I myself felt about it. I would say there were things that I would have liked to have changed but that's not exactly right. I actually think I would just like to make some alternates to the ones I already did. During my expanded time piece I would like to take just a part of the piece and expand that even further. With the compressed peice there was actually a montage or series of scenes that I wanted to add at the end. I really enjoyed this project and it has already inspired me to do more like it. I really like the idea of playing with time

Testing

This is a test. This is only a test.

10 Week Plan

Project one - Have video digitized and solidified idea in mind by this weekend. Begin preliminary editing by Monday April 17th, and continue through the week, leaving the weekend for troubleshooting and finishing touches. Will probably do most of the sound work on saturday the 15th. Will be working with the movie 28 Days Later.

Project two - So far I am planning on an installation piece that will require a small lcd screen to be placed inside of a hole in a wall (or similar place close to the ground) the idea being that this will be the home of a mouse, and playing on the lcd will be a tiny mouse going about his business. I am planning on filming a real mouse, for an extended period of time and either editing it or taking just a chunk of the film and running it without interruptions. If this turns out to be interesting I may decide to use it for my 3rd project. In which case I have another idea for my installation. I wanted to take a tom and jerry cartoon, use two projectors, one projecting the cat and one the mouse on two adjacent walls, and edit so that the cat or mouse leave their own wall and enter the other's space but you cannot see the action inbetween.

Project Three - Not so sure. I was contemplating something with text and still images or very slow moving images. Possibly have the words appear letter by letter so you think you know what word is about to come up and then ultimately having the word be different that what the viewer thought it would be. Or a bunch of images with one word per image that ultimately make a sentence but have the images and words move so fast at first that you can't tell what they are and eventually slow them down revealing the message. But I'm having a little trouble with the idea of miniture or small screen output.