Final Silva Frontier

This is the hardest blog post I’ve ever written in any Silva class ever. Picking your favorite 6x1 project is like picking your favorite child. This kind of filmmaking is so personal that it’s difficult to think of one project being inferior to another. When I finally put this list together I realized that the favoritism lies with the assignments or their guidelines; my favoritism resides more in my ultimate pride in the final outcome of the piece.
I loved working on every single project. I wish that I would’ve given myself more time with all of them, and that this was the only thing that I had to do all semester. I think it would’ve been interesting to see how much better I could have been with a little more time and more attention to detail. That being said, I plan to rework many of these films—if for no other reason than so I could feel less uneasy while watching them.

So, here it goes. Drum Roll Please…




6. Recycled Footage
I got spend hours deciphering the crazy, manic, coked out madness that is Charlie Sheen, and give the president the power to call him a jackass. Who else gets to do that for a homework assignment!
I approached this project wanting to do something more fun than I usually do. I don’t consider myself to be a terribly serious person in real life, but my films always tend to be more serious side of things. Unfortunately, it didn’t really accomplish what I hoped it would stylistically. I like the style of the film from about 42 seconds until the end, but the first 41 seconds didn’t really work without music underneath. I tried to manufacture a beat from frames of Sheen’s dialogue, but it wasn’t suitable for the rhythm of the edit. I really wish there was a culture jam class/unit where we could discuss a methodology. How much would it cost to bring Aaron Valdez in for a workshop?

5. Cameraless Filmmaking
Ok, this was a really cool assignment. I would’ve never thought about coloring on film or scratching making an entire film! It was so cool. I loved working on this. The only thing that sucked is that I missed some of the group meeting times because of a death in my family. I really plan on exploring this technique further.

4. Multi-Plane Animation
The pictures up on facebook say it all. I came into class, played with food, squished a tomato, and shot on film. It was super cool, but I wish that it would’ve come out better. I did enjoy playing up the cheesy aesthetic in post, but I wish that we would’ve framed things better and made better use of our 3 planes.

3. Rhythmic Edit
This was a really cool project. My immediate instinct was to give this assignment a documentary feel, but I decided to just shoot Cassandra in her natural habitat instead. I really enjoyed the visual music feel given to this style. Also, this is probably the coolest soundtrack I’ve ever built.

2. Long Take
Lord of the Flies Weekend was awesome. I love hand processing. It’s my favorite thing, and the fact that I got to shoot and process on the same day made it even cooler. Also, since I had more experience than most I sort of got to do a bit of leading, which was really cool experience since I want to teach.

1. 48-Hour Video Race
This is one of the coolest films I’ve ever made. I played with the idea of making a more traditional self-portrait style film, but I really enjoyed the aesthetic that I managed to create using household items, my face, rubber ducks, and photoshop. I wasn’t in love with how abstract the film was at first until Andre and Cassandra both told me that I managed to make them feel like they were drowning. Mission accomplished.

My Life Is a Culture Jam

What do the Yes Men and found footage films have in common?

That’s an interesting question. After all, the Yes Men are a group of activists, who use humor and impersonation to bring global issues to light. The documentary we watched focused on their impersonation of the World Trade Organization. These impersonations showed the absurdity of certain WTO policies and practices.
Found footage films take pre existing footage and cut it in a way to add new context. This come sometimes be political (as with culture jamming) or can sometimes simply explore the subtext in a film—Dave Monahan showed a film in Intro to Editing that showed a single scene from To Kill a Mockingbird that was edited in a way that emphasized every single frame. These can range from films like Big Screen Version, which shows the oversaturation of media by cutting clips from Fox News into a new beat, to The World Wastes Andy Hardy, which shows an oedipal subtext to the Andy Hardy film series that stars Mickey Rooney.

So, what do these really have in common?

Rather than taking footage that is preexisting and creating new subtext, the Yes Man take an existing organization and alter it by taking part in it in order to emphasize a different truth than the one presented by the actual WTO. It’s the closest thing to a real, life culture jam. Rather than cutting together footage of the WTO, the Yes Men research the existing organization and taking a role in it that parodies the organization.