Notes for Project 2: Participatory Practices

Based on the participatory practices that I was thinking about using (that I would have people take a video of me as I ran by or something to that extent), I am thinking about doing something else on top of that. I was considering using camera tossing with other people's access to cell phone or other portable camera devices. So what I was thinking of doing this time was starting a relay type thing in which I would get people to help me participate in a cell phone camera toss and capture relay race. It's some what a recent idea and I haven't really thought through how it will work at the moment, but I would have the participants do a run and then toss their camera to the next person as like the baton so that the next person could continue and so fourth.

My aim with this is to use the poor quality of the camera to act as a different perspective of an event and I wanted to utilize participation by having people use their phones to show differences between the quality of the footage as well as get other people involved in the project.

Notes for Project 2: Participatory Practices

Its not a sure thing yet, but an idea that I came up with is I will use the video equipment available in the actual video; what I aim to do is film a running sequence like that of Blink 182's "What's my age again?" but have the camera person be active in the frame as well, capturing two different angles which I will interchange the perspectives through editing. Maybe I will have the runners also have cameras to have more perspectives to capture the moment. Also I may have random people on the street take a video of the people passing by on their phones and send it to me or take my phone and take the video so that a can get more people in on the madness. I guess ultimately it will be a music video.

As for research, planning, and working process, it is an idea that I very recently came up with so its a tad scarce at the moment, but I am pretty sure I will be drawing from Blink 182's songs so the musical backdrop, though I am not sure on which song to actually pick. "Whats my age again?" is a lot of fun, the song ties in very well to the craziness that they do and I may follow the same path for this video. I am developing shots to take at the moment, but even if I do come up with foundation shots, I think that the shots will end up being kind of impromptu due to the other random people's contribution.

Notes on Project 1: Remix

So when actually putting all the clips together to start editing, I realized that things were going pretty much according to plan except when it came towards the end of the project. I ended up with the scoops scene from and opening montage from Soylent Green and post apocalyptic shots from the Salt n Sea place thats a few hours  inland of San Diego, which was kind of nice actually knowing the place. I decided to use the montage so that it could give a short hand version man's current state of affairs with itself and then going to the scoopers to show what we are actually doing to ourselves. I then wanted to use the post apocalyptic shots from the desolate area to give this tone of a now uninhabitable place.

I went through a few ideas before coming up with what I did. I was going to throw after the scoops scene a part of the euthanasia scene in Soylent Green. I wanted to convey a world in which is now completely diminished of life and can only be seen through a video, a saved memory of the once live and not-so-bleak reality. The shot though ended up being really long without many substantial changes. I just really dig that movie!

Notes on the Remix vid

I was thinking of doing a narrative focusing on the environment and land as the dramatic space. The message I am going to try to convey is that human consumption, industrialization, and aggression has a daunting future in store if we keep going down the path that we have chosen.

I tend to think of my work chronologically so that I can be satisfied with each step before I move on to the next one. So far I have come up with some sources and shots that I think I will be using to remix into my video. They are in order as I will edit them in my vid:

Landscape shots that are devoid of any human contact (or at least look that way) from the documentaries "Earth" and "Planet Earth"

The killing of a monkey by the tribe of monkeys with a bone in Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey " and following shortly after is a shot of the Earth itself from "Earth" (I will slowly turn these shots black and white for effect)

I want a shot of a "Land for sale" sign or something of that nature with the camera moving to reveal a lot of construction behind it, but I am still looking for a source for that

I want to show a city shot with a cross dissolve to a ghetto and dirty city atomsphere, Maybe like in Children of Men or 28 Days Later.

Then a sequence from Soylent Green in which it shows a dusty, dirty, devoid of any other non human life and maybe include the monkey shot from earlier and juxtapose it over the final shot in Soylent Green where he says that the stuff is people.

I wanted to use the concept of remix to take the emotions I felt from the films above and make them tell a different story without chopping up their shots or adding too many other effects to get my message across. What I felt from the sequence with the monkeys in "2001" was this sense of a curse. The bashing of another with a bone; its a double edged pact that our ancestors (the precursors to intelligent beings) made for us. We have figured out how to use tools to make life easier, but the trade off is that we could use tools to destroy another. It's an eerie sight that feels so true for me.

I am fascinated with the idea of a world like our own in which the harmony of nature never lost its balance. Or if humans or another intelligent life form came around. A world with untouched lands and oceans where the balance is maintained by the animal and plant kingdom only taking what is needed to survive and creating something to return what it has taken.

But the second part of my remix vid will show what I see the world as today. A dying, greedy, imbalanced place. I want to have the colorful landscape shots of the beginning to play a role in the second half by having buildings and construction happening on the land, turning now buildings of industry into the new landscape. And to top it off, I want to show the atmosphere that "Soylent Green" had because I feel that it is the direction we are heading in. Its gritty, dirty, povershed, and lifeless.