When my family and I are hanging out in the water at the Lake of the Ozarks, we like to play a game called Mafia—a whodunit game of attempted logic, persuasion, and self-preservation. To play the game, the group selects one person to take the role of the narrator and the remaining players are “townspeople.” The townspeople then close their eyes, and the narrator goes around the circle, one by one, secretly assigning each person the role of either a regular townsperson or a mafia member. Once everyone has a role, the two mafia members open their eyes and silently agree to “off” somebody. The mafia then close their eyes and blend back into the population of the regular townspeople. After the narrator instructs everyone to open their eyes and reveals whom the mafia just killed, it is up to the remaining townspeople, mafia included, to decide who the town should execute for the crime. After someone is chosen and eliminated from the game, everyone closes their eyes again and the sequence is repeated until the only people left in the group are either townspeople or mafia, and that group is declared the winner.
When the group is deliberating whom to execute, the mafia members clearly don’t want to reveal their identities, so they try to point the blame on other townspeople and make them out to be the mafia. This deception makes the game difficult when you’re a regular townsperson, because the only information you really know is that you are not mafia and anyone else could be. While you’re trying to figure out who the mafia members really are, sometimes the group will turn on you, and suspect you of being a mafia member. This predicament was the situation I found myself in during the last game we were playing, where I was a townsperson and the group started pointing the finger at me.
“Eric was smirking when we all opened our eyes, clearly that means he’s one of the mafia,” somebody in the group said.
“Yeah, and he hasn’t said much since we started talking. Clearly he’s guilty,” someone else reasoned.
I tried to make my fellow townspeople understand that I was not part of the mafia and that I was on their side. But despite my attempts to reason with the townspeople, the group only became more suspicious of me.
“Look, now he’s trying to steer the blame on other people! He’s got to be mafia!”
When the only evidence you have is your own word in a game where some people’s role is to lie, your word isn’t going to be enough to save you. In this case, the townspeople were convinced I was against them, and there was nothing I could say to change their minds. The group elected to eliminate me and, ultimately, the townspeople ended up losing that game to the two people whom I had initially suspected were the mafia.
Recently, I’ve learned that there are some similar scenarios in life where it doesn’t matter how good your intentions are, how honest you have been, what your level of integrity is, or how much you want to make somebody understand that you are on their side. When someone doubts you, and the only evidence you have to support yourself is your word, then there’s not a whole lot you can do to help yourself. As someone who is accustomed to using evidence to prove guilt or innocence in mock trial cases, I had a hard time accepting that there are situations where I can do nothing to persuade others of something that I know to be true. Sometimes the only thing you can do is to accept the group’s conclusion and hope that they don’t make the same mistake the next time you play.
As much as it stings to get eliminated by the very townspeople that I try to help, I still eagerly sit on the sidelines, waiting for the next round and another chance to help the townspeople bring down the mafia.
May 30, 2012. 6:30p.m. EST
On this day, at this time, one year ago, I boarded a plane to begin my 6-month adventure in Egypt. Looking back on that moment now, the memory feels like it could not have happened a year ago. On one hand, May 30, 2011, like the next 206 days of my trip, feels like a dream, like it was part of some other life, and it is sometimes hard to believe it ever really happened. On the other hand, the feelings from that day are so vivid in my memory; it feels like it could have happened just last week. I remember the crazy 24 hours leading up to my departure one year ago. After cutting short my Memorial Day weekend at the lake and returning to St. Louis with my mom, I had already said goodbye to most of my family and friends. I finished packing my bags, made a 2 a.m. last-minute trip to CVS, had a 3 a.m. mental breakdown in my room, got a couple hours of sleep, took a plane from St. Louis to New York City, got ripped off exchanging American dollars for Egyptian pounds at JFK, and now I was sitting at the gate—the lone American among a throng of Egyptians—waiting to board EgyptAir flight 986 to Cairo. After I boarded the plane, stowed my luggage, and took my seat, the eleven-hour flight transported me to what felt like an entirely different world.
The next 6 months and 3 weeks brought plenty of unique and unforgettable experiences. If you’ve been following this blog since last year, then you followed me through the Arabic classes, the political protests, the scuba dives, the intercultural travel, the soccer matches, and all the other experiences that made up my study abroad in Cairo. For those of you who would like to catch up on my trip, feel free to read posts from the study abroad section. If you would prefer a summarized version of the trip (which you probably do), I recommend checking out my capstone posts, Khalas and The Highlight Reel.
While maintaining this blog over the course of my trip required a lot of time and effort from me during my time in Egypt, on the one-year anniversary of my departure, I have truly realized the value in writing about my experiences and publishing them on this blog. Just this past weekend at the Lake of the Ozarks (this time I got to stay for the entirety of Memorial Day weekend), I received two huge gifts from people who kept up with my blog.
The first gift was verbal—the story about how one of my family friends encouraged her daughter to discuss my blog with her 3rd grade class when they were studying Egypt. Ashlyn presented to her class, recounting my experiences in Egypt and Israel to her classmates, to help them learn about these countries. Her teacher was so impressed with her, she asked Ashlyn to present to her other classes as well. Hearing how my blog has had such a ripple effect was more reward than I ever expected to get from this when I began writing. Hearing that story and getting to thank my publicist, Ashlyn (and her mother Page), in person made all the time and effort I put into this blog completely worth it.
The second gift I received this weekend was a very belated Christmas present from one of my biggest fans, Aunt Katie. Over the past few months, she had been designing a hardcover photo book with pictures and text excerpts from my blog for me. She did a marvelous job with it, and now I’ll have my memories from my trip to physically keep with me anywhere I go.
The front cover of my photo book (featuring a photo from Alexandria)
Photos from the end of my summer session
Photos from my trip to Israel
Back cover (featuring a photo by the Red Sea)
I am so glad that family and friends like Ashlyn, Page, and Katie enjoyed reading about my study abroad in Egypt, and many other people have discussed my travels with me as well. I’ve often gotten the question of whether I will ever return to Egypt. I certainly like to think the answer is yes, but likely I will not return for a while. At the very least, I’ve got to stay in D.C. to finish my undergraduate degree at American University before I think of more international travel. But as I prepare to enter my fourth and final year at AU, I am so glad that I had the chance to study abroad in Egypt and to make this journey part of my college experience. The experiences I had during my trip made a much wiser person out of the young man who was boarding that plane at JFK a year ago. I’m glad that by writing about those experiences, I’ve managed to touch family and friends back home and help others gain more global perspective. At this time a year ago, I was feeling a hundred different emotions, but now, all I feel is gratitude for the opportunity to have taken this trip and for the people who supported me and followed me all the way through it.
Thank you to all my readers who stuck with me through all of my postings for my Visual Literacy class. Those posts certainly consisted of different subject matter from my Study Abroad posts, but I hope you found them worthwhile reads.
With my Egyptian adventure well behind me and my Visual Literacy class over with (I got an A- by the way), I’m not sure which direction to take this blog next. While I mull it over, I’m going to highlight two videos featuring yours truly that I think you might enjoy.
1) American University Mock Trial
Although I was out of the country for half of mock trial season, I still had a very memorable spring semester with my mock trial team. For the team’s end-of-the-year banquet, my teammate Nick and I put together this video commemorating AUMT’s 2011-2012 season. If you make it all the way to the end, you’re in for a laugh. Enjoy.
2) Tough Mudder
Related to the memorable mock trial season was capping the semester with a 12-mile military obstacle course/mud-run with my friend Jess from the mock trial team. We drove from D.C. to Pocono Manor, PA for the race on April 29. Now, when I signed up for this race, I was thinking that late April would have pretty agreeable weather for an outdoor race involving water obstacles. Of course, I didn’t take into account the elevation, so despite the lack of clouds in the sky, the high at Pocono Manor on race day was about 45 Fahrenheit, with a wind-chill that made it feel like 30.
It was definitely one of the craziest things I’ve ever done, and fortunately, Jess’ brother was there to take video of it all. He put together a great video of me, Jess, and our friend Everett in our attempt to earn our orange headbands. Enjoy.
While the race definitely lived up to its reputation as being “probably the toughest event on the planet,” it made for a very fun and memorable day. If this looks like the type of thing you might enjoy, I encourage you to check out http://toughmudder.com/ and find an event near you. Oo-rah!
Hopefully I’ll find a new focus for this blog soon. Until then, brace yourselves for more random posts about my life.
Hey everyone, here is my final project for Visual Literacy class. The idea of this film is that it is supposed to be a “mood piece”. Watch the film and then describe your mood/emotion in one word. Enjoy.
“Our Freedom Isn’t Free” Production Journal:
Pre-production:
Because my final assignment gave me a lot of freedom to choose my medium, my topic, and my subject matter for my project, it took a lot of time to figure out what I wanted to do for the project and how I wanted to do it. I knew right away that I wanted to use video as my final project medium, since that tends to be the medium that where I create my best work, but coming up with the topic for the video took a bit more time. Out of my numerous options for directions in which to take the film, one options was to create an experimental type of film called a “mood piece”—designed simply to evoke a particular mood in the viewer. I thought back to movies I’d seen where I’d felt the strongest moods while watching them. Every film I could think of that evoked an emotional response from me—from Inception to Requiem for a Dream—had a strong soundtrack to accompany the images on the film and to push home the emotional appeal of a scene. I wanted to see if I could create the same type of emotional push using a powerful soundtrack paired with a series of powerful images, so I decided to try my hand at making a mood piece.
The question then became which images I would shoot, which soundtrack I would use to accompany those images, and which mood I would try to evoke in my viewers. Since I go to school in D.C. and I have the opportunity to regularly see the majesty of the monuments and memorials of the National Mall, I decided I would use those as the subjects of my film. I was going to create a mood piece to allow others to feel the kind of patriotism that I feel when I visit the monuments and memorials on the mall. In deciding on a soundtrack, I immediately thought of which song I wanted to use. “Fanfare for the Common Man” by Aaron Copland is an American classic, and it’s a song that I associate with a majestic scene.
But I also wanted the soundtrack to communicate more than just the majesty of the monuments. In trying to figure out what to do, I thought back to a YouTube video I had seen which gave a montage of American military men and women in action. The most powerful part of the video wasn’t the images, and it wasn’t the Transformers soundtrack playing in the background (which is a great soundtrack, by the way), it was the voice over of Ronald Reagan delivering his “A Time for Choosing” speech. Hearing that speech delivered in the 60s and relating it to the American military men and women of today made watching the video so much more than seeing some cool action shots of the American military. It drew a parallel between the Cold War and the conflicts our military is currently engaged in, and it tied American history to the present day. Without a doubt, it evoked strong patriotic emotions in me. I decided I would put voice-overs of important American speeches to accompany the relevant American monuments on the camera.
I thought of the monuments where I would want to film, I thought of some speeches that could accompany those images, and I drew up a storyboard to pitch to Professor Williams. In talking with Prof. Williams, I realized that my theme was inconsistent. On the one hand, I was going for a America-is-awesome-so-you-should-feel-patriotic sort of thing, and on the other hand, I was going for a our-servicemen-and-women-have-died-defending-us-and-our-freedom-so-you-should-feel-patriotic sort of thing. Prof. Williams and I decided I could try to reconcile the two, by making my video about how American freedom is amazing, but our freedom isn’t free. I decided I’d see what I could do with that theme.
Production:
Friday, May 4, 2012: I went to the library to rent a Kodak zoom-enabled video camera and a tripod.
Saturday, May 5, 2012: I woke up at 4:30a.m. to get down to the mall to record the sunrise. Let me tell you, there are some pretty interesting people on the public bus at 5:00a.m. on a Saturday morning. Anyway, I got to the mall and started taking some pre-dawn footage. I quickly discovered that I wasn’t liking the performance of the Kodak camera, so I switched back to Old Reliable, my Canon Powershot A3100—she isn’t much, but she gets the job done. My camera was compatible with the tripod, so I used the tripod to stabilize all my shots. I took A BUNCH of footage of the sunrise from the Lincoln Memorial (I had never seen the sunrise from there before, and it definitely lives up to the hype). I then wandered around to different monuments and memorials and shot simple steady pan shots from several angles. I shot footage of the Lincoln Memorial, the MLK Jr. Memorial, the FDR Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Washington Monument, the WWII Memorial, the White House, the Constitutional Gardens, and the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials. Then I walked across the bridge to Arlington, and shot footage at Arlington National Cemetery, notably at the Tomb of JFK and at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. My shooting wrapped up around 11a.m., and overall I was wandering around taking footage for about six hours. I was very satisfied with the amount of footage I had shot, and I was going to have plenty to choose from to put into my roughly three-minute video. When I got home, I uploaded my footage onto my laptop and imported it all into iMovie.
Post-Production:
Sunday, May 6 – Tuesday, May 8: I edited my film using iMovie software. I quickly realized I should have been a little more discretionary in how much I shot, because it was difficult to sift through all my footage to find the short clips I wanted to use. I began to download mp3 files of speeches off http://www.americanrhetoric.com, and I browsed transcripts of the speeches to find which clips I wanted to use. I quickly discovered how difficult it was to time the clips I wanted to use with the transitions in the score playing in the background. I also found that some of the speeches I wanted to use simply did not work because they did not balance with the other speeches in the film. For instance, I wanted to use speeches by Barack Obama and Harry Truman, but while they are both great speakers, their speeches paled in comparison to the legendary orations of FDR, MLK Jr., and JFK. When I listened to the Ronald Reagan speech, I knew I wanted to end with that one. I had happened to film the bugle playing “Taps” next to the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and I decided to use that as the soundtrack for the end of the video. The whole thing was a big trial-and-error process, but after a lot of painstaking timing changes and clip adjustments, I ended up with a product that I was pretty happy with.
To improve on the project, I would have liked to have had better film equipment. When trying to capture the grandeur of such huge monuments and memorials, it helps to have a camera that can take in all the details. Additionally, I would have liked to have clarified the theme a little better—either sticking to the military side or the American freedom side. I think it would have been cool if I could have shot some candid footage of kids playing near the monuments, construction workers building downtown, and people leading happy, American lives. That probably would have added to the patriotism feeling and added a human element that is difficult to get when looking at monuments and memorials. But overall, I’m very satisfied with how the project turned out. It took a lot of work, but I think the final product does a nice job at invoking a patriotic mood in its viewers.
I love video production, and I’ll probably be working more with iMovie over the summer. For my next project, I’m going to try to incorporate the same background soundtrack + voice-over concept as I used in the mood piece to make an emotionally appealing promotional video for the AU Mock Trial team. Should be fun.
Every spring, Film Fest DC screens a wide variety of foreign films at theaters around D.C. This year, the list of films included dramas, comedies, action movies, and everything in between from 39 different countries, and I wanted to make sure I saw at least one of them. As someone who is obsessed with an obscure activity called mock trial, I read the title of the film Ace Attorney and instantly wanted to go see it. Through Film Fest DC, I was able to watch the film at the E Street Theater last Friday and write a critique of it.
Video game title screen for Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Developed by Capcom (Japan) -- Published by Nintendo (2001)
Movie screenshot for Ace Attorney: Directed by Takashi Miike - Japan - 135 minutes
A critique of Ace Attorney
Ace Attorney is a comedic, fantasy realism film based on a video game of the same name. In a time when crime in Japan is extremely high and courts’ dockets are overflowing with cases, the Japanese legislature establishes a system where each defendant is only allowed a three-day bench trial to prove their innocence. The result is a lot of dramatic courtroom showdowns, where prosecutors and defense attorneys use quick, back-and-forth arguments and cool, futuristic technology to show their evidence, examine their witnesses, and make their case to the judge. The film follows protagonist Phoenix Wright, a novice lawyer fresh out of law school, in his attempt to unravel a mysterious murder and defend his friends from wrongful prosecutions.
The film uses visual elements and principles very effectively to create a fantastic environment where these events take place, to connect flashbacks to the regular storyline, and to remind the viewers that they are watching a film that is based on a video game. While the real life legal world is usually comprised of a lot of dark suits in dim courtrooms, the legal world in Ace Attorney is much more vibrant, colorful, and visually appealing. Phoenix always wears his blue suit and the prosecutors he faces wear red suits with elaborate neck scarves. But while the colorful attorneys add visual appeal to the trials, the best use of color comes from the costumes of the spectators in the gallery. The bizarre hair, makeup, and clothing of the people who pack the courthouse to watch the trials reminds the viewer that these trials are taking place in the fantastical world of the video game. Additionally, the film uses excellent editing techniques to visually connect flashbacks to the storyline and to keep the viewer guessing while Phoenix unravels the truth about what happened in his cases. Flashbacks of the same scene are shown over and over again throughout the film, each time adding a little bit more to the scene as Phoenix uncovers more information in his investigation. During the parts of the film that are in a courtroom, the film uses terrific special effects, reminiscent to televised graphics of a professional sports game, to quickly highlight the evidence he is referring to and to keep the trial very fast-paced and exciting for the viewer. These visual aspects make the film very fun to watch, and they remind the viewer that they are watching a film based on the alternative world of a video game.
The main purpose of this film is to give a new interpretation of a story originally told by a video game. While it’s primary function is entertainment, the film also shows the viewer the importance of proper due process in our legal system. While the Japanese system is different from the United States’, neither system is degraded to the point of the legal dystopia that exists in the world of Ace Attorney. The chaotic trials in this film demonstrate why we do not want to sacrifice defendants’ rights in criminal trials. The film illustrates for viewers how the purpose of our legal system is not simply to convict suspected criminals but to search for the truth so as to not convict the innocent. But in addition to these deeper themes on legal theory, the film also demonstrates simply that the practice of law can be exciting. Since the video game is primarily marketed towards youth and the film is likely to be viewed by a similar audience, the director could be subtly encouraging youth to think about a career in law, which typically is not the type of exciting profession that people consider at a young age. Since Japan is a developed country and the film did not embrace any revolutionary themes or ideals, the film did not fit the Third Cinema genre that our class discussed, but through its portrayal of an alternative legal world, it shows themes of the importance of protecting defendants’ rights and the excitement of the legal profession.
I am far from an expert on Japanese cinema, so it is difficult for me to give a fair evaluation of this film, but judging from an American perspective, I enjoyed the film immensely. There were some repetitive points in the story and times when the dialogue or acting did not appeal to my American tastes, but, as a whole, I thought the movie was very entertaining, and I left the theater still thinking of all the exciting special effects, colorful costumes, and intricate story lines that made up the fantastical legal world of Ace Attorney.
For our final field trip for Visual Literacy class, my classmates and I went individually to go visit an exhibition entitled Watch This! at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. The exhibition consisted of several different video screens and projector images, each showing a different example of video shooting and editing techniques that have impacted the history of motion picture arts. I browsed the room of exhibits looking for a good piece to write my assigned critique on, but none of the pieces on display in the room were doing much for me. Right as I was about to give up on finding something interesting, I came to the last piece in the room, and I knew I had found the piece that I wanted to critique.
Surveillance. Four-channel video. Color. Silent. 2010.
A critique of Surveillance by Ernie Gehr:
Surveillance, by Ernie Gehr, is an eye-catching piece. Presented as four flat screen TVs hanging in a straight line, the piece has a modern, aesthetically pleasing presence in an exhibit that otherwise lacks its degree of style and sophistication. But while the presentation is strong, the true visual appeal of Surveillance is the content being shown on the screens. As the name suggests, the images are candid “surveillance” shots of different locations in Madison City Park. The four screens each show a different surveillance location, and each individual screen periodically cuts to a new location so that the images on the screens are constantly changing. The images are all pre-recorded, and each screen runs about 17 minutes of video, which makes the total amount of surveillance footage in the piece about 68 minutes. However, the images the viewer sees are not simple surveillance images of the park. In editing his work, Mr. Gehr used digital techniques to present the footage with an inlaid rectangular image of the same video. Sometimes the interior rectangle is presented slightly differently from the background image. For instance, sometimes the interior rectangle is the mirrored image of the background image, and other times the interior rectangle is out of time synchronization with the background image. But in most of the clips, the video in the interior rectangle and the background image are identical. No matter how the clips are presented, the editing adds an additional layer to the visual appeal of Surveillance.
A close up of one of the four screens. Note the inlaid-rectangle that both hides and reveals what is going on beneath it.
Mr. Gehr used many interesting techniques in his creation of Surveillance to make this piece a visually strong work of art. The element of design that Gehr used most effectively was line. The rectangles within the images create mind-boggling illusions that hinge around the linear borders of the rectangle. While the image in the middle rectangle might be the same as the background image, the middle rectangle is also blocking the viewer from seeing the middle of the background image, so, at the same time, the middle rectangle both hides and reveals what is going on in the scene. Of course, Gehr keeps the viewer guessing by making some background images differ from the middle rectangle. For instance, in one clip, the middle rectangle revealed a hungry squirrel diving into a trashcan for food. In the background image, the viewer can see the bottom of the trashcan and the same surroundings as those in the middle image. The conclusion in the viewer’s mind is that both images are the same. However, as the clip progresses, the squirrel leaves the trashcan in one image and hides behind it, and then suddenly, the squirrel reveals himself in the background image from behind the middle rectangle, but he isn’t present in the video within the middle rectangle. While both images were filmed at the same location at roughly the same time, the two playbacks are not synchronized, and Gehr uses the time difference between the videos to play tricks on the viewer’s mind. For this reason, Gehr both uses pattern and deliberately breaks from it in this piece. There is a definite pattern and symmetry in the presentation of the piece as a whole, but each clip is something unique. The viewer has to think about each clip to understand any differences between the middle rectangle and the background image and to understand the entire scene. There is various use of light in the different shots, but primarily, Gehr keeps the lighting happy and bright, as one might expect for a day at a park. Gehr tries to keep his work as real as it can be. His work is reminiscent to the Lumiere style of film–a 60 second, unedited, completely still window into a particular scene–which panders to viewers’ voyeuristic tendencies. My emotional reaction to Surveillance is a mix of intrigue, happiness, and frustration. The intrigue comes from both trying to understand what I’m looking at and from the voyeurism of watching other people go about their business at the park, the happiness comes from seeing lots of people enjoying their beautiful day at the park, and the frustration comes from the middle rectangle that often prevents me from fully understanding the background image.
I think this piece is trying to show how any moment in life can be beautiful as long as you’re looking at it the right way. By altering these images and by giving the viewer different ways of seeing them, Gehr helps show how a single motion can be a beautiful pattern and how a different perspective can change the way you perceive a scene. Additionally, this piece shows how similarly people behave, and it allows the viewer to picture him/herself as any one of the people in the Surveillance footage. The footage does not capture actors engaged in dramatic scenes, but rather it captures regular people doing regular things in a regular park. The footage demonstrates how people behave similarly when in similar situations. Surveillance causes us to think about how one life is no more important than another by demonstrating how we are all people capable of enjoying a nice day in the park.
But, while I thought this piece was the best in the Watch This! exhibit, I did not think the piece was anything groundbreaking. I would have liked some more differentiation in the presentation of the video clips and not just a rectangle in the middle of every clip. I did think the contents of the clips was well varied, and I enjoyed watching the candid antics of people and squirrels from a surveillance perspective, but on the whole, I thought the piece was just OK. I think replacing this piece with some well made Lumiere films would be a better use of those four flat screen TVs for the Smithsonian.
———————–
While I wasn’t a huge fan of the Watch This! exhibit, just down the hall was another exhibit called The Art of Video Games, which focused on the evolution of video games as a visual art where both the artist and the viewer are responsible for the image presented on the screen. The exhibit highlighted different gaming systems over time, and I read about how some of my favorite Nintendo 64 games from my childhood were, in fact, groundbreaking visual experiences for gamers. The exhibit showed the evolution of game designers’ abilities to capture human movement in colors and pixels and allowed visitors to play games from different eras to notice the how design affects gameplay. I highly recommend this exhibit to anyone who has played videogames, is interested in learning about videogames, or just looking for a new kind of contemporary art exhibit. The exhibit will be at the Smithsonian American Art Musesum through September 30.
For more information on the Art of Video Games and everything else that is going on at the American Art Museum, visit the museum’s website at http://www.americanart.si.edu/.
“Memorializing”
Video—Mood Piece
~3 minutes in length
Concept/Theme:
For my final project, I plan on creating a video that will invoke a mood of patriotism in its viewers. The video will be called Memorializing, and it will feature footage of Washington D.C.’s iconic monuments, memorials, and buildings, such as the WWII Memorial, the Vietnam War Memorial, the White House, and the new Martin Luther King Jr. Monument. While the images of American monuments and memorials will serve to invoke the mood of patriotism, the true strength of Memorializing will lie in the use of a dynamic soundtrack to supplement the images on the screen. The soundtrack will include a steady track of Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man” that will remain constant through the fading in and out of different images. With each image, a new voice-over of a historical American speech will play and fade into the soundtrack.
The theme I will be driving at will be the power of the historic events throughout American history that are memorialized in these iconic locations in Washington D.C. The presentation of these moments will alternate between moments of peace and moments of war. Speeches such as JFK’s inaugural address and MLK’s “I Have a Dream” fuel patriotism for America’s devotion to peace and equality for all mankind. Speeches like FDR’s Pearl Harbor speech, Reagan’s speech at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, and Obama’s speech about the death of Osama bin Laden demonstrate America’s strength and ability to solve conflicts through use of our armed forces. While the two types of speeches have contrasting themes, the overall message that I aim to communicate is how, throughout history, America has stood for ideals of peace and equality, and it has courageously defended those ideals through the sacrifices of our servicemen and women.
Purpose/Intent:
The intent of my mood piece is simply to invoke the mood of patriotism in the viewer. In a time when it is fashionable to express dislike for America, I would like my piece to remind my fellow Americans, particularly those of my generation, of the historic fabric of our country that we all share and of the responsibility we have of upholding the values that generations before us fought and died defending. As a D.C. resident, I am reminded of the importance of these historic moments in American history whenever I go downtown. I want to convey the emotions I feel when I visit the National Mall to other Americans who are not able to see these monuments like I do.
Inspiration:
While my own feelings about the United States, the National Mall, and American history contributed to my motivation to produce this piece, my inspiration for the idea came from a variety of different sources. First, I’ve always had a thing for montages. I do not exactly know why, but when a montage is well done, it can move me more than almost any other work of art. Second, whenever I hear Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare for the Common Man,” my mind is always filled with images of American valor and patriotism. I figure since I’m in D.C. and I have a chance to pair an epic American song with images of epic American national icons, I should take the opportunity and go for it. Finally, the inspiration for the voice-overs of presidential speeches actually came from a number of montages I’ve seen from other amateur video editors on YouTube. One montage that has really stuck with me is one featuring action shots of American armed forces and a voice-over of a Ronald Reagan speech about the need for American military supremacy. Since I won’t be able to take action footage of the American military, my mood piece might not be quite as gripping as that one, but hopefully through use of some visually appealing shots of D.C. icons, a well-cut soundtrack, and some sharp editing, my piece will invoke the patriotic mood I’m going for.
Production Plan:
April 21: I will go to National Mall and observe locations for shots. I will note elements around the memorials, monuments, and buildings that would be good to include in the shots. I will consider ideal times of day/night to film at particular locations. My initial ideas for shots are illustrated in this storyboard:
"Memorializing" Storyboard
April 22 – 28: I will look for a day with ideal weather conditions and head down to the National Mall to film. I know I will want a lot of footage of various memorials at sunrise, so I will be heading down plenty early on at least one of the days to get the “golden” shots.
Post-production: I will load video onto my computer and edit the video using iMovie software. Ideally, I will be able to find mp3 files of the various speeches I’ll need for the voice-overs. If I cannot find those files, then I’ll record audio from speeches on Youtube, convert the recording files, and use those for the voice-overs. Once I have a rough-cut version of the edited video, I will run it for a few test subjects to make sure I’m getting the intended mood response.
Expected Outcome:
My initial audience will be my classmates and professor in Visual Literacy, but eventually this movie will be available for public view on YouTube. My intended audience is American youth, but I hope the images and soundtrack of the piece appeal to both Americans and non-Americans in a wide range of age groups. In the end, I hope the piece will invoke a mood of patriotism in the Americans who watch it.
