The process of filming for me was relatively simple and straightforward. I asked one of my friends to come play soccer and just film me warming up. I did about 3 total hours of filming because I just wanted to be sure that I had enough footage to piece together my video. A major challenge that I had was that I couldn’t contact one of my other friends who is a FAMS major and is very versatile with a camera. Sports photography and videography is by no means a simple task for a beginner. In my video I really tried to convey the notion that sports are a form of art and expression for athletes and there are so many different emotions that go into it.

This project was certainly a challenge for me. I knew I wanted to connect nature and the body. There were definitely multiple ways I could go about that. I always take long drives by rivers and I found the perfect backdrop for a nature scene. These train tracks are old and rusty and rarely used. I wanted to create a dream like scenario where a girl and the train tracks were one. This video performance entails a girl walking on the train tracks, the sound played along matches up with how she disappears. This creates a very anxious and emotional feeling, one that really can’t be described. The performance really can’t be explained and how you view it really decides what you get out of it.

I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted to do for my final project and it took me a lot of time and work to figure out exactly what I wanted to do. I began doing research on famous video performers and delved deeper into Marina Abramović. Marina, as we have seen in class, is an extremely well-known artist and has done several pieces of performance art. When thinking about what I wanted to do for my final I kept thinking about Marina’s video Art is Beatiful, Artist is Beatiful. This video inspired me for my final project. I decided to take a video of myself taking off my makeup, then reapplying it and doing it over and over. I overlayed some simple music that actually made it quite emotional. Though I did not think I would become emotional during this process, listening to the music actually made me quite sentimental.

Overall I really enjoyed doing this video. I wanted to capture the raw emotion that is produced and to kind of view the social norms that we can sometimes get lost in. I was trying to make it seem like I was not comfortable in my own skin and to bring out how difficult it can sometimes be to live in this modern day. The person that I was portraying kept trying to get the perfect look but she was never satisfied. I wanted a relatable person that peolpe could feel like or see themselves being that person. I actually think this video made me reflect on the way I live my life. This girl was trying to please herself while obviously feeling the need to please others. I am glad I chose this for my final and really enjoyed the whole process.

For this project I wanted to continue exploring themes that I have played with throughout the semester but in a new way. I selected the topic of war again for this project but instead of looking at an older war I decided to examine our ongoing efforts in the Middle East. Additionally, the video features footage appropriated from released footage of what I believe is a coordinated drone strike on Taliban targets. This is intended to also raise questions about the ethics of using drones to engage with our enemies, a topic which has become a focus of the media in recent years as the number of drone strikes has increased. I also attempt to subtly bring up the controversy surrounding civilian casualties associated with drone strikes and the fact that American citizens have been the target of some drone strikes.

This project attempts to imitate the increasingly popular “Let’s Play” style of video predominately featured on platforms such as YouTube and Twitch. These videos feature a broadcaster walker viewers through or previewing games in entertaining ways. The videos have grown extremely popular in recent years, especially in younger demographic and can be spotted across all forms of social media. Popular online personalities, such as famed YouTuber PewDiPie, are making millions of dollars and have become vital marketing outlets for brands to reach younger customers. The videos seem to all follow a similar format and depending on the notoriety of the channel will have various levels of advertising and sponsored content.

In this way I hoped to again examine the realness of war and our relationship in understating it. If hollywood representations can seem more realistic or familiar to us than real footage taken from a drone what does that say about our understanding of the real conflict and what our troops or enemies experience?

In terms of creating the video, I spent a great deal of time watching Let’s Play videos since I had never really seen too many before. I found them to be fairly boring and unfunny, but they all follow a similar format and illicit millions of views and the personalities accrue hundreds of millions of followers and follow a similar format. In addition I was also trying to draw influence from the YouTube performance artists we looked at during the beginning of the semester. Imitating the YouTubers was a bit difficult because I am not much of an actor and just talking to a screen and pretending to speak to an audience was pretty hard. The footage from the drones was actually incredibly easy to find and appropriate. The footage is surprisingly readily available on YouTube and had well over 1.7 million views. In the end I hope this communicates a critique on the topics of the war, our use of drones, our misperception of modern warfare and video games and how online personalities are creating uninspired videos that target and exploit young viewers around the world.

This was tough to share because I normally don’t share my feelings at all, and to talk about my sisters was even more hard because I really don’t like to share anything about them at all in general either. I felt really vulnerable sharing the hard details of growing up with my sisters because most people feel that they are only able to the the good things about having siblings with handicaps but I wanted people to hear the truth and hardships and also the good times. This lets people see not only my childhood, but a little more about a part of my life of that a few select people get to hear.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AmMRILBV4pY&feature=youtu.be

For my final video project I really wanted to test my self and try something I definitely have never done before. I found that all of my previous projects have been very personal and centered around my beliefs and experiences and I wanted to transcend that with this final project.

The initial inspiration came from two lessons I had learned in Film Theory class I took here at Lafayette College.

1. Hollywood agenda
2. Lack of homosexuality but heavy use of homoeroticism

To go into more detail, it was the idea that basically the production companies on the larger scale are arguably biased and have only money as an incentive for their work. The second point is that non humorous portrayal is still very rare in movies, but movies like Die Hard and Rambo seem to sexualize men in very homoerotic ways. I heavily believed that both of these ideas were completed B.S. and that there was no validity to them at all. I love Hollywood movies and I don’t like Die Hard cause of all the guy hugs. But as I re-watched such pieces of work with this now in mind I realized there is truth to these points.

This is how I decided to come up with Breaking Point, a video art project that eventually evolved into a trailer for a movie called Les Amoureux (lovers). Basically I took what is my favorite movie of all time that definitely would fall under both these points and used my little editing skills to bring out these themes in the movie.

What I realized is unreal, after my first sweep of the movie I had 16 minutes of clips that without audio one may think they were from a piece of gay pornography. I also realized how Hollywood this film really was in its ideals that it portrayed for its characters. I was even able to take the title “Point Break” and redefine it as the breaking point at which a gay person would come out. The product was truly uncanny and unbelievable revealing to myself.

There is a component inherent in almost every person that responds to some sort of sexual or self-awakening. There is a delicious nature to how each one of us came to life. In this video, I used my mind and body to encompass a few themes; love, self indulgence, death, fertility, and the notion of being dirty and clean at the same time.

Often, especially in our current day there is a negative stigma that circles around “dirtying yourself” through the acts of sexual pleasure (especially relevant to women). I wanted to show an opposing side to this stigma by physically dirtying myself with the sticky and messy fruit, but through my facial expressions and body language displaying the sensual lustfulness of being a woman and being a part of a larger process such as birth, love, and death. The act of sex is one that can be underrated or misused, which ultimately decreases its power and true being.

The majority of the color of the fruits I used in this performance is the color of flesh. My acts throughout represent an undoing and giving of ones self over to the pleasures of nature. I bathed myself in the wonders that the natural world provides us and at the same time sucked the life out of them, taking in all the luscious juices which are analogous to fertility and the intuitive nature of a woman, and enjoying the act itself; leaving not only a huge mess; but tasteless, ugly fruit that no longer serves its once powerful and beautiful purpose.

There is a concept of time that follows throughout this narrative, which starts off with a subtle yet strong heart beat, reaches a climax in the middle (just like an orgasm does), and falls down to the raw form of ones self by calming to a pulse. This journey can be seen not only in life itself, but also in certain events and experiences one may attain in such a time frame, which can be considered as the themes I mentioned earlier.

The title of this piece is “La Petite Mort par les Fruits” in our modern day can be translated to the sensation of orgasm as likened to death, by fruits. “La petite mort” is a phrase in French, which describes the post-orgasmic state of unconsciousness and the spiritual release that arrives with having an orgasm that can often be followed by a short period of melancholy or transcendence as a result of such expenditure. French is a sensual, romantic language, which I believe fits perfectly into the mold of such a story as this.

Lastly, Pink Floyd has a sort of sensual and beautiful nature that at the same time brings with it melancholy and darkness. In the studio that I filmed this performance, I started Dark Side of the Moon and let it play throughout the piece. I later used the original audio tracks to match it up with the exact time frame of the music in the footage itself, because my actions were also largely reliant on the sounds I was hearing and almost flowed with the melodic and lyrical being of the album.

From the outset of developing a final project, I chose to create a piece I felt emotionally connected to as I believe that is where my most poignant work evolves. As I mentioned in my proposal, I felt especially connected to Marina Abramovic’s Art Must Be Beautiful, Artists Must Be Beautiful. I think I was most attracted to the work because of her vulnerability and the tone of obsession that was conveyed by her compulsive hair brushing. Struggling with my own obsession and the compulsions that accompany it, I used the theme of obsession as my launchpad into a project.

Knowing I am uncomfortable in front of the camera, I expected to create a film that referenced but did not physically include me, perhaps by creating a story of someone else’s struggle which I documented, for example. However, I chose to put myself in an uncomfortable position and potentially capture a similar vulnerability to what I felt in Abramovic’s piece. My obsession manifests into the compulsion of eating the same thing for breakfast each morning. While the aesthetic approach I chose is simple, I think it articulates my point best.

Each morning as I sat down to eat my egg whites, cantaloupe, honeydew, and half grapefruit, I was joined by a camera. I filmed the entirety of a week’s worth of breakfasts, documenting a task seemingly mundane yet extremely charged with obsessive tendencies. The filming strategy itself references different approaches we have discussed throughout the course instead of complying to one approach completely. There is no reference to video appropriation, however both video performance and citizen journalism influenced the work. While I am unanimated and do not interact directly with the camera, my movements and habits are a performance recorded by the camera. Instead of choosing to record certain moments of my meals, I let the camera record each in its entirety, similar to citizen journalism tactics.

I faced various challenges while creating the piece, both personally and in the production itself. I put myself in a position to face something about myself that I am not comfortable with, unsure of what the product would be. While editing my footage I had to make some challenging decisions. Initially I cut pieces from each meal and edited them consecutively to portray one meal. I felt this conveyed my point, but I was not entirely satisfied with it. My inspiration was renewed after we discussed splitting the screen to show several days simultaneously. This is the approach I ultimately took. iMovie restrained me from displaying more than two videos at a time, however I could see the project expanding. If I collected daily footage over a longer period of time and edited it in such a way that many days could be displayed at once, I think the viewer would be overwhelmed and the sense of obsession would be stronger.

For my final project I wanted to work with GoPro footage that I had taken in the summer at home, and appropriate it into a new video that has a new storyboard and overall idea. I had first started with the idea of taking out all of the existing sounds and change them to irrelevant sounds that created a new story. I found this challenging to create and focus on a specific topic. After I had discussed and brainstormed new ideas I decided I wanted to create some sort of horror movie with the same footage but adding my own sound files and music. I succeeded in doing this but felt it needed a direction or plot because the video built up and up and then suddenly ended.

I wanted to try and incorporate an issue such as global warming and some how tie it into my overall theme of a horror movie, but was unsuccessful in finding fitting footage that could blend well with my existing clips. We then discussed the idea of using a natural disaster in the movie, I found that Hurricane Katrina had a lot of content on the internet and fitting clips.

I think if I had more time I could have created and thought of a more fitting idea that relates to myself and had a stronger message, but overall the final project turned out pretty well. All of the sound files were added and blended into the video files to make it flow smoothly and act as though the sound was coming from the GoPro. I showed many of my friends the video and they were shocked at how well the sound fit to the video and needed proof that I did that myself with unrelated clips from youtube, because of how well it flowed. I tried to make it as realistic as possible and bring the audience to a point where they were curious and intrigued as to what was going to happen next. The end clips are very shocking and hard to believe a natural disaster can do so much damage. With that being said, I think I did a good job of blending the two and kept the audience at the edge of their seats.

For this project I knew that I wanted to do stop motion animation. I knew that it would take a lot of time and effort, but it was something I have always been interested in doing. I have done some small stop motion animation projects, but nothing of this magnitude. After being introduced to the work of Martha Colburn I became even more inspired to create a video using this technique.

I chose to narrate and animate a story written by Dani Atkinson called Said the Princess. It is such a unique story in so many ways. One being that it twists the idea of a fairytale story in which the princess must be saved by the prince. In this case the princess is not the typical damsel in distress. In this story the damsel is in distress only because she realizes that the villain expects the prince to save her. She claims that she knows the prince won’t be able to save her and that he was probably trapped somewhere and needed her to save him. The princess addresses the flaws of the prince, but loves him anyways. She is motivated to escape her predicament in order to rescue the prince. Although you don’t see much of the prince he is also very different from the usual fairytale prince. He is not perfect and that is addressed blatantly in the story. He is physically unable to save the princess and instead is the one who needs the saving. These aspects hint at feminist themes. By saying and showing that women don’t always need to be saved, men can also be in the position of a lad in distress. It also doesn’t try to imply that the prince is any less of a man because he is unsuccessful at rescuing the princess or that he is the one in need of rescue.

Another unique aspect of this story is that the protagonist, the princess, can hear the narrator. The narrator and the princess go through a slightly awkward situation. The narrator claims to only be a voice, the princess copes with the fact that she can hear this strange voice, The narrator is omniscient, so being able to hear the narrator helps the princess learn about her captivity, her captor and how to escape. In this situation the princess and the narrator often conversate in between the narrator’s descriptions of the princess’s activities.

After creating this video I realized how difficult it is to do stop motion animation. I have so much respect for those who can make full length movies at 30 framse per second. In this video there are not 30 frames per second, but way less than that. If I were to do a 5 minute stop motion animation with 30 frames for second I would need 9000 frames to create the movie. It took so much time, effort and patence in order to complete the video. The taking of the photos were fun yet time consuming, The most difficult part would have to be the editting though. In the video, speech is animated. It took a lot of time to correctly match up the mouth shapes to the audio that it was supposed to produce.