Sara Taksler said that she loves political satire because it inspires people to take action. She said that it is the spark that ignites the viewers inner fuel to take action and change the world they are being exposed to, but how come those who watch satire are taking the least amount of action?

Political satire is a genre that grew from the Greeks. The Greeks use to put on a playwright competition where the best playwrights would write a drama, a comedy, and a satire. This competition was called the Dionysia. Dionysia was a 5 day festival where all Athenians would flock to enjoy some of the best and wittiest playwrights pieces. These pieces were praised by politicians in power and enjoyed by all. This competition died out as wars raged on, but these genres lived on through the will of the people. Now these art forms have evolved and are being practiced and preformed on platforms that have evolved with the evolution of media.

Now we have papers such as the Onion that write satires that are now available online. We now have shows like Last Week Tonight, The Late Show, The Daily Show, and so many more. These shows reach millions of viewers and have cult fan bases.  The largest audience of these political satire shows are millennials. The millennials who watch these shows are associated with a more democratic or liberal mindset. According to Sara the millennials who watch these shows should be the most driven to create change, but facts from the recent election and primaries would show other wise. According to Election Project, the age group of 18-29 year olds had the lowest turnout rate by a margin of 20% during the 2016 election. This age group also declined by more than 5% from the previous election and declined almost 10% from the last controversial election of 2008. Despite the fact that more satire shows are showing up and despite what Sara said, viewers seem to be getting more complacent and are taking even less action then before. Satire might not be the spark that lights the fuel anymore, it just might be another platform of information.

Here is my rough cut. I am thinking about adding a intro title card and some music to it. I was wondering if gradually introducing the music in the beginning would be a good idea? I’m also wondering if I cut the interview too short. I have more footage and could expand it, but thought it would be better if it was shorter. I can also add more b-roll if that is needed. I’m really open for any suggestions.

I a Jew. I have been to holocaust museums in Philadelphia, Washington, and in Israel and I have never seen something so grabbing and graphic.

The film instantly put me on edge with its ominous and daunting music. I became truly terrified when the music became heavier and they started to show shots of the train.  I was immersed in a nightmare when the train pulled into the concentration camp as night with soldiers silhouetted in the fog. I knew what was to come next. I had heard stories from survivors, I have seen pictures of the shower houses and the camps themselves, but I have never seen something so graphic. I have never seen a starved human rag doll. I have never looked into the stare of a beheaded human head. I have never seen people carry the skulls of another human and put them in a row next to other skulls. This film took me to a living hell and I never want to see it again.

But that is the point of the film as it ends with “It can happen again” which are the only words shown through out the movie. It could happen again. I write this with Newtown in mind and in the wake of Texas and know that mass shootings have happened again and again, as have genocides. We now have the means to capture the true hell that these events are; we now have cameras. We have always had people to tell us stories and artifacts to bring back, and statistics to point to, but we have never had cameras. We can now capture the true graphics of an event and show them to people. This is one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen and I never want to see it again and I will damn make sure I do everything I can to prevent another genocide. But after saying Newtown I might say the same thing, but I don’t feel the same way. I don’t feel that same disgust and unease after watching Newtown as I did after Night and the Fog. Maybe we do need to see the graphic, to understand the full story and to feel the whole set of emotion. Maybe instead of arming everyone with a gun, we need to arm them with cameras.

Kim Snyder tells the story of a preventable tragedy that shocked the nation and altered the way a small community viewed their town. One day one man changed everything for 26 families. Kim Snyder never shows this man and never names this man. Even though the viewer never hears or sees this man, the viewer still can feel the darkness this man brought to this town. Snyder’s interviewees are shot against a black back drop. The black darkness is always there in the background lurking which matches the dark tone of the film. Then randomly through out the interview quick cuts to black suddenly startle the viewer, leaving them in a state of unsettled confusion. This technique simulates what happened to those families who lost loved ones. A sudden darkness came into their life and took everything from them in a brief moment, but just like the interview, their life kept going on. Snyder does a fantastic job with capturing that aspect of their lives. Living with the pain of that day. There is one woman who says that she now divides her life into two parts before that day and after that day. Snyder shows the viewer the brutal and buried part of this story, the human side. She takes the viewer into a very small distant town and shows the viewer an intimate side of gun violence grief. This is something that I have never seen or experienced and hope that I or anyone else in this nation has to experience.

Recently The Loss We Can Gain team shot a live event. Shooting the event was not the challenging part, it was preparing for the event that proved to be the most challenging. During a live event there are many moving parts that you have to plan for before time. That means knowing the itinerary and the setting very well. We had to go and scout out the location days in advance to learn about the setup and get a feel for the room. It was there that we learned that there was a big window behind the speaker. This obviously created a problem because we couldn’t shoot the speaker straight on or else the shot would be blown out. We devised a better strategy and new angles. While shooting we also experienced technical difficulties. All of our sound devices stopped working. For a live event capturing the sound is the most important aspect. We luckily planned for a situation like this and had a zoom mic on hand. (I highly suggest always having a zoom mic on hand just incase anything goes wrong). This proved to be life saving and from that we were able to save ourselves from disaster. The most important thing I can say about filming live is to be over prepared and to know what you’re going to do before the actual day of the shoot.

During our last class, when we shot our interviews my group ran into some trouble shooting. Our sound was not working. The worst part about this is that we did not realize this mistake until half through our interviews. This meant that we had to go back and shoot all of the interviews again. That was after we fixed our mistake. Our mistake turned out to be that we never even turned on our receiver. This was such as simple error that could easily have been avoided, but non the less it happened with 6 people watching. This goes to show that just because it looks set up doesn’t mean that it is set up. Now I have learned, that before recording one should test all of the materials that they are working with to make sure that all systems are green.

For my interview I plan on interviewing Ben Cohen. He is a professor at Lafayette who is very active in environmental movements on campus. He is on the sustainability committee, he is one of the two environmental studies capstone professors and he is the faculty advisor for LaFarm. He has recently done a lot of work with LaFarm and the Easton Community. He has bridged these two through his work with Vegetables in the Community (VIC). VIC is a program that has been running for the past few years where two students work over the summer harvesting vegetables at LaFarm and then give them away for free at a community farmers market. This work has given out thousands of meals over the past few years and has given poorer families a more nutritional diet. I plan on filming him in his office and using B-roll from the past year of gleamings and farmers market that I have already taken.