Frijolero by Molotov

I Don't Wanta Fanta!

The Molotov Man

I read the Molotov Man article a while ago, but I never wrote a blog about it because I was blown away by to the point that I didn't know where to start or organize my thoughts, so I just figured I'd respond to it later. I have accepted the fact that I just need to let my thoughts flow. Seriously, this article is perhaps the most impactful article I have read all semester. Let me begin with Joy Garnett. I was sympathizing with her at the beginning of the article to tell you the truth. I didn't see anything wrong. She had taken an image and made it her own as well as all her supporters. Wasn't Joy helping Susan out in way by bringing attention to her photograph? Have not many images gone into the public domain after so many years? Perhaps, but what Joy had done was decontexualize the original image. That is the problem.

"Who owns the rightst to this man's struggle? The words continue to resonate in the room.

Meiselas was documenting the war in Nicaragua. In fact, she had documented a crucial moment in Nicaragua's history when this man is threw a molotov cocktail at the Somoza national guard garrison, "one of the last such garrisons remaining in Somoza's hands." The Sandinistas would soon after take power and govern Nicaragua for about ten years "and this image ended representing that moment for a long time to come". Meanwhile, this image of the Molotov man would reappear all over Nicaragua; on walls, on matchbox covers, on church pamphlets. Anyways, If I were Susan Meiselas, I would probably feel the same way about Pablo Arauz's context being stripped away. He had fought too hard to have his story turned into an image of an abstract riot. In the end I can't help but agree with Susan. We owe it to ourselves and our subjects to preserve the specificity of these images, so that everyone may known its history. Because those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it as Santayana once said. Just because you can manipulate an image doesn't mean you have to. And Susan's photo didn't need to be manipulated. Yet, I can't help but say that certain images/footage might benefit the public by being manipulated, or parodied. Parody. Now thats something to take into account. What if I want to send a beneficial message to the public by manipulating an image of George W. Bush, which might cause people to see him in a new light. For the good of the public.
Anyways, I'm still thinking about this. You know, my found footage video on Fanta was a parody. Soda is bad for you in general, and the types of marketing for this product is insanely over-the-top (fanta can chasing people), so I decided to make fun of it. Besides, its a subject that I don't think you can compare to the seriousness of Pablo Arauz and the Sandinistas.
By the way, there is a rock/hip hop band called Molotov from Mexico that is extremely popular for there politically charges songs. I wouldn't be surprised if they were inspired by the Molotov man.

I Want My Eggs Scrabbled with Cheese

I have never worked so fast in such a short amount of time in my life. I completed my project in about 10 hours (I only had one class that day). Honestly, I don’t know how I finished it on time. God must have felt sorry for me and slowed down time while I was working on the project. First of all, I didn’t really start my project until very early Wednesday morning for various reasons, one of them being the fact that I kept changing my idea beforehand. I must have changed it a billion times before I finally was satisfied with my scrabble idea. I felt that with scrabble pieces I could creatively put the Space odyssey quote into the project, which I did. And it allowed me to do stop-motion. Stop-motion = awesomeness. I ended up using my sister’s digital camera, and it hated me with a passion. I had to drive to Wal-de-mart and buy a new memory stick because her memory stick was full, and then I had to drive all the way to her house to pick up the charger because the camera died at noon. I also had used her cell phone to a shoot a 15 second clip of a book sliding across the floor, but Final cut only imported it as a single frame, which is why it is only a single frame in the project. It was part of the story I had in mind of a book of games sliding to my feet and me opening it up and suddenly seeing words appear on a page out of nowhere. As you can see in the video, it tells me that I must play scrabble in order to win the prize; the ultimate prize being the cheese sandwich of course. Anyway, if I had used the 15 seconds then my project would have gone over one minute, so it was all good in the end, or so it seemed… I went to the editing lab that afternoon and edited faster than I had ever edited before. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy had me mesmerized. I had been studying Tchaikovsky in music history class which is why I had the song stuck in my head. I printed to video around 9pm and raced to Cheese sandwich. It played back fine during print to video, but I forgot to see if it actually printed anything. It didn’t. So, I was a little disappointed in myself. Shit happens. At least now I will never make the mistake again of not checking it. Anyways, I was just glad to be there and see everyone else’s projects which I thought were amazingly incredible. Every time I find it fascinating how people can take the same assignment and dish out completely opposite, yet fantastic works.
If I could change anything, I would have stop-motioned each word to the point that the words would have written themselves out smoothly, but I was worried that I would run out of time at the time. Oh and one more thing, I’m sure you can notice the chalk on the floor around the scrabble pieces. I didn’t have a tripod and it was the only thing I could think of in order to have the frame in the same spot the entire time. Haha.

My Answer to the 48 Hour Video Race: Scrabble with Cheese

Do Work!

I have not had too much time to think about the 48 hour video so I’m glad I can start brainstorming for this project through this blog. I think I am going to use a cell phone that I can take pictures with, and if it can film video too even better. Luckily my sister lives in town so I can borrow her cell phone. I think incorporating digital stills would not be a bad idea either because I could play with these by creating a pixilation like in 201. I also would love to do stop-motion animation again. It’s tedious, but I enjoy doing it. Including found footage is something I might do as well. Anyway, in class last week someone mentioned using a gameboy, which is an awesome idea, but it got me thinking about using an Etch-a-Sketch (oh, the memories of elementary school) to create images and then take still pictures with a camera. I can later create a pixilation with these pictures just like with the digital stills, but the sketches might be too faint to capture.
Two weeks ago during class we were given an item and we had to create a story it. When we were done we switched cameras and were given a new prop and we had to add on to the story that was filmed by another group who had a different prop. There were three groups, three cameras, and three props if that helps any to paint a clearer picture. It was kind of like that game where a line is added to a story as it goes down a row of people to create a series of barely related but comical situations. It was interesting to see that each group focused on a different genre of film per prop. My group tended to focus on action-thriller, and our three shots turned out pretty awesome…and made me look like a psychopath in all of three…haha. Anyways, it was good practice for the 48 hour video race since with whatever prop we are assigned I would like to create a narrative of some kind. In the meantime I will turn my brainstorm drive on high power before March 30th…because a theater without beer is just a museum (Bertolt Brecht). I love that quote.

The Saturday Shoot

Saturday’s shoot with the Bolex 16mm camera was an interesting experience. First of all, I have never had to go to class on a Saturday in my entire life, but since this was for a film class it was ok by me. When I arrived, everyone was standing underneath a tree by Hoggard Hall and it was raining. Everyone who was helping our group out was in costume -pretty outrageous costumes I tell ya-, and there was also a prop penguin. So, I just want to say thanks to Joselyn for bringing all that stuff because it added that finishing touch to the mise en scene. And also a big thanks for choreographing the dances. I wish we could have done the entire swing routine we had come up with, which brings me to the fact that we were jipped on the time constraint. Someone told our group that we only had 26 seconds to film and then someone else said that we had 56 seconds. We ended up filming 26 seconds while other groups filmed 56, which really pisses me off. Afterwards, while we were developing the film, everyone was a little worried that the footage was not going to come out well either, that it might be over exposed, but when I saw it projected I was like phewwww. It was fine. Now, when I edit the footage next week, I might be able to make up for the short time by adding slowmo, or reversing the footage as Andre suggested. Regardless, I still love the footage that we filmed even if it might be a little short. Just as important is the fact that I had fun doing it. The adreline rush that day was great, and sometimes creative juices flow faster when you know that you have a time limit, not to mention being at odds with mother nature as well. I loved the choreography ,and the camera movement was great. Sometimes its amazing what you can fit into one long take.