Wednesday, January 21, 2015

Refugee Essentials
"The end of the line."


The Origin - I was really interested in some basic ideas of materialism and attachment, recurring themes in The Medium is the Massage. Just before making "Refugee Essentials," I was in a group of people who were temporarily displaced by a pipe burst in my house. The event had a relatively minor effect on my own possessions and all of our lives. We were each allowed to return to the house to grab "essential items" from our rooms before the house was restored. I was really intrigued and amused by some of the items which individuals considered essential.

The Method - The audio originates from two sources. 1) I conducted short on-camera interviews about the central event in this film. 2) I collected audio samples of dripping and cascading water flows and breaking wooden boxes. The audio established stark contrast between the first and second half of the video. The visuals includes shots of lights seen through thick household objects used as color filters and close-ups of material objects. This visuals support the same contrast between the beginning and end of the video. The filtered images of lights hint to themes of death and severity, while the material objects establish an unexpectedly ironic tone as a conclusion.

The Inspiration - McLuhan writes, "The circuited city of the future will not be a huge hunk of concentrated real estate created by the railway. It will take on a totally new meaning under conditions of very rapid movement. It will be an information megalopolis." My experimental video is called Refugee Essentials. My project tries to display some of the material obsession that comes out of this age of mass production.
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3 comments:

  1. AnonymousJanuary 21, 2015 at 1:27 PM

    I loved the mixture of the ambiguous shots in the first half which contrasted the crystal clear and sharp shots in the second half.

    It was also interesting to hear the subject matter of the voice-over. I think if I had heard someone mention all of those materialistic things only verbally, it would have somewhat gone by unnoticed but with the visual aids, it made the speech so much more powerful! Can't wait to see what else you come up with in the future

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  2. UnknownJanuary 21, 2015 at 10:05 PM

    I love the ominous soundscape you've created and the eerie, abstract shapes in the beginning, contrasted with these divas talking about the VR tokens they rescued. It is both a very specific topic to our campus and a lighthearted joke at the expense of overdramatic privileged youth the world over.

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  3. UnknownJanuary 22, 2015 at 9:45 AM

    The two sections of your video are so interesting, and they equally take power away from each other. The first part makes me think about how much we tend, especially as filmmakers, to make certain events seem like life hinges on that one moment. To start the movie like that and in the same breath cut it down is super neat!

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