My American Beauty: TAKE TWO

MY American Beauty

As inspired by the bag scene from American Beauty, I want to explore the movement of leaves against the wind. I shot footage at multiple locations, where I or friends manipulated or rather added to the movement of leaves, and where I just filmed the movement of leaves in their own element with no interference. I am still unclear  as far as what filtering I may do with my scenes, but here is a more complete or more developed narrative than before.

I want my DVD to open up with the scene "bad" scene from American Beauty .  I want to then pull up my menu:

MY SCENES (tentative):

Scene 1:  " MY American Beauty"

                Will open with footage I took at the Smithsonian interacting two areas of film and the movement of leaves

Scene 2: "Rose Garden"

               With this Scene I want to be able to play with music and color. I shot footage of roses in the Smithsonian Garden and I want to explore the movement of color with the roses to music

Scene 3: "Yellow Tree"

I captured footage of this ONE Yellow Tree in the Smithsonian, I'd like to explore the dimensions and angles of that tree. At one point the wind blew so hard that it looks like the tree is snowing, but its just the leaves falling. I do not yet know how to play with that, but I would like to use these shots somehow.

Scene 4:  " Yellow Tree Stacked"

Again this scene will in someway explore the dimensions of the tree, from all its angles,. I liked the idea of stacking these clips as a way to pull the whole scene together. Except you do not see the tree in a linear order. You may see the top of the tree, than the trunk, or one branch, but not this top to bottom or bottom to top view.

Scene 4 and 5 (may be together, if I decide to include them): "Lonely"

           I shot these images and some linkages were that there were "lonely" benches in some of the footage. I want to put together a montage somehow to the tune of "Lonely". Also i took this shot of a lone leaf blowing on the sidewalk, and I'd like to play with that in this scene  as well.

            My concern, is that my narrative does not really speak as far as a story goes, at least not in the way that one would expect a story to "speak" so I am hoping that I am not grasping at straws.  ANY IDEAS?

Nature

Narrative Outline:

Working with the idea of nature in its elements and how they all intertwine. Goal this weekend November 14-16th is to take as much footage of nature elements to work with so that I can begin capturing and creating my narrative on monday.

My link in this story is that nature itself, and how it moves.. I kind of took my inspiration from the movie  American Beauty. There is a scene where one of the characters is shooting the bag blowing through the air. That scene is sort of my inspiration in really looking and exploring the beauty of nature, at its best.

[Again my problem is trying to create the story that flows well. But I think that the movement of nature tells its own story and I just need to figure out how to make the story speak more about itself (if that makes sense)]

Vignette 1: Exploring leaves falling, slowing them down, reversing the way they fall etc. I think that for the most part my story will be told more through how the videos can be manipulated to make you see nature in a certain light, than actually telling a story.

Vignette 2: The second scene is going to take the leaf falling and moving it throughout other scenes; by superimposing it into other footage that I have captured.

Vignette 3: I took footage of roses on the National Mall. I want to play with color manipulation and see if I can have the color changing on the individual roses to music.  I do not know how well I can actually play with the color and music tempo, but I want to explore this facet a little bit more.

What is the world REALLY?

This idea of a "world distorted" is an interesting concept. I'm finding that as we get more in depth with this class that what we see for ourselves may not be what is the "real" view.. And that life is really a story, based off the perspectives of another person. We are forever filtering information told to us by other people and trying to make the best of it. Most of that information we disregard others we take it in, in its full capacity. Semiconductor by Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt is an example of that technique. They are able to tell the story of Magnetic Fields through the use of this "distorted" view. Personally for me I think that Science would be much more interesting if I could see it visually like this. 

   This idea of distortion doesn't necessarily mean something bad or something destroyed, but it means something that can be manipulated. Some means for a person to tell the story they want, so that it takes the direction, view and ending that they want. The art piece by Ruth Jarman and Joseph Gerhardt open my eyes to a new way of viewing Science, it made it fun and interesting it wise quite amusing. 

Virtual Reality?

Lynn Hershman creates a world of virtual reality with her projects Lorna and Deep Contact. However, whose virtual reality is it? With the Lorna project the audience is given the opportunity to snoop into th characters past and see where thye came from and how them came to be in that position etc. Hwever, what is interesting about this concept is that in some ways the viewer begins to parallel Lorna in the fact that they are sitting down glued to this visual media. Unlike Lorna the audience however, does have the option to leave their physical setting, but what this brings up is the dependence of virtual games. People do not necessarily stay in one place because they are afraid of the outside world liek Loran, but isn't this attraction to media just as bad as her fear of leaving? I mean she watches TV and becuase of the content of that media becomes more fearful of the world outside. How often do we get wrapped up ivirtual reality that we tend to escape the outside wishing that our lives had some sense of a pattern that was easily attained.
This is the role that Soap Operas take for many stay at home moms etc. The lines between reality and fiction become somewhat blurred. If we rely too much on what scares us will we become like Lorna and hide behind the constructs of media intervention, replacing human interaction with a world of fiction?

A World in flux...

I am a fairly busy person. So I am wanting to try and take a day of my life or two days depending and just go through my daily routine. But in some way be able to mix it all up so that I could be eating dinner in like a classroom or something instead of being at home.