Movement Manifesto

Manifesto Statements:

• Good art takes the everyday, the typical, and presents it in a thought inducing and inventive way
• Good art explores new approaches to something ordinary.
• Good art creatively blends conventional with experimental.

 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eP3iO6WNhc&feature=youtu.be  

Artist Statement:


In our manifesto we really wanted to conceptualize the significance of finding beauty in typical things or actions and depicting them in an interesting or unique way. We were really inspired by the grandeur found in Revolution (Life Cycle of a Drop of Water) by Chris Turner and Plastic Bag by Ramin Bahrani. As the title of each signifies, they are each about something simple and that we associate with every day. But through the creative eyes of these directors we as viewers are given new insight into the life of each of a simple drop of water and an average plastic bag. We, too, wanted to depict something very typical, but in a way that causes viewers to stop and really appreciate the magnificence something taken for granted. Breathing is definitely something that most of us take for granted; in fact it's so common that most of us can probably go all day doing it and not even think about it. In the exposition we have a girl under water drowning herself; withholding the very thing that grants her life: breath. We juxtapose this several times with underexposed clips of people using breath in various forms. This creates a stark contrast between one and the other: the first no longer wishing to breath, the other finding great joy in their use of breathing. Whether it is blowing out candles, catching your breath, or using a cool breath to cool down a drink, breathing is pretty spectacular and certainly under-appreciated. The last two scenes juxtapose a sigh of relief and choosing to come up for air and live. The multiple shots of types of breaths were to signify how whenever we are without air all we can think about is breathing. The scenes also gradually become shorter in length as the film progresses, in a similar way that breathing increases as stress increases. And then, finally, at the end we slow it down as the the sigh of relief is exhaled and the girl takes a much needed breath. Through this we hope that the viewer will view breath with more appreciation and maybe recognize its significance a little more regularly.

Creative Art Piece

http://vimeo.com/59026775

The everyday/factual/scientific/reality looked at through a colorful lens.

Historical Story

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B3j3VZNPVl2HcTV5N3dfQkpCb00/edit?usp=sharing

Artist Statement:

We told the amazing story of William “Buck” Holloway Joyner. The exact details of the event where not perfectly know. We did know that he cut an infection out of his leg, killed two guards and stole a plane to fly back to the American base.  We really wanted to humanize the opposing side (the Japanese) and fight against this stereotypical way of making them these heartless enemies. That is why we decided to follow Takeo a little bit in his home life and leave the decision of Buck’s reuniting with his family up to him. We really wanted some of the hero characteristics to reside with Takeo and not with Buck. We chose Takeo’s name, which means strong and good husband, to demonstrate that as well. We wanted Buck to be as true to his character as possible, and that character was not perfect.  We didn’t want him to be the stereotypical WWII idealized hero, we wanted him to have flaws (the drunkenness and the murder of two people) but have a true motivation for the escape (family). We didn’t want to take the flat “action film” approach to this story. We rather focus on the difficult and unique relationship that exists between a POW and the sincerely kind captor he has known for the past 8 months and the connection they have through fatherhood.

Reading Neufeld’s, “After the Deluge” it makes you realize the importance of stories and the power they hold in preserving the past so that it can be told to those in the future. The individual stories shared in the comic are stories that would have been shared to few people or left untold if they had not been adapted into some type of media and shared on the internet. As film makers we are foremost storytellers and sharing the past is a duty we have to our ancestors and to humanity in general. In our script we combine these two duties we have by sharing a story about April’s grandfather and like the stories in Neufeld’s comics we are preserving and sharing an isolated incident within a great event in our world’s history (or nation’s history). We also can better connect with April’s grandfather as well as the people in Louisiana allowing us to be more sympathetic to those times or that event which helps us learn from or be further moved by the actions that take place. Storytelling is history and as film makers we are in a great position to contribute to that.

  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHfr8nydUxE

This video is a video that was randomly found on youtube by the Joyner clan, and it features Buck Joyner. You first can see him at 1:26 on the left hand side. He is the shorter gentleman.  At 2:36 he is giving a speech and at 2:45 he looks right at the camera. Buck passed away in May of 2012 and was just recently buried in Arlington National Cemetery on February 3, 2013. Watching this was inspiration. It’s a living memory and portrayal of immortality for Buck.  Being able to picture him in your mind, his movements and the way he looks, really helps you along with character development. 

Genealogical Artifact

I’ve lived in the same house all my life. My parents moved there a couple months before I was born, and I slept in the same bedroom every single night until I left for college. There is a lot of good and a lot of bad accompanied with that house, as there is with life in general. A decorative negative was the god-awful, moldy, 80’s shag carpet that inhibited our floors when my family first moved into the house. It was the color of dirty beige and had shag so deep it covered your ankles. Okay, so that’s a lie but it was stained all over from the wear and tare of children. When I was about 10 years old, my parents decided it was time to change the carpet out. I was surprisingly devastated. I had cried on that crappy shag carpet. I had fought and laughed and bled my guts out so much that a rug was stapled into the floor in hopes that no one would accidently see the stain. This carpet was my childhood and my parents were willing to chuck it out without even noticing that my brother and I had taken hours to permanently ingrain hot wheel tracks within it. Much to my joy, however, they replaced the carpet everywhere in the house BUT the playroom where I spent much of my time. The new carpet was nice. It was soft and lovely to look at. Pretty soon hard times hit my family and our new carpet became stained and worn mainly from the secrets it was holding about the abuse. I grew up, left for college and came home for summer. My mother was replacing the carpet yet again. I threw a fit. This new carpet was not MY carpet, as MY carpet was not MY carpet when it was first installed. I quickly ran to the playroom so that I could lie on the floor and feel the familiar bumps and stains of the carpet original to the house. It was gone. Mother had even replaced that room too. My childhood was over. I was never again to be 6 years old crying silent tears because I split apple juice on the carpet, the carpet and the apple juice stain that no longer had a place in the only house I called home. My mother sensed my sentimentality and presented me with a shadow box with three stripes of carpet in it; the 1^st strip the original carpet, the 2^nd from when I was 10, and the 3^rd a piece of the new carpet just installed. My mother rolled her eyes remarking my strange love for the “damn carpet” but it wasn’t the “damn carpet” I cared so much for. That night I tried sleeping in the brand new double bed that had replaced the twin I was used to, but couldn’t. I went to lie down on MY carpet, but it was gone. I stared long and hard at the shadow box and began to sob. I would never go back to the life I knew with those past carpets. It was over. No more hot wheels with my brother, no more wrestling matches, no more late night snacks spilt on the floor, no more yelling, and crying and beatings. I realized that I didn’t care about the carpet; I cared about the phases of my family that had stained those pieces of floor covering. The original carpet of my childhood, aged and worn with cheerio crumbs representing when my family was oh so young and developing. The carpet from my adolescent and teen years riddled with tears and blood and true trials of a family. Then the brand new carpet— beautiful, fresh, and unstained; an opportunity for my family’s future. So there I was lying on my floor staring at the shadow box full of carpet making tear stains on the freshly installed soft flooring. Damn new carpet. Mother will kill me if she sees I’ve already ruined you. 

Artist Statement:

I focused on the carpet from my home in Texas. As I came to write the story I put on some of my favorite music and just really concentrated. I wanted to get the voice right because it’s just not just an item we need to do justification to, but to ourselves and the meaning behind the object. I sat down and just let the story flow out. I didn’t stop or think I just kept writing and writing wanting to go back and fix any errors or revisions later. I wanted the story to be as natural as possible but still have a certain written artistic style that I know I didn’t present when I told it in front of the class.  We were told to have a certain degree of performance within our text. I struggled with this. By my final draft of the story I feel like I did accomplish this, but it took a while to define what I wanted to go for, which was just straight up natural speak but a fair amount of imagery as well as opening up a little bit about my family and our relationship struggles throughout the years of growing together. 

The poem from our reading (On page 112) really inspired me to choose the carpet. It says the lines, “Not only did they touch me, or my hand touch them: they were so close that they were a part of my being…”. I really contemplated this while choosing my subject and the carpet stuck out clearly as something that was more than just an object from my life it was a part of being that it could have “lived half my life and will die half my death.”

I am a fan of the classics, so we are gonna kick it old school and reference The Scarlet Letter. Just as within the novel, a piece off fabric has so much more symbolism and metaphorical meaning than it presents. In The Scarlet Letter it represents Hester’s pain, suffering and societal judgments on her. She wears her sin, her troubles, and her past. In many ways, the carpet of my family literally holds all the stains from mishaps and wrestling matches and fights that mark us as this imperfect family with things to be judged for. People could look at our carpet and see what we are. That may be exaggerated to an extreme but I know I would happily cut a piece of the old carpet and pin it to my clothing if people desired me to represent the sins of my family in a tangible way. I would wear it proudly to make the point that no one has a right to judge my family, that they are mine and I am grateful for the good and the bad choices we have made that have gotten us to where we are, which is still fundamentally screwed up, but at least still a family.  Maybe this carpet, like Hester’s scarlet letter, is my “passport into regions where other women dared not tread”(Nathaniel Hawthorne).