Proposal

For my proposal I have chosen a piece that is currently in production and has been in production for almost a year. The piece is currently titled “Lake Drive”. The piece deals with the intervention of time. It takes myself and the camera man roughly around 22 minutes to complete the initial drive, but when the edits are added you travel an entire 12 months in the span of 22 minutes. The goal of this piece is to disorient the viewer’s perception of time. By combining all the months, the path and duration stay the same but the times change. The viewer should be taken for a ride through the seasons of Milwaukee in one car trip. The trip will start with one season and then flow into a random or highly contrasted season. All seasons will be displayed from the same angle in the vehicle with the same mount and framing.

-Dusty Vollmer

It's all just a big narrative anyways...

On a very simple level, a narrative film would be considered any film that tells a story. With that said I could see the argument in saying that "Duck Soup" provides an intervention into narrative film with the fact that all of the stunts and skits that they have laid out, are laid together with script to provide a story. I would say that it is an intervention into narrative due to the fact that it is obvious that these skits where put together before there was a story. I'd assume that the story was loosely woven around the acts or performances that they felt they wanted to display, and in this manner they are offering a different strategy, if you will, on storytelling. The acts that they perform, merely build the background of the specific players or actors in question. These types of Marx Brothers films rely heavily on the foundation of the characters themselves and the stories usually are second to the performers themselves.
On the subject of suggesting that the film, "The Way Things Go", is a narrative, I would agree that it suggests that there is a linear plot to the film. I would only go as far to say that this is linear film as opposed to non linear film only because it is apparent to the viewer that this film is following a path of sorts. In this case it is almost recounting the events of this "Rube Goldberg" type setup. Looking back I would say that calling this an intervention into narrative film would be an interesting take on the film itself, however I try to avoid being concerned with the labeling of projects. The more I keep typing the more I like considering this film as an intervention, mostly because I think that the strong linear feel to the film would back up many points made to say that it is indeed narrative. I now believe that it is narrative. Seriously though, everything is narrative to the viewer, because the viewer creates memory of what they see and in this way they are creating their own story, if they choose to recall the information that they have stored as a memory. Mood alone would dictated the narrative of their memory itself.
Well that's it, becoming a little florrid.

Interventions of memory

I believe that James Benning's film, One Way Boogie Woogie/27 Years Later, is a good example of intervention involving memory. The film begins with images that are matched to their correlating audio and then 27 years later the same shot is presented with the corresponding audio from 27 years ago. The audio in this case poses itself as a place mark on a visual memory map, if you will. The audio triggers memories that were created 60 minutes prior and causes your mind to recall visual events. The visual events that are displayed in your mind's eye are visual representations of what you stored as a memory to your reaction to the visual. Your mind stores the memory of the audio and then searches to match the original audio with your original visual memory which is also combined with the current visual display, creating a new memory unique in it's self. So, in this way, James Benning has created an intervention of conventional memory making, by evoking your visual memory to recall an event that corresponds with the same audio.

Barbie Liberation Organization

- The Barbie Liberation Organization was formed in 1989.
- Circuit boards had to be trimmed, a capacitor moved, and a switch re-engineered.
- The dolls had stickers that instructed the buyer to call their local TV station.
Your LIST OF THREE must include:
a statement about WHAT constitutes their practice. (what do they do?)
The Barbie Liberation Organization takes the Teen Talk Barbie and swaps the Talking Duke G.I. Joe’s voice boxes. This way the products say things that were intended for a different audience.
- WHAT is the goal or target of their practice
The goal of their practice is to change the message that Barbies are putting out to the youth. They want to break the norm of the degrading comments that Barbies spew. They also want to make people aware of what children are being influenced by.

Sunlight

I would say that sunlight was the main character in "Love's Refrain" by Nathaniel Dorsky. The reason I say this is that it is the most frequently featured item, to me, in the film. Whether the sunlight is creating a reflecting, a shadow, or just by it's self, it is the most frequent item in the film and due to the in class discussion, that would make it the main character of this film. When I noticed all the shadows present I started to think that shadows would be the main character, but I continued to think about what makes shadows and I eventually realized that a good portion of the shots in this film used natural light ie the sun. I also thought about the way the glass was used to misconstrue the viewers ideas of what they were viewing, and after a moment's ponder, I realized that that was indeed sunlight again.
Sunlight.

Spiral Jetty

I was confused at first as to why the piece included this man running the path of the Spiral Jetty. The more I thought about it the more I began to see why it fit. Throughout the piece you see a lot of machinery creating this piece, with the occasional human, but for the most part you see machines and nature. At the end you see this person running the path, and in a way it is displaying the connection between this piece of art, the earth, and humans. It would be a different piece with out the presence of a person. It definitely displays the connection between people and the work of art.

Flying ant

At first when I thought of this table top project I thought of using an idea that I had in a dream. The dream was, everyone in the class having their own mirror, and by a few couple turns, we (the audience) would be able to explore the entire room thru the use of hand held mirrors. This was the plan, until I was informed that the class would not be present during filming, which makes sense. Next obstacle…We viewed some pieces from previous classes. There was a piece that involved a mirror and a similar concept. I then decided to keep the concept of exploring the room with mirrors, but I decided just to change a few variables to affect the general feel of the piece. The variable that I changed was the lighting. I simply turned off the lights. This effect technically is only strong when showed along with other table top pieces. In all I was merely trying to explore the space of the room.

Upon arrival to the shoot, I realized that the people or persons I had made contact with about assisting myself in the angling of mirrors had not shown. I was lucky enough to have the assistance and collaboration of one Derek Ison and one Matt Wodenka. This piece really would not exist if they had not been present. This project also would not have happened had it not been for the extreme patience of Sarah Buccheri. I guess you could say that my professionalism was definitely down in this piece, only due to the fact that I didn’t make it to any of the practice times. I definitely had a specific visual guide in my mind, but making people see the same idea was a tough sell. Once it started coming together, the people involved definitely had the feeling that this could be redone and made better. The end result was interesting due to the guest appearance of two friendly flying ants that were confused by the lights. The timing was off, but then again it was sort of on the fly. I liked how it turned out, but I think it would be better with mechanical stands, motors, larger mirrors, ambient sounds, and outdoors. I definitely have a passion for exploring mirrors. I personally believe that they are a cheap gateway to an unexplored space.