The subject we chose is sustainable building. We hope this will encourage people to take extra steps toward moving into more eco-friendly homes in the future or making renovations to their current homes. The script is traditional because it does not stick 100% to the original essay and also involves interviews with people who have more to say than what was on the original paper.

It is both expository and performative. While there is a narrator reiterating what we said on our paper, there are also interviewees communicating with the viewer personally. The film is partially black and white and has somber music, setting a serious tone for a serious subject. The most challenging part of making this movie was trying not to make the same movie for the third time in a row. We sidestepped this a number of ways, but the interviews are the biggest change.

Patrick Thoits

Subrural

In this piece we primarily aimed to create a comparison between the urban sprawl and wildlife. To address the issues of coexistence between humans and nature, the film juxtaposes images of metropolis and forestry settings. We endeavored to create an “identity free” visual progression as this global issue applies to all humans. This silent film is a radical adaptation to an essay confronting complicity in regards to environmental awareness. The video piece takes an observatory and poetic approach at delivering its message. Visually the piece parallels patterns and ongoing events in both city and forest to define a connection. Due to a concise production plan, the making of this film went smoothly, leaving any challenges as simple scheduling constraints and remembering the variable shudder.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

From its beginning, we wanted it to be about Evergreen as an institution where supposedly we as students and faculty aim to, put simply, embody the “Five Foci” in our attempt to learn in ways that allow us to self-determine apart from the social structures and institutions that arrange our behavior into complicity. We also wanted it to be specifically about exercising our freedom to educate ourselves collaboratively. We were asking ourselves a lot of questions. Realizing that the idea of accountability itself can be taken in a lots of ways – the most common seeming to be about spending money ethically or voting – and that the issue of how to work towards ‘social change’ is complex and confusing, we wanted to reflect the need to really think about it both in our writing and our adaptation.

Footage for the video was largely taken while we were actually hanging out and walking, talking about these issues, which was nice because we wanted our video to reflect the practice of discussing, the general plurality of perspectives, and our time spent at both Evergreen and the places where we continue our learning experiences everyday. Spontaneity kind of took precedence over scripting. Only half of what we wrote ended up in our piece, unfortunately, and we also had to omit recordings of conversations and footage from an interview we had last week with activist/writer Kenyon Farrow due to the 7 minute limit.

A film by Joel Nelson and Sean Neagle

Watch a Donkey Fight an Elephant Artist’s Statement

            For our film, Watch a Donkey Fight an Elephant, we focused on the two party system and how it has lead to an un-democratic system of government, which in turn, has lead to greater voter apathy. Our video focuses more on the justice aspect of the program, particularly the idea of just government. Our essay changed a lot based on feedback from our PODS, who helped us clarify our ideas, and address the issues of culpability and what we can do to help. We used our AV script more as a general outline when shooting, leaving plenty of room for improvisation. We were fortunate in that Green Party candidate Jill Stein was speaking on campus while we were shooting, lending more voice to our ideas. Our essay was literal, but we took a more performative route with the video itself. The video also contains some elements of advocacy as well. In general, we tried to make an informative, performative, black comedy with our video. The most challenging aspect for us was writing our AV script. We worked long and hard on it to make our ideas clear, and come up with interesting visuals to go with our text.

ARTIST STATEMENT

The message we were trying to communicate is how only through understanding the repercussions of our actions can we facilitate change, for we cannot care for anything of which we do not know.  The process of creating this piece was a little unorthodox because we disregarded the visuals while writing the script, and disregarded the written script while creating the visuals. The method of adjusting the collaborative essay into a script followed in suit, drastically different, the video hosts a radical adaptation. Despite a somewhat haphazard conception, in the end, things melded together cohesively. The piece predominantly uses the reflexive and poetic modes of representation, with a small element of performative mode. The video is comprised of many shots regarding the environment, and human interaction within it. There are also supplemental moments of abstract representation. The most challenging thing about this project was creating a pre production plan, and following through with it. Additionally, we ran into many technological issues when transferring media, from one workstation, to the next. Ultimately, the project was a success.

Nonfiction Media

October 23^rd, 2012

Click here to view the embedded video.

Artist Statement

Our film, “Looks Good Enough to Eat”, is about the impact of food waste and food production on the human race’s efforts to be sustainable.  In developing this film Jeb and I borrowed ideas from one another’s independent works to create a truly collaborative project. Because of the similarity between our two works this was a very natural effort. Our intention was to shed light on the ways our food production and consumption harms the environment.  While it borrows aspects of absurdism our film is a fairly traditional and literal visual representation of the essay we wrote. Our mode of representation was highly expository but our deliberate appearances on screen were participatory. Stylistically, the film was dry and straightforward, although imaginative in parts of our participatory aspects.  The biggest issue for us in production was getting all of the footage we wanted. There were certain shots from our AV script that we simply weren’t able to get because of their impracticality. We wanted to get footage of a large scale industrial farm but our inability to get to one made that impossible. If such footage had been available it may have competed with, and outshined, our participatory role in the film. Regardless, for the resources at our disposal we made the best possible film we could and had a great time doing so.