I did enjoy the last film, La Noire de, we watched for the class; directed by Ousmane Sembene, the "Father of African film." I still don't feel the film entirely convinced me that this woman had no other option but suicide though. It never tried to explain what would happen if she just left, but this may just be because It would've been more clear to the audience at the time and location of the film, so c'est la vie... or maybe such is death (don't know the french for that). This point, though, is why I enjoyed an earlier effort by Sembene, Borom Sarret, much more. It's a short film of around 2o minutes about a wagon driver; I loved how the film just showed another day on the job and how easily it can take a turn for the worse. It puts the poverty of the city right in your face and it also contains, like La Noire de, extensive use of voice-over. Check it out sometime.
Wednesday, May 11, 2011
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Soma
Here's the short film I wrote/directed/edited for my final project in the class if you want to check it out online.
Monday, May 9, 2011
Hiroshima mon GODZILLAAAA!!!
It was stated in the Caruth text we read, which was in regards to Hiroshima mon amour, that instead of making a documentary about the bombing of Hiroshima, Alain Resnais chose to shoot a film of fiction. Caruth goes on to say (and I'm paraphrasing) that she thought a more powerful truth was achieved by doing this; by shooting something close but indirect in its telling. Which brings me to Godzilla. More than just a potential monster cash-cow, Godzilla is an awesome answer to nuclear bombing and testing. Taken from Wikepedia: The opening scene of the Bingo Maru being obliterated by Godzilla's first attack and later scenes of survivors of other attacks being found with radiation burns, were inspired by the U.S. testing of a hydrogen bomb on Bikini Atoll. A real Japanese fishing ship, the Lucky Dragon 5, was overwhelmed when the U.S. Castle Bravo nuclear test had a yield of 15 megatons rather than the planned 6 megatons. Military personnel, island natives and several Lucky Dragon 5 crew members, persons believed to be in a zone of safety, suffered from radiation sickness and at least one died six months later. This created widespread fear of uncontrolled and unpredictable nuclear weapons, which the film makers symbolized with Gojira. The actual event played a major role in drawing attention to the hazards of nuclear fallout, and concerns were widespread about radioactively contaminated fish affecting the Japanese food supply.Godzilla's climactic attack on Tokyo was meant to exemplify a rolling nuclear attack, like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only much more slowly. Honda had plotted it this way, having been shocked by the real devastation of those cities.
The horrible sequel where Godzilla gets a son. So so bad.
So while these nuclear warnings can be read from the English version, Godzilla, King of the Monsters, (which has cut scenes of more direct nuclear references and added footage of American actor Raymond Burr) the Japanese version, Gojira, is where the power of responsible film-making is really at.... Well, as responsible as a man in a lizard suit with radioactive breath who has the ability to spawn multiple cheesy sequels can get, that is.
Original Japanese trailer Link. May need to copy/paste:
http://youtu.be/eSk-i1UFJWA
The horrible sequel where Godzilla gets a son. So so bad.
The Ascent of Apocalypse Now
For my final paper, I researched the soldier's psyche and how it was represented in the two films of Larisa Shepitko's The Ascent and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. I had, originally, chosen The Ascent, simply, because I love the film and because it does a fantastic job of showing Russian warfare in WWII; After re-watching it for this paper, I was pleasantly surprised by the other connections it had to Apocalypse Now. While the ascent in Shepitko's film is hopeful, I liked the idea of an ascent into madness that Coppola's film showcases. I use "ascend" instead of "descend" because there is a truth discovered at the end of the film that is only revealed to the soldiers because of their madness; and also because of the more literal use of them travelling up-river into madness. There is also some great ties to religious undertones in both films. We have a Christ/martyr role in The Ascent and a taking over the role of god by killing a god in Apocalypse Now. Anyways, I totally recommend Shepitko's film; it's really awesome and I'll provide you with a clip below; it's in Russian with no subtitles, but the visual power is what is at the forefront here.
Track-o-rama
I've only seen a few French New Wave films; those being Truffaut's 400 blows and Godard's Breathless and Contempt. From what I have seen, however, a sense of reveling in cinematic technique is observed. And while there can be some amazing things conveyed with the cut, I've always been fascinated with the tracking shot. It just reeks of directorial hard-work and, I feel, can be a true testament to an actor's skill. I love the tracking shot at the beginning of Contempt where it sways from right to left when the producer is met for the first time. Good stuff. So I thought I'd share some of my favorite tracking shots from two films separated pretty far, both temporally and geographically.
and John Woo's Hard Boiled
http://youtu.be/CTCymujrkMg
Orson Welles' Touch of Evil
and John Woo's Hard Boiled
http://youtu.be/CTCymujrkMg
Blade Runner Is For Fake
I remember there being talk about whether we should care or not for the Replicants, in class. Some brought up the "ghost in the machine" idea and another questioned whether a "soul" could exist anyplace but inside a human being. After seeing Orson Welles' F For Fake (aka F Is For Fake aka F Is For Fakes; I'm still not sure what the correct English title is) a couple of weeks before re-viewing Blade Runner, I started to see the Replicants in a new light; a light based in a theory put forth by F For Fake. It, basically, talks about the artistic merit of a forgery; when we see the fake and find it beautiful on first sighting why do we hate it when we find out the truth behind it? Is it because we feel our experience wasn't true? We feel cheated now?... Why should our initial reaction be tainted though? Is it not still as beautiful as when we first spotted it? Did we only like it because of the original painter? And what if we find it to be better than the original? I feel like all of these questions are just as viable to the Replicants as they they are to paintings. Anyway, it's a good and strange movie which I recommend checking out.
Blade Runner/BTAS
Yessss, I believe it's now time for the "Matthew Reagan catch-up blog posts for lit/film class" hour......... (Probably going to take me longer than an actual hour) Let's start light: In the film, Blade Runner, there is the character of J.F. Sebastian, a genius designer who works for the Tyrell Corporation and also suffers from progeria. Now I brought this up in class a long time ago and I thought I would expand for this is kind of my nerd area of expertise. I am, of course, referring to the character of Karl Rossum from Batman: The Animated Series or BTAS. Rossum is a total wink of the eye to the character of Sebastian; He is a creator of robots and advanced toys and is even voiced by the same actor who played Sebastian, William Sanderson. (a fantastic actor that plays dopey better than the best. See him in Deadwood for a prime example) Even more fascinating than this clever inclusion of the character is the selection of the name Rossum. This goes back to the play from 1921, R.U.R. or Rossum's Universal Robots. Wikipedia provides a fascinating read about it; the best part being where the word Robot actually originated from this play. Awesome! check it out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.U.R.
Video of the BTAS character:
Sunday, May 8, 2011
My final paper about the meaning of photographs
The Meaning of Photographs Today
In the past taking a photo required a lot more work than just pressing a button. Old time cameras were more complicated than today’s digital ones. Since taking pictures has become so easy there have been an abundance of landscapes, celebrations, and memories captured than ever before. I believe that photography today has a different meaning than it did in the past. For example, certain Native American tribes and certain religions had, and some still have, negative views on having their picture taken. There is the belief that if you have your picture taken that it will “steal your soul” (Bobos). Even Sontag comments on how people felt about photographs stating “the less sharp is the distinction between images and real things; in primitive societies the thing and its image were simply two different, that is, physically distinct, manifestations of the same energy or spirit” (155).
In the films Last Year in Marienbad and Hiroshima Mon Amour, the use and meaning of photography is different than what earlier “primitive” societies thought about photography. In Last Year in Marienbad the main character Mr. X is trying to convince the woman that they had met the year before and had a love affair. In the middle of the film he shows her a picture that he says he took of her last year. In this instance the picture’s purpose was to evoke a memory, it was supposed to make her remember that she had met him and that he wasn’t lying. In the beginning of Hiroshima Mon Amour the woman is talking about how she saw the pictures and other artifacts of Hiroshima in a museum and says that she “saw everything”. The man however states, “You saw nothing in Hiroshima, nothing” insisting that just because she saw photographs doesn’t mean she knows what it was like. In this film the photographs in the museum were meant to show and try to evoke an understanding of what it was like in the aftermath of the bombing in Hiroshima. To the woman she felt like she could understand what it was like in Hiroshima after viewing all the things in the museum, especially the pictures. Sontag believes that pictures can elicit some kind of sympathy or empathy stating “the quality of feeling, including moral outrage, that people can muster in response to photographs of the oppressed, the exploited, the starving, and the massacred also depends on the degree of their familiarity with these images” (19). What she means is that it is possible to have certain feelings and understanding of what is going on in a picture if you are familiar with the images, but none the less you can still have feelings about a picture.
“A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a give thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture” (Sontag 5). In Sontag’s notion of photography in her booked titled “On Photography”, she illustrates what photography is and the progression of photography from what people thought about it in the beginning to, for the most part, what it meant to the generation of her time. She states that “photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it” (5). By this she means that people believe things when they can see it. For humans it is hard for us to believe anything if it is not tangible so in a sense seeing something in a picture, which is tangible, evokes a belief in what is being seen. This is what I feel photography is about, being able to see things if you were not physically there to see it in person or also to remember something you once saw. Which ever it maybe, essentially you will believe it because it shows proof. This is only true though if the picture was not manipulated in some way.
Usually when you look at a picture that means something to you it will elicit emotions in you. “Memorializing the achievements of individuals considered as members of families (as well as of other groups) is the earliest popular use of photography” (Sontag 8). This explains that photography started out with wanting to capture special events to be remembered. When one looks back on a picture it evokes an emotion and memory of what was happening in that photo. An example would be photos of a wedding, every time the bride or groom looks back on those photos, their memory of that day comes to mind and all the emotions that were felt on that day will usually also return. Today photographs are not used merely for “memorializing achievements” they are for remembering everything from a baby’s birth to a vacation in the Bahamas. Sontag also explains the evolution of taking pictures for any situation was brought about when cameras were made to be easily used. Pictures became especially prominent in travel, to the traveler photos are “a way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it, by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir” (Sontag 9).
Since the invention of cameras photography has become a new art form but is also a highly used amateur practice. It has become so well known a practice in today’s time probably because the rate of change of the world is happening. There are “an untold number of forms of biological and social life are being destroyed in a brief span of time” (Sontag 16) and now there is a device to capture all that is disappearing. Most people want to capture certain moments, scenes in nature, and landmarks because they know they won’t always be there but if they have a picture of it, they will always have that memory.
I have now discussed the evolution of the meanings of photography starting with early native people thinking that taking a picture would steal someone’s soul, to then photos being used for family rituals and tourism, now in the present photographs are used for social reasons. One main example of social usage of photos is the social networking site Facebook. With more than 500 million people on Facebook and billions of pictures posted each month this is just one of the examples of the use of photos in a social context.
The snapshot camera was introduced in 1883 by Kodak and was a “portable medium that allowed users to record personal experiences” (Lee 266). Now with the “development of digital cameras, and their connection with communication networks, has transformed photo-taking conventions and expanded the range of photography’s social usage” (266) as described by Lee in his article Digital Cameras, Personal Photography and Reconfiguration of Spatial Experiences. His article goes on to explain that photo sharing used to be “home mode” which is the act of compiling pictures into a photo album and building a “mnemonic framework for oral presentation and collective conversation that brings one’s stories into the presentation of the album” (Lee 267). This allowed people to share their moments and experiences with only those close, intimate family and friends. These days it has become more common with the younger generation to post pictures on the Web for almost anyone to see. The digital age has transformed the “nature of photographic performance and its cultural significance” (Lee 267). Since digital cameras are so easy to use and the images are inexpensive to create, it has allowed people to capture every moment of their experience of life (Lee 276).
With social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and blogs photographs are now meant as personal expressions. This is a major difference between earlier meanings of pictures and present day meanings. Research on photos being posted on Facebook and other social sites has began to emerge. Such research contains the relationships between personality and how many photos a person is “tagged” in on Facebook and also on the personality trait of narcissism and photo sharing. A big research topic in psychology on this subject is the fact that most people using Facebook are using it to “hype themselves up”, trying to make themselves look like they are a certain person rather than who they really are. Since a picture can say a thousand words, people use this to their advantage. For example if a person believes that partying makes them “cool” then they would most likely add photos of themselves at parties in hopes that people will think they are “cool” and will like them. Again this is only an example of what could be a possible mental process of a Facebook user. These are just a few examples of how people are trying to understand this new meaning of social usage of photos.
“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted” (Sontag 24). Taking pictures has progressed as a form of remembering and personal expression. Today’s generation wants to be more individualized and social networking sites have made this possible by allowing one to make their mini home pages unique and expressive. Photographs have turned into a social usage that I believe will continue in the future as long as there are social networking sites. Photos are still used for capturing achieving moments, celebrations and tourism today but have also evolved into the meaning of personal expression.
In the past taking a photo required a lot more work than just pressing a button. Old time cameras were more complicated than today’s digital ones. Since taking pictures has become so easy there have been an abundance of landscapes, celebrations, and memories captured than ever before. I believe that photography today has a different meaning than it did in the past. For example, certain Native American tribes and certain religions had, and some still have, negative views on having their picture taken. There is the belief that if you have your picture taken that it will “steal your soul” (Bobos). Even Sontag comments on how people felt about photographs stating “the less sharp is the distinction between images and real things; in primitive societies the thing and its image were simply two different, that is, physically distinct, manifestations of the same energy or spirit” (155).
In the films Last Year in Marienbad and Hiroshima Mon Amour, the use and meaning of photography is different than what earlier “primitive” societies thought about photography. In Last Year in Marienbad the main character Mr. X is trying to convince the woman that they had met the year before and had a love affair. In the middle of the film he shows her a picture that he says he took of her last year. In this instance the picture’s purpose was to evoke a memory, it was supposed to make her remember that she had met him and that he wasn’t lying. In the beginning of Hiroshima Mon Amour the woman is talking about how she saw the pictures and other artifacts of Hiroshima in a museum and says that she “saw everything”. The man however states, “You saw nothing in Hiroshima, nothing” insisting that just because she saw photographs doesn’t mean she knows what it was like. In this film the photographs in the museum were meant to show and try to evoke an understanding of what it was like in the aftermath of the bombing in Hiroshima. To the woman she felt like she could understand what it was like in Hiroshima after viewing all the things in the museum, especially the pictures. Sontag believes that pictures can elicit some kind of sympathy or empathy stating “the quality of feeling, including moral outrage, that people can muster in response to photographs of the oppressed, the exploited, the starving, and the massacred also depends on the degree of their familiarity with these images” (19). What she means is that it is possible to have certain feelings and understanding of what is going on in a picture if you are familiar with the images, but none the less you can still have feelings about a picture.
“A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a give thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture” (Sontag 5). In Sontag’s notion of photography in her booked titled “On Photography”, she illustrates what photography is and the progression of photography from what people thought about it in the beginning to, for the most part, what it meant to the generation of her time. She states that “photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it” (5). By this she means that people believe things when they can see it. For humans it is hard for us to believe anything if it is not tangible so in a sense seeing something in a picture, which is tangible, evokes a belief in what is being seen. This is what I feel photography is about, being able to see things if you were not physically there to see it in person or also to remember something you once saw. Which ever it maybe, essentially you will believe it because it shows proof. This is only true though if the picture was not manipulated in some way.
Usually when you look at a picture that means something to you it will elicit emotions in you. “Memorializing the achievements of individuals considered as members of families (as well as of other groups) is the earliest popular use of photography” (Sontag 8). This explains that photography started out with wanting to capture special events to be remembered. When one looks back on a picture it evokes an emotion and memory of what was happening in that photo. An example would be photos of a wedding, every time the bride or groom looks back on those photos, their memory of that day comes to mind and all the emotions that were felt on that day will usually also return. Today photographs are not used merely for “memorializing achievements” they are for remembering everything from a baby’s birth to a vacation in the Bahamas. Sontag also explains the evolution of taking pictures for any situation was brought about when cameras were made to be easily used. Pictures became especially prominent in travel, to the traveler photos are “a way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it, by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir” (Sontag 9).
Since the invention of cameras photography has become a new art form but is also a highly used amateur practice. It has become so well known a practice in today’s time probably because the rate of change of the world is happening. There are “an untold number of forms of biological and social life are being destroyed in a brief span of time” (Sontag 16) and now there is a device to capture all that is disappearing. Most people want to capture certain moments, scenes in nature, and landmarks because they know they won’t always be there but if they have a picture of it, they will always have that memory.
I have now discussed the evolution of the meanings of photography starting with early native people thinking that taking a picture would steal someone’s soul, to then photos being used for family rituals and tourism, now in the present photographs are used for social reasons. One main example of social usage of photos is the social networking site Facebook. With more than 500 million people on Facebook and billions of pictures posted each month this is just one of the examples of the use of photos in a social context.
The snapshot camera was introduced in 1883 by Kodak and was a “portable medium that allowed users to record personal experiences” (Lee 266). Now with the “development of digital cameras, and their connection with communication networks, has transformed photo-taking conventions and expanded the range of photography’s social usage” (266) as described by Lee in his article Digital Cameras, Personal Photography and Reconfiguration of Spatial Experiences. His article goes on to explain that photo sharing used to be “home mode” which is the act of compiling pictures into a photo album and building a “mnemonic framework for oral presentation and collective conversation that brings one’s stories into the presentation of the album” (Lee 267). This allowed people to share their moments and experiences with only those close, intimate family and friends. These days it has become more common with the younger generation to post pictures on the Web for almost anyone to see. The digital age has transformed the “nature of photographic performance and its cultural significance” (Lee 267). Since digital cameras are so easy to use and the images are inexpensive to create, it has allowed people to capture every moment of their experience of life (Lee 276).
With social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace, and blogs photographs are now meant as personal expressions. This is a major difference between earlier meanings of pictures and present day meanings. Research on photos being posted on Facebook and other social sites has began to emerge. Such research contains the relationships between personality and how many photos a person is “tagged” in on Facebook and also on the personality trait of narcissism and photo sharing. A big research topic in psychology on this subject is the fact that most people using Facebook are using it to “hype themselves up”, trying to make themselves look like they are a certain person rather than who they really are. Since a picture can say a thousand words, people use this to their advantage. For example if a person believes that partying makes them “cool” then they would most likely add photos of themselves at parties in hopes that people will think they are “cool” and will like them. Again this is only an example of what could be a possible mental process of a Facebook user. These are just a few examples of how people are trying to understand this new meaning of social usage of photos.
“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted” (Sontag 24). Taking pictures has progressed as a form of remembering and personal expression. Today’s generation wants to be more individualized and social networking sites have made this possible by allowing one to make their mini home pages unique and expressive. Photographs have turned into a social usage that I believe will continue in the future as long as there are social networking sites. Photos are still used for capturing achieving moments, celebrations and tourism today but have also evolved into the meaning of personal expression.
Friday, May 6, 2011
"The Messenger" screenplay I discussed in class
Here is word for word what I turned in for class, I'd appreciate any coments and/or questions.
Background Information for “The Messenger”
The following screenplay is the opening scene to a story about the era following a period of global catastrophe. World War III has ravaged the world. Nuclear weapons have leveled the major cities and the governing bodies that remain have lost virtually all their former power. Nearly all the world is without power, running water or any of the amenities that the modern world has to come to expect.
The survivors, who are mostly from rural areas, must fend for themselves. This is a story about a group of survivors who were infants when the catastrophic events took place and, therefore, knew nothing about the old world. The following scene depicts their rescue by a group of military units.
In the opening scene the viewer, much like the children, will be unaware of who the soldiers are. They appear as ambient, otherworldly figures with seemingly genuine intentions, but as the story unfolds it will be clear that this is not true of all of them. To provide some context for the story I will summarize the main themes that make up the remainder of the film.
The highest ranking soldier in the group that finds the infants wants to return them to proper military personnel and continue their mission (essentially to fight in a war to save a planet which is already ravaged). Several of the other soldiers (there are 8 in total) refuse to let this happen. Some have already lost their own families and see the children as an opportunity to start anew. They are tired of fighting a war that can’t be won and simply want to start a life somewhere. Before the commander can take the children back to a military compound, the other soldiers kill him and take the children. They then flee by helicopter (a futuristic helicopter that has a nuclear energy source) to a remote and dense forest in East Texas. The chose the spot because one of the soldiers grew up nearby and knows of a fallout shelter where they can hide and base their village. The soldiers destroy any equipment that could allow them to be tracked and found “Antiquity” where they will raise the children and, they hope, rebuild mankind.
Quickly things get off track. The soldiers dispute amongst themselves as to how they should raise the children. Some of them want to tell them everything about the old world and how it was destroyed. Some are deeply religious and want to offer the children a very religious upbringing. But one of the soldiers, who the others call Silver, thinks differently. He begins with a simple question: if children had no background knowledge and no external world to influence them, what would you teach them? Anything from the old world that was a source of conflict or used as an instrument of war, religion, political ideology, science and technology, he discards. Instead he tells the children an outright lie; he lies about who they are, what happened to the world and what their purpose on life is. Silver will, in time, acquire complete control of the village, by killing several soldiers who disagree with him and frightening the remaining into submission. One of these soldiers, however, will escape and play a role later in the film.
The remaining story would follow one of these children as he escapes from the village and begins to learn the truth about the old world. He encounters the escaped soldier, travels to remaining city, learns the truth of the world, and discovers technology and art from the past. Eventually he will return for the other children, in particularly for one girl (it has to have a love story of course), and the confrontation with Silver will be violent.
The opening scene will revolve around the myth that Silver tells the children. This myth accounts for who they are, what their purpose is, and why the world has grown dark (some of the children are old enough to faintly remember their parents and a very different world). Angela, the youngest child, will be heard telling the myth as images of what really happened flash on the screen. At times she will use terminology that will not make sense and for this reason will be juxtaposed with an image. For example, stars (which are very visible in their remote location and a constant source of awe to the children) are called the Temple Above. Silver tells the children that he is from one of these Temples and that is where they will ultimately return. This is an example of one of the myths he tells them, piecing together the other myths will require attaching a term to a common image.
The myth Silver tells the children is meant to dichotomize the world between good and evil. Everything favorable Silver will equate with the “Light,” an entity that exists in the stars that the “Messengers,” what Silver will call himself and the other soldiers, have come to share with the “Children” the inhabitants of Earth. Everything that Silver thinks could lead to a loss of power over the orphans he equates with the “Dark,” a force that led to the destruction of the war by bringing false “light,” called the “Synth,” to the Children of the old world. Synth includes technology, art and anything else Silver wants it to include. It is his tool of submission for his followers. He tells his followers that if they follow his teachings they can, in time, be granted access to the “Temples” which are simply stars. The children are severely punished if they doubt this myth.
The theme of the story will revolve around mankind’s ability to resist myth and discover truth, the inability to dichotomizing the world between good and evil and the morality of lying to children to protect them.
“The Messenger”
by
Gabriel Canto
FAde In:
Intro Scene: A FLicker in the dark
It begins with a shot of a beautiful night sky and the sounds of a toddler crying. Then, the following narration begins and the stars shine increasingly brighter until the words “Temples Above” are spoken. After the first two sentences, the audience sees an image of a door opening, bringing light into a dark room occupied only by small children and an older woman who lies dead. The older children are nudging at the women, but she doesn’t respond. As the door opens they turn and look towards the door. Three large figures emerge wearing futuristic military uniforms that are only minimally visible in the dark hallway. Each is wearing a helmet with a flash light on the side that quickly blinds the children. The three figures are recognizably human only by their shape. Their faces are not visible and the overpowering light gives them a mystical quality. The light fades into images of nuclear bombs, panicked crowds, tanks, planes, destroyed monuments, burnt art and collapsed churches.
Angela
We shined through the Dark, that’s how our Father found us. As all the Light faded in the World Before, Father watched from his Temple above. Our Brothers and Sisters, he told us, were seduced. Seduced by the Dark which had grown to engulf the World Before. The world that once belonged to our Brothers and Sisters, of Children, those who were to grow to become Keepers of the Light. But they had ceased to grow. Now it was the Dark that filled their hearts. In time, the Children, Father said, forgot to tend the Light, and in its place they harbored treachery.
An image of a young man in boot camp will appear for a few seconds intermixed with other war images. This same man will keep appearing at different stages of his military career, first deployment, first kill, etc. One image is of him getting injured by shrapnel leaving a very noticeable scar on his face. The last image will be this man in a squad of four men walking through the wreackage of a destroyed city and hearing the same baby’s cry. These images will be very quick and focus on the face and, particularly, the scar.
Angela
Never, Father said, never forget to tend to the Light. For many ages the Light had reigned in the World Before, but the Children forgot to tend to the Light. For this reason the other Children shine no more. We were only Seeds when our Brothers and Sisters strayed. As seeds our Light flickers so that our Brothers and Sisters could find us, but they were blinded by deceit. They were to pass on the Message, so that one day we could be Keepers of the Light like our Father, but they didn’t. That’s why Father came for us.
War images continue.
Angela
During the age of Light the Dark plotted while it slept, for it longed to reign above as it had before the Message was delivered to the Children. The Dark is cunning, Father warned, cunning and seductive. The Dark disguised itself as Light and only the ever Tending Children could distinguish one from the other. The Synth, the deceitful Light of Dark, grew slowly at first. The Synth was Light that never needed tending, and many of the Children were fooled by its lure. Light that needs no tending, our Father warned told us, is deception.
Now the images go back further than the beginning of the War. Images of technology are prevalent. Phones, computers, ipads, TV’s. As the word “Synth” is heard a child is seen staring into a television as he plays video games. The screen closes in on his eyes and the reflection of television screen is visible in his pupils.
Angela
From their Temple above they watched as Dark preyed on the foolish Children and spread to the ever Tending. The ever Tending, however, were ready to join their Mothers and Fathers in the Temples above. They left the World of Children in the hands of the foolish, just as Dark had hoped for. The foolish embraced the Synth and the Dark grew strong. In time, no Light remained except that of Seeds. Seeds that lie in the dirt, until they are released, but no children were left to release Seeds.
Again, an image of bright stars coincides with the words, “Temples Above.” Next the images return to the children. They, nine total, 6 boys and 3 girls, ranging from tiny infants to 7 years old, are being carried in the basement of a nursery. In the windows we quickly catch glimpses of explosions in the distance. When the children are finally safe in the basement, a nearby explosion rattles the room, knocking over baby carriages and toppling file cabinets. One of the cabinets falls on the woman who has been carrying the children into the basement. She is the same women we saw dead before, and she looks into the camera hopelessly as she lies on the ground under the debris. No one will be able to help her. A puddle of blood grows around her.
Angela
When Father left their temples to battle the Dark, we remained in the dark casting our fragile flickers. Father pulled us out, and showered us with Light. He took us to Antiquity and taught us everything. Father is the Messenger. Our Savior.
The same children, slightly older, are being led by the same mystical figures through a dark wooded area. They find a stone bunker and the figures lead them inside. The end of the narration coincides with the children walking inside.
Outside the setting is very dark with only a faint outline of tall trees surrounding the secluded bunker. After all the children are inside two soldiers remains outside and one smokes a cigarette. He takes off his helmet revealing a scar on his cheek. The other soldier wanders into the trees, as the smoker watches, before looking up to the stars. He is smiling and clearly excited about what the men have done. For the first time since the war, he has a home and a family. As he turns to walk back to the bunker the other soldier is suddenly in his way. Before the soldier, who is no longer smiling, can speak, the smoking soldier covers his mouth and slits his throat. The dying soldier falls to his knees, mutters indistinguishable words and falls to his side. The living soldier walks back to where he was standing before, picks up his still lit cigarette and takes one long drag as he stares into the camera.
Fade Out:
Background Information for “The Messenger”
The following screenplay is the opening scene to a story about the era following a period of global catastrophe. World War III has ravaged the world. Nuclear weapons have leveled the major cities and the governing bodies that remain have lost virtually all their former power. Nearly all the world is without power, running water or any of the amenities that the modern world has to come to expect.
The survivors, who are mostly from rural areas, must fend for themselves. This is a story about a group of survivors who were infants when the catastrophic events took place and, therefore, knew nothing about the old world. The following scene depicts their rescue by a group of military units.
In the opening scene the viewer, much like the children, will be unaware of who the soldiers are. They appear as ambient, otherworldly figures with seemingly genuine intentions, but as the story unfolds it will be clear that this is not true of all of them. To provide some context for the story I will summarize the main themes that make up the remainder of the film.
The highest ranking soldier in the group that finds the infants wants to return them to proper military personnel and continue their mission (essentially to fight in a war to save a planet which is already ravaged). Several of the other soldiers (there are 8 in total) refuse to let this happen. Some have already lost their own families and see the children as an opportunity to start anew. They are tired of fighting a war that can’t be won and simply want to start a life somewhere. Before the commander can take the children back to a military compound, the other soldiers kill him and take the children. They then flee by helicopter (a futuristic helicopter that has a nuclear energy source) to a remote and dense forest in East Texas. The chose the spot because one of the soldiers grew up nearby and knows of a fallout shelter where they can hide and base their village. The soldiers destroy any equipment that could allow them to be tracked and found “Antiquity” where they will raise the children and, they hope, rebuild mankind.
Quickly things get off track. The soldiers dispute amongst themselves as to how they should raise the children. Some of them want to tell them everything about the old world and how it was destroyed. Some are deeply religious and want to offer the children a very religious upbringing. But one of the soldiers, who the others call Silver, thinks differently. He begins with a simple question: if children had no background knowledge and no external world to influence them, what would you teach them? Anything from the old world that was a source of conflict or used as an instrument of war, religion, political ideology, science and technology, he discards. Instead he tells the children an outright lie; he lies about who they are, what happened to the world and what their purpose on life is. Silver will, in time, acquire complete control of the village, by killing several soldiers who disagree with him and frightening the remaining into submission. One of these soldiers, however, will escape and play a role later in the film.
The remaining story would follow one of these children as he escapes from the village and begins to learn the truth about the old world. He encounters the escaped soldier, travels to remaining city, learns the truth of the world, and discovers technology and art from the past. Eventually he will return for the other children, in particularly for one girl (it has to have a love story of course), and the confrontation with Silver will be violent.
The opening scene will revolve around the myth that Silver tells the children. This myth accounts for who they are, what their purpose is, and why the world has grown dark (some of the children are old enough to faintly remember their parents and a very different world). Angela, the youngest child, will be heard telling the myth as images of what really happened flash on the screen. At times she will use terminology that will not make sense and for this reason will be juxtaposed with an image. For example, stars (which are very visible in their remote location and a constant source of awe to the children) are called the Temple Above. Silver tells the children that he is from one of these Temples and that is where they will ultimately return. This is an example of one of the myths he tells them, piecing together the other myths will require attaching a term to a common image.
The myth Silver tells the children is meant to dichotomize the world between good and evil. Everything favorable Silver will equate with the “Light,” an entity that exists in the stars that the “Messengers,” what Silver will call himself and the other soldiers, have come to share with the “Children” the inhabitants of Earth. Everything that Silver thinks could lead to a loss of power over the orphans he equates with the “Dark,” a force that led to the destruction of the war by bringing false “light,” called the “Synth,” to the Children of the old world. Synth includes technology, art and anything else Silver wants it to include. It is his tool of submission for his followers. He tells his followers that if they follow his teachings they can, in time, be granted access to the “Temples” which are simply stars. The children are severely punished if they doubt this myth.
The theme of the story will revolve around mankind’s ability to resist myth and discover truth, the inability to dichotomizing the world between good and evil and the morality of lying to children to protect them.
“The Messenger”
by
Gabriel Canto
FAde In:
Intro Scene: A FLicker in the dark
It begins with a shot of a beautiful night sky and the sounds of a toddler crying. Then, the following narration begins and the stars shine increasingly brighter until the words “Temples Above” are spoken. After the first two sentences, the audience sees an image of a door opening, bringing light into a dark room occupied only by small children and an older woman who lies dead. The older children are nudging at the women, but she doesn’t respond. As the door opens they turn and look towards the door. Three large figures emerge wearing futuristic military uniforms that are only minimally visible in the dark hallway. Each is wearing a helmet with a flash light on the side that quickly blinds the children. The three figures are recognizably human only by their shape. Their faces are not visible and the overpowering light gives them a mystical quality. The light fades into images of nuclear bombs, panicked crowds, tanks, planes, destroyed monuments, burnt art and collapsed churches.
Angela
We shined through the Dark, that’s how our Father found us. As all the Light faded in the World Before, Father watched from his Temple above. Our Brothers and Sisters, he told us, were seduced. Seduced by the Dark which had grown to engulf the World Before. The world that once belonged to our Brothers and Sisters, of Children, those who were to grow to become Keepers of the Light. But they had ceased to grow. Now it was the Dark that filled their hearts. In time, the Children, Father said, forgot to tend the Light, and in its place they harbored treachery.
An image of a young man in boot camp will appear for a few seconds intermixed with other war images. This same man will keep appearing at different stages of his military career, first deployment, first kill, etc. One image is of him getting injured by shrapnel leaving a very noticeable scar on his face. The last image will be this man in a squad of four men walking through the wreackage of a destroyed city and hearing the same baby’s cry. These images will be very quick and focus on the face and, particularly, the scar.
Angela
Never, Father said, never forget to tend to the Light. For many ages the Light had reigned in the World Before, but the Children forgot to tend to the Light. For this reason the other Children shine no more. We were only Seeds when our Brothers and Sisters strayed. As seeds our Light flickers so that our Brothers and Sisters could find us, but they were blinded by deceit. They were to pass on the Message, so that one day we could be Keepers of the Light like our Father, but they didn’t. That’s why Father came for us.
War images continue.
Angela
During the age of Light the Dark plotted while it slept, for it longed to reign above as it had before the Message was delivered to the Children. The Dark is cunning, Father warned, cunning and seductive. The Dark disguised itself as Light and only the ever Tending Children could distinguish one from the other. The Synth, the deceitful Light of Dark, grew slowly at first. The Synth was Light that never needed tending, and many of the Children were fooled by its lure. Light that needs no tending, our Father warned told us, is deception.
Now the images go back further than the beginning of the War. Images of technology are prevalent. Phones, computers, ipads, TV’s. As the word “Synth” is heard a child is seen staring into a television as he plays video games. The screen closes in on his eyes and the reflection of television screen is visible in his pupils.
Angela
From their Temple above they watched as Dark preyed on the foolish Children and spread to the ever Tending. The ever Tending, however, were ready to join their Mothers and Fathers in the Temples above. They left the World of Children in the hands of the foolish, just as Dark had hoped for. The foolish embraced the Synth and the Dark grew strong. In time, no Light remained except that of Seeds. Seeds that lie in the dirt, until they are released, but no children were left to release Seeds.
Again, an image of bright stars coincides with the words, “Temples Above.” Next the images return to the children. They, nine total, 6 boys and 3 girls, ranging from tiny infants to 7 years old, are being carried in the basement of a nursery. In the windows we quickly catch glimpses of explosions in the distance. When the children are finally safe in the basement, a nearby explosion rattles the room, knocking over baby carriages and toppling file cabinets. One of the cabinets falls on the woman who has been carrying the children into the basement. She is the same women we saw dead before, and she looks into the camera hopelessly as she lies on the ground under the debris. No one will be able to help her. A puddle of blood grows around her.
Angela
When Father left their temples to battle the Dark, we remained in the dark casting our fragile flickers. Father pulled us out, and showered us with Light. He took us to Antiquity and taught us everything. Father is the Messenger. Our Savior.
The same children, slightly older, are being led by the same mystical figures through a dark wooded area. They find a stone bunker and the figures lead them inside. The end of the narration coincides with the children walking inside.
Outside the setting is very dark with only a faint outline of tall trees surrounding the secluded bunker. After all the children are inside two soldiers remains outside and one smokes a cigarette. He takes off his helmet revealing a scar on his cheek. The other soldier wanders into the trees, as the smoker watches, before looking up to the stars. He is smiling and clearly excited about what the men have done. For the first time since the war, he has a home and a family. As he turns to walk back to the bunker the other soldier is suddenly in his way. Before the soldier, who is no longer smiling, can speak, the smoking soldier covers his mouth and slits his throat. The dying soldier falls to his knees, mutters indistinguishable words and falls to his side. The living soldier walks back to where he was standing before, picks up his still lit cigarette and takes one long drag as he stares into the camera.
Fade Out:
Thursday, May 5, 2011
Into the Darkness
Short Story
It was the fall of 2003 that I found myself a member of the fourth infantry division of the United States Army. It had always been a dream of mine to be able to fight for my country and our beliefs but after my first mission I would no longer share that enthusiastic viewpoint that once occupied my innocent mind.
There is an eerie feeling in the air of death and suffering that can be felt by even the most robust men at the moment of arrival in the desert. The ruthlessness of events to come haunt would haunt every man that survives to remember. There are two types of people in the world. Ones that rise up to define themselves as heroes in moments of great challenge, and others who let the moment define them only to slip into darkness forever.
Almost no time at all passed before we were summoned to receive our mission objectives from Lt. Lazarus. He had a reputation of an unrelenting nasty human being. He did not except failure, it was not an option. When the lieutenant had informed us of the important terrorist figure we were to locate from deep in the heart of the country we knew it was either return home with a body or no return at all. It was known this would be a long vigorous manhunt but nothing could have prepared me for the experience that lay ahead.
We were to meet up with another unit that had been on the trail for many months already. The group was led by a man named Kurtz, I received a stern warning that he had been out in the desert for a long time and was mentally unstable. His tactics immoral but effective, like the lieutenant, he had one objective and would at all costs succeed. The second objective was to bring urtz back after we completed the operation as he was deemed unfit to lead any further missions.
We would travel up the main roadway for hundreds of miles to reach Kurtz then commence to into the unknown. The path we were taking was known as the "highway of death"; many men have died along the way to say the least.
After two days of rest at the military base we began our operation. The first couple for days were uneventful, as I was constrained to my spot in the humvee to reflect on our mission objectives. The greatest challenge thus far was adapting to life in an environment so different from anything in america. It seems as if a dust storm is permanently situated in our area making it hard to breathe and see. I quickly learned how to chug water as it was necessary to drink an enormous amount to maintain hydration. It was lie living on a strange planet; there was so sign of life in any direction.
The vehicle began slowing down as we approached a rundown town. It appeared to be uninhabited but slowly sickly faces started peeing out of window and from behind buildings. I felt as if I was looking at skeletons. It was inconceivable to me how they remained living but I ponder now if you could even label their way of life as living at all. Being only meters away from the shadowy figures I realized our men stationed on the turrets were completely unnecessary, these things were nothing more than rats infesting the buildings.
We stopped to investigate as they just stood there glaring at all of us. All it took was a few rounds fired into the air from a soldier's M16 to send them running back into the holes they had crawled out form. The structure I stood in the middle of did not even resemble a home; it was missing all of the features that would classify it as such. There was no bathroom, only a bucket in the corner. Bugs coated the walls like decorations. Experiencing this for the first time was confusing, there were many emotions to feel. The town was declared nonthreatening and within a blink of an eye we disappeared never to see those souls again.
To take my mind off the dreadfulness, I spent the next few hours in the humvee reading about Kurtz's past reports. It was easily seen why he had received the reputation as a madman. In every description of action that passed my eyes it became clear that he might very well be every bit as insane as he was made out to be. In an effort to strengthen my knowledge of Kurtz and the happenings of his career I read every piece of information I could on him. I felt a strange connection to him, although he was an unstable mind he was a brilliant one as well.
After several days of staring out the window into nothing and raiding homes it all became second nature to me. The further we traveled up the highway the more I realized that my emotions were fading. Seeing the repugnance of the death and suffering at every village had become monotonous. However, the routine was broken when we received word that Kurtz and his crews' whereabouts. He was only about a days' worth of travel away in a place called Adwar. It was believed that our target may be hiding there.
Once we had reached Adwar we spotted a group of men who appeared to be part of the U.S. Army but were completely out of uniform. There were five of them and they all were nonchalantly going about their business as if they were in their own backyard instead of a hostile war zone. I realized this had to be Kurtz's crew judging from the absence of organization to the group. I stared at the men trying to figure out who was the infamous one. It was then that I noticed a sixth man in the shadows, he blended in with the night so well that he was almost invisible. When he stepped out of the shadows I took quick note of his appearance. Before me stood a tall older man mounted with his arms crossed as if judging all of us. As he came closer it was clear he had some sort of illness. At first glance at his face, he had a blank expression that rendered him almost incapable of feeling.
The silence lasted for what seemed like hours, but was finally broken by our new leader. He went straight down to business and made it clear that we would be pillaging every building in the city until we found what were were searching for. At first impression, I had no idea what to think of him. I was expecting a hyperactive wild killing machine but Kurtz did not fit that role the least bit, he was different from the stereotype. The more and more I watched him operate I could detect his underlying disturbance.
The next night we began our task with the first building on the west side of the town, Kurtz ordered the raid. The men crushed the door in and immediately took any inhabitants prisoner. The rest of us would then begin ravishing through the rest of the building destroying everything in the way of the path. We kept a keen eye for any underground rooms or trapdoors that would be able to hide anything.
Each house seemed to have the same disturbing consistencies of dead bodies, dead animals, diseased people, and a stench that I swear still fill the air around me today. Flies filled the air as rain does during a storm.
There were many instances in which we would burst through the doors and encounter armed attackers which would inevitably end up lying in a pool of their own blood on the floor.That is to be expected. It is not the taking of an armed mans life that sticks to your mind. It was the occurrences of unarmed individuals that Kurtz would order to be tortured and killed for no reason at all that haunts someone forever. Occasionally the enemy would succeed and ill one of our soldiers which ultimately adds fire to our already trigger happy crew.
This went on for days and it seemed that the more deaths that occurred, the further Kurtz's mind fell into darkness. The way he did things was so disorganized and aggressive that he had almost sunk down to the level of the enemy we were trying to rid the world of. He once said to me, "We live as we dream, alone", truly the voice of one consumed by madness. Everyday his illness became more apparent, by the sixth day he was noticeably coughing up blood. On the ninth day of our rampage we cleared a house, it was extremely heavily armed. We lost several men. After hours of examining, a hole was discovered filled with the target of our interest. When he refused to surrender there was no problem finding the courage to pull the trigger of loaded gun. The coward lay in the hole as we glared down at him. We had succeeded in finding the man responsible for so much evil in the world. I thought I would be relieved in the ending of our mission but instead the sun refused to shine.
The news spread fast of our accomplished feat as this was a moral victory for our country. Somehow though, we did not feel the same joyful feelings. Just as we had lost all sympathy for the terrorists, we also were unable to be happy. Our emotions were inhibited by those lifeless faces that we had grown so accustomed to seeing.
We had plenty of time to analyze our efforts of the last couple of weeks on the return trip. Kurtz remained silent in his own little world perhaps trying to justify his actions. It is the men like him who let that defining moment get the best of their soul. There is no returning from the darkness that is the evil side of the human mind.
Kurtz would not stay alive long enough to see all of the American smiles we had brought to their faces. The entire country found justice in our actions of killed the wicked man who had killed so many of our friends and family members.
I wished to join their merriment but all that would occupy my mind was the last words of a corrupt man, "the horror, the horror".
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
The mask in La Noire de...
Here is a clip from the end of the La Noire de... film. Go to the 10min mark and watch from there til the end. This is where the little boy chases the man with the mask. What significance do you think the mask has?
http://youtu.be/_MVJo4AkqWI
-Danielle Holub
http://youtu.be/_MVJo4AkqWI
-Danielle Holub
Here is a short explanation to the my short story, "The Crown Victoria."
The Crown Victoria Explanation
I wrote “The Crown Victoria,” as a psychological short story involving both the fantastic, the uncanny, and doubles. I originally planned on writing a screenplay, but I decided that a short story was a better medium, as I really wanted to get into the character’s head. I think with some work though, it could easily be adapted into a short film.
Todorov describes the fantastic situation. It is when we are in a world that is our own, but then some event occurs that is out of the ordinary and unexplained. This is the introduction of the men in the black suits in the short story, who appear and disappear throughout the story. He describes the fantastic as that period of uncertainty. In this story, the entirety fits into the fantastic, as you are never really certain whether the protagonist, Patton, is crazy or of this is really some sort of supernatural event. Whether it is the uncanny, where the event is explained in logical terms, or the marvelous, where the event is just accepted as supernatural, is really up to the reader.
I bring about the theme of doubles in several places. The first is in which you often see reflections throughout the story, starting with the windows of the car. Then following with the mirror at the bottom of the staircase, which Patton often sees himself, but sees his image deteriorating as he becomes more paranoid and stressed out. He also sees his reflection in his phone as he tries to call 911. Lastly, he views himself at his worst as he sees his own image in the reflection of the barred window in the mental hospital. Doubles are also apparent in the two men in the black suit, who are dressed exactly the same.
RSD
The Crown Victoria Explanation
I wrote “The Crown Victoria,” as a psychological short story involving both the fantastic, the uncanny, and doubles. I originally planned on writing a screenplay, but I decided that a short story was a better medium, as I really wanted to get into the character’s head. I think with some work though, it could easily be adapted into a short film.
Todorov describes the fantastic situation. It is when we are in a world that is our own, but then some event occurs that is out of the ordinary and unexplained. This is the introduction of the men in the black suits in the short story, who appear and disappear throughout the story. He describes the fantastic as that period of uncertainty. In this story, the entirety fits into the fantastic, as you are never really certain whether the protagonist, Patton, is crazy or of this is really some sort of supernatural event. Whether it is the uncanny, where the event is explained in logical terms, or the marvelous, where the event is just accepted as supernatural, is really up to the reader.
I bring about the theme of doubles in several places. The first is in which you often see reflections throughout the story, starting with the windows of the car. Then following with the mirror at the bottom of the staircase, which Patton often sees himself, but sees his image deteriorating as he becomes more paranoid and stressed out. He also sees his reflection in his phone as he tries to call 911. Lastly, he views himself at his worst as he sees his own image in the reflection of the barred window in the mental hospital. Doubles are also apparent in the two men in the black suit, who are dressed exactly the same.
RSD
My Short Story: The Crown Victoria
The Crown Victoria
I worked hard to be where I was. I started out as a carpenter, and over time, moved all the way up to superintendent of the company. I liked my job. Sure, it was day to day, but it was an income, a desk job, and respectable. Through my journey up the company, I gained a lot of self confidence, and saw the world as an open book full of possibilities. I never let those terrible news reports bother me, and always focused on the good side of things. Sure I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t going to let a few details from my past hold me back. That was until that day that black car showed up.
I had just gotten home from work when I noticed a black Crown Vic with windows tented even darker than the paint of the car. They were the type that were so reflective that you couldn’t see the inside at all, just an image with the neighborhood houses with the cloudy blue sky above. I glanced at the license plate and memorized the sequence in my head, just in case anything strange happened. It was a custom plate. G1LT-E4. I took a glance at it and thought out loud, “Hm, that’s weird, I wonder who’s car that is?” I went on with the day, quickly forgetting the strange crown victoria. I went to the fridge and grabbed a beer, the blue mountains on the can told me it was, “as cold as the Rockies.” I flipped the TV on and scanned through the channels and found some cheesy police chase show. Just another relaxing Friday to myself, as always. “Ah, forgot to check the mail,” I remembered. The car was still there. As I walked out the house down to the street and to the mailbox, I thought I saw a light turn on and off in the Crown Vic. I thought, “Is someone in there… Am I being watched? Am I in trouble?” I quickly and inconspicuously tried to grab the mail, and walked as casually as I could into the house, trying to pretend like I hadn’t noticed anything unusual.
That car stayed there all day long. I peeked through the blinds at it from my bedroom window every ten to fifteen minutes. As I sat there, waiting and wondering, I began to look at my life over the last few years. Had I done anything wrong? Every instance of me doing anything questionable flashed through my head. There was the time I found $100 bill on the floor of a restaurant and I picked up and kept it for myself. Or the short span of time after high school that I sold drugs. Only marijuana and small time. But I made a good deal of money. It was easy money. And then I told myself it was just my paranoia getting to me. I thought, “How would anyone find out?” I thought, “and why would they care?” But then as my thoughts continued, I remembered something that I had forgotten. I had been drunk, and done something terrible. But I couldn’t distinguish whether it was part of some dream or something real. Why would this just come back to me at this moment, how could I have forgotten about it. The phone rang, interrupting my thoughts.
“Hello,” I said, panic in my voice.
“Hey bud, its Tyler,” he said. “What the hell’s wrong with you, you’re breathing really hard.”
“You know man, it’s probably nothing and this is going to sound crazy, but there’s this black car in front of my house and it’s just kind of odd you know. I even thought I saw a light go on and off.”
“Well I’m sure it’s nothing, your neighbor probably just got a new car,” Tyler said.
“Yeah you’re probably right,” I remarked, a little ashamed but comforted.
And then I heard a car engine turn on and peeked through the blinds of my front window, the black Crown Vic turned the corner and a feeling of relief moved through my body.
“Patton,” it was faint but grew louder. “Patton,” he said again, louder.
“Oh, sorry Tyler, I was watching the car. It drove away.”
“Ah see, you big wimp,” he laughed, “Well anyway, I was just calling to see if you wanted to come grill tomorrow night with us.”
“Yeah definitely,”
“Great well come over around 7:00, the kids and the wife are looking forward to seeing you.”
“Alright, have a good one Tyler.”
“You too bud, later,” Tyler said.
As the night went on, my comfort diminished as I continued to think about the black car. “What if they were monitoring my phone and knew I was on to them, or what if they saw me looking at them? I’m sure I saw someone in there.” After tossing and turning for a few hours I finally managed to fall asleep at 1 o’ clock.
I woke up to the sound of a car driving down the street. “Shit,” I thought, “is the car back?!” I looked out the window. Two men in suits stood outside the car, looking up at me.
RING RING RING! The doorbell rang. I stood stupefied for a moment. RING RING! “What do I do now?” I frantically questioned myself as my heart raced, beating at what felt like 500 beats a minute. “They know something, I don’t how, but they do!” I opened the door and slowly crept down the stairs, taking each step as quietly as I could, but the stairs seemed to crack and moan louder than ever before. Facing me at the bottom of the stairs was a mirror, and I saw myself, but I didn’t recognize myself. The person in the mirror was a Pale, large eyed, and rigid version of myself. I made it to the front door. I looked out the peephole. No one was there. “What the Hell?” I thought. “I’m really losing it.” I sat down in front of the door shaking, and fell asleep sitting with my back against the door.
I woke as if an explosion had gone off. The door was being pounded upon. “We just need to talk to you for a second Mr. Williams,” came a low voice but in a strangely calm manner.
“We’re investigators with the police and heard something about a friend of yours,” the right man quickly remarked afterward.
“Why the hell would you come here this time of night?” I asked, still sitting against the door.
“It’s 10:00 in the morning Mr. Williams.”
All of a sudden light crept into the window next to the door and filled the front room of my house. “It wasn’t just…. That just happened!” I stood up and looked out the peephole again. There were two men standing there, both in black suits.
“We don’t know what you’re talking about Mr. Williams. We’ve just heard a few rumors that we hoped you could clear up. If you could just let us in and we can talk it over, and clear up this mess,” the man on the left stated.
“What the hell? I haven’t done anything!”
“Well then you have nothing to worry about. But if you don’t let us in, we will have to use force, and that will cause a huge scene. You don’t want that, do you Mr. Williams?”
I was dialing 911 before he was finished speaking and quickly walked into the other room.
“Hello, emergency service, how can I help you,” A soothing woman’s voice came over the small speaker in the phone.
“There’s two men here at my house that claim to be investigators, my address is 302 Longflower. Should they be here? Something is weird here, I think these guys might be trying to rob me or something.”
“Yes sir, a police officer is on his way to check out the situation,” the woman responded.
I stumbled over to the door and looked out the peephole, the two men and the black Crown Vic were already gone. I waited in the chair by the front door for the police to show up, it only took about 10 minutes. KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK, I opened to door.
“Hello sir, we got a call about some suspicious characters,” said the officer, a big man with short dark hair and a tiny mustache. He looked exactly like any cop you would expect to see in a crime drama.
“Yes officer, two men showed up in a black Crown Victoria, they were sitting outside my house all day and knocked on my door about twenty minutes ago, claiming to be part of some sort of investigation. I refused to let them in. I called you and then they took off.”
“Ah,” the officer replied, “probably just some guys trying to rob you, they’ll post out and watch the habits of a house pretty often. They’re definitely not with us though. We’ll be on the lookout for these guys, thanks for your information.”
“Thank you, but I’m worried there might be something more to this,” I stated.
“Probably just being a little paranoid sir, just give us a call if you see anything else.”
“Ah ok,” I said, frightened. “Thank you officer, have a good night.”
I watched him drive away from the front window, and stood there watching for about five minutes looking through my screen door, and all of a sudden, I saw the Crown Vic pulling down the street, followed by two Escalades. “Oh my God, they’re back.” I slammed the door shut and locked both deadbolts. I tried to make a call on my cell phone it was completely dead. I only saw a black screen with a reflection of myself, looking worse than I could ever imagine. The next part is real hazy in my memory. I don’t even know how many men were there this time, but the two original men led them.
“We gave you a chance to comply Mr. Williams. We know everything.” The man on the left said coldly. “We’re going to have to use force now.”
“Who are you? What did I do?” I yelled as my body tensed up and I could feel the adrenaline rush through my body. I couldn’t even move. The rest is like a series of still images in my mind. The door was busted in. 5 men came in and grabbed me and restrained me, one frame at a time. They held me down and I thrashed wildly. The man that was on the left pulled out a huge syringe and injected it into my thigh. I screamed out but there was no sound. I must have passed out or there was something in there to screw up my memory, because I woke in my bed. I looked at the clock in my room, flashing showing 3 o clock am. The power must have gone out.
I woke up with a startle, and looked at my leg, there was no hole or bruise or anything. I walked down the stairs and again at the mirror at the bottom. I looked normal again besides the idea of being a little sleepy. I looked at the door. No sign of a struggle. But when I looked out that same window, I saw that same Crown Victoria. All hopes of it being a bad dream were gone. The reflective window rolled down, and the driver, the man who was on the left, gestured with his hands and lip signing “I’m watching you.” The car drove off. “What do I do now?” I asked myself as began to panic.
I drove to the hospital and told them someone had injected something in my leg, they told me there was nothing there. I insisted. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went straight to the police station and told them everything. I told them how I had hit that guy when I was driving home drunk 9 years ago. How I stopped to look at him, but was too scared of the consequences. I told them how I drove away, and managed to forget about it for these 9 years, but I couldn’t suppress the memory in anymore. Someone’s body had been found 9 years ago, a 15 year old girl named Theresa, who had run away from home. It was on the highway right by my house. I confessed to the crime and went to court. I couldn’t stand to be terrorized by the men in the black suits and that freaking. They ruled me not stable enough to stay in jail so they sent me here. And that’s the whole story Dr. Terry.
“Mr. Williams, you have a problem, but it’s not your fault, you suffer from a disease of the mind. You need to realize you have a problem.” Dr. Terry said calmly. He was a strange man with a monotone voice, grey hair, and glasses. He was exactly the way you would picture a shrink.
“I can’t believe this!” Patton yelled. “There is something crazy going on here, but its not me! I can’t just make stuff up like this, can I?! It’s all real, it’s all real. I don’t know what these guys wanted with me but they injected me with something and I’m either some sort of weird experiment or their tracking me or something but I know I’m not making this up!”
“Mr. Williams, you need to calm down.” He said as he pressed a button on his desk. Two men came in and grabbed Patton, injected him with a shot and took him to a small cell like room.
He woke up.
“I can’t believe this,” he said to himself as he got out of the tiny cot. He looked out the tiny window with the black iron bars. A reflection of himself stared back at him in the mirror. He didn’t recognize himself. His eyelids drooped down, he had dark circles under his eyes, his hair was disheveled, and his skin paler than ever. The bars behind interacted with the reflection to give him a clear picture of his captivity. “At least I’m safe here,” he thought as he followed the road away from the mental asylum with his eyes. But as he followed the road his eyes got bigger and a panic-stricken look came across his face, reflected back at him through the window. A black Crown Victoria was driving up the road, towards the asylum. The license plate read G1LT-E4.
I worked hard to be where I was. I started out as a carpenter, and over time, moved all the way up to superintendent of the company. I liked my job. Sure, it was day to day, but it was an income, a desk job, and respectable. Through my journey up the company, I gained a lot of self confidence, and saw the world as an open book full of possibilities. I never let those terrible news reports bother me, and always focused on the good side of things. Sure I wasn’t perfect, but I wasn’t going to let a few details from my past hold me back. That was until that day that black car showed up.
I had just gotten home from work when I noticed a black Crown Vic with windows tented even darker than the paint of the car. They were the type that were so reflective that you couldn’t see the inside at all, just an image with the neighborhood houses with the cloudy blue sky above. I glanced at the license plate and memorized the sequence in my head, just in case anything strange happened. It was a custom plate. G1LT-E4. I took a glance at it and thought out loud, “Hm, that’s weird, I wonder who’s car that is?” I went on with the day, quickly forgetting the strange crown victoria. I went to the fridge and grabbed a beer, the blue mountains on the can told me it was, “as cold as the Rockies.” I flipped the TV on and scanned through the channels and found some cheesy police chase show. Just another relaxing Friday to myself, as always. “Ah, forgot to check the mail,” I remembered. The car was still there. As I walked out the house down to the street and to the mailbox, I thought I saw a light turn on and off in the Crown Vic. I thought, “Is someone in there… Am I being watched? Am I in trouble?” I quickly and inconspicuously tried to grab the mail, and walked as casually as I could into the house, trying to pretend like I hadn’t noticed anything unusual.
That car stayed there all day long. I peeked through the blinds at it from my bedroom window every ten to fifteen minutes. As I sat there, waiting and wondering, I began to look at my life over the last few years. Had I done anything wrong? Every instance of me doing anything questionable flashed through my head. There was the time I found $100 bill on the floor of a restaurant and I picked up and kept it for myself. Or the short span of time after high school that I sold drugs. Only marijuana and small time. But I made a good deal of money. It was easy money. And then I told myself it was just my paranoia getting to me. I thought, “How would anyone find out?” I thought, “and why would they care?” But then as my thoughts continued, I remembered something that I had forgotten. I had been drunk, and done something terrible. But I couldn’t distinguish whether it was part of some dream or something real. Why would this just come back to me at this moment, how could I have forgotten about it. The phone rang, interrupting my thoughts.
“Hello,” I said, panic in my voice.
“Hey bud, its Tyler,” he said. “What the hell’s wrong with you, you’re breathing really hard.”
“You know man, it’s probably nothing and this is going to sound crazy, but there’s this black car in front of my house and it’s just kind of odd you know. I even thought I saw a light go on and off.”
“Well I’m sure it’s nothing, your neighbor probably just got a new car,” Tyler said.
“Yeah you’re probably right,” I remarked, a little ashamed but comforted.
And then I heard a car engine turn on and peeked through the blinds of my front window, the black Crown Vic turned the corner and a feeling of relief moved through my body.
“Patton,” it was faint but grew louder. “Patton,” he said again, louder.
“Oh, sorry Tyler, I was watching the car. It drove away.”
“Ah see, you big wimp,” he laughed, “Well anyway, I was just calling to see if you wanted to come grill tomorrow night with us.”
“Yeah definitely,”
“Great well come over around 7:00, the kids and the wife are looking forward to seeing you.”
“Alright, have a good one Tyler.”
“You too bud, later,” Tyler said.
As the night went on, my comfort diminished as I continued to think about the black car. “What if they were monitoring my phone and knew I was on to them, or what if they saw me looking at them? I’m sure I saw someone in there.” After tossing and turning for a few hours I finally managed to fall asleep at 1 o’ clock.
I woke up to the sound of a car driving down the street. “Shit,” I thought, “is the car back?!” I looked out the window. Two men in suits stood outside the car, looking up at me.
RING RING RING! The doorbell rang. I stood stupefied for a moment. RING RING! “What do I do now?” I frantically questioned myself as my heart raced, beating at what felt like 500 beats a minute. “They know something, I don’t how, but they do!” I opened the door and slowly crept down the stairs, taking each step as quietly as I could, but the stairs seemed to crack and moan louder than ever before. Facing me at the bottom of the stairs was a mirror, and I saw myself, but I didn’t recognize myself. The person in the mirror was a Pale, large eyed, and rigid version of myself. I made it to the front door. I looked out the peephole. No one was there. “What the Hell?” I thought. “I’m really losing it.” I sat down in front of the door shaking, and fell asleep sitting with my back against the door.
I woke as if an explosion had gone off. The door was being pounded upon. “We just need to talk to you for a second Mr. Williams,” came a low voice but in a strangely calm manner.
“We’re investigators with the police and heard something about a friend of yours,” the right man quickly remarked afterward.
“Why the hell would you come here this time of night?” I asked, still sitting against the door.
“It’s 10:00 in the morning Mr. Williams.”
All of a sudden light crept into the window next to the door and filled the front room of my house. “It wasn’t just…. That just happened!” I stood up and looked out the peephole again. There were two men standing there, both in black suits.
“We don’t know what you’re talking about Mr. Williams. We’ve just heard a few rumors that we hoped you could clear up. If you could just let us in and we can talk it over, and clear up this mess,” the man on the left stated.
“What the hell? I haven’t done anything!”
“Well then you have nothing to worry about. But if you don’t let us in, we will have to use force, and that will cause a huge scene. You don’t want that, do you Mr. Williams?”
I was dialing 911 before he was finished speaking and quickly walked into the other room.
“Hello, emergency service, how can I help you,” A soothing woman’s voice came over the small speaker in the phone.
“There’s two men here at my house that claim to be investigators, my address is 302 Longflower. Should they be here? Something is weird here, I think these guys might be trying to rob me or something.”
“Yes sir, a police officer is on his way to check out the situation,” the woman responded.
I stumbled over to the door and looked out the peephole, the two men and the black Crown Vic were already gone. I waited in the chair by the front door for the police to show up, it only took about 10 minutes. KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK, I opened to door.
“Hello sir, we got a call about some suspicious characters,” said the officer, a big man with short dark hair and a tiny mustache. He looked exactly like any cop you would expect to see in a crime drama.
“Yes officer, two men showed up in a black Crown Victoria, they were sitting outside my house all day and knocked on my door about twenty minutes ago, claiming to be part of some sort of investigation. I refused to let them in. I called you and then they took off.”
“Ah,” the officer replied, “probably just some guys trying to rob you, they’ll post out and watch the habits of a house pretty often. They’re definitely not with us though. We’ll be on the lookout for these guys, thanks for your information.”
“Thank you, but I’m worried there might be something more to this,” I stated.
“Probably just being a little paranoid sir, just give us a call if you see anything else.”
“Ah ok,” I said, frightened. “Thank you officer, have a good night.”
I watched him drive away from the front window, and stood there watching for about five minutes looking through my screen door, and all of a sudden, I saw the Crown Vic pulling down the street, followed by two Escalades. “Oh my God, they’re back.” I slammed the door shut and locked both deadbolts. I tried to make a call on my cell phone it was completely dead. I only saw a black screen with a reflection of myself, looking worse than I could ever imagine. The next part is real hazy in my memory. I don’t even know how many men were there this time, but the two original men led them.
“We gave you a chance to comply Mr. Williams. We know everything.” The man on the left said coldly. “We’re going to have to use force now.”
“Who are you? What did I do?” I yelled as my body tensed up and I could feel the adrenaline rush through my body. I couldn’t even move. The rest is like a series of still images in my mind. The door was busted in. 5 men came in and grabbed me and restrained me, one frame at a time. They held me down and I thrashed wildly. The man that was on the left pulled out a huge syringe and injected it into my thigh. I screamed out but there was no sound. I must have passed out or there was something in there to screw up my memory, because I woke in my bed. I looked at the clock in my room, flashing showing 3 o clock am. The power must have gone out.
I woke up with a startle, and looked at my leg, there was no hole or bruise or anything. I walked down the stairs and again at the mirror at the bottom. I looked normal again besides the idea of being a little sleepy. I looked at the door. No sign of a struggle. But when I looked out that same window, I saw that same Crown Victoria. All hopes of it being a bad dream were gone. The reflective window rolled down, and the driver, the man who was on the left, gestured with his hands and lip signing “I’m watching you.” The car drove off. “What do I do now?” I asked myself as began to panic.
I drove to the hospital and told them someone had injected something in my leg, they told me there was nothing there. I insisted. I couldn’t take it anymore. I went straight to the police station and told them everything. I told them how I had hit that guy when I was driving home drunk 9 years ago. How I stopped to look at him, but was too scared of the consequences. I told them how I drove away, and managed to forget about it for these 9 years, but I couldn’t suppress the memory in anymore. Someone’s body had been found 9 years ago, a 15 year old girl named Theresa, who had run away from home. It was on the highway right by my house. I confessed to the crime and went to court. I couldn’t stand to be terrorized by the men in the black suits and that freaking. They ruled me not stable enough to stay in jail so they sent me here. And that’s the whole story Dr. Terry.
“Mr. Williams, you have a problem, but it’s not your fault, you suffer from a disease of the mind. You need to realize you have a problem.” Dr. Terry said calmly. He was a strange man with a monotone voice, grey hair, and glasses. He was exactly the way you would picture a shrink.
“I can’t believe this!” Patton yelled. “There is something crazy going on here, but its not me! I can’t just make stuff up like this, can I?! It’s all real, it’s all real. I don’t know what these guys wanted with me but they injected me with something and I’m either some sort of weird experiment or their tracking me or something but I know I’m not making this up!”
“Mr. Williams, you need to calm down.” He said as he pressed a button on his desk. Two men came in and grabbed Patton, injected him with a shot and took him to a small cell like room.
He woke up.
“I can’t believe this,” he said to himself as he got out of the tiny cot. He looked out the tiny window with the black iron bars. A reflection of himself stared back at him in the mirror. He didn’t recognize himself. His eyelids drooped down, he had dark circles under his eyes, his hair was disheveled, and his skin paler than ever. The bars behind interacted with the reflection to give him a clear picture of his captivity. “At least I’m safe here,” he thought as he followed the road away from the mental asylum with his eyes. But as he followed the road his eyes got bigger and a panic-stricken look came across his face, reflected back at him through the window. A black Crown Victoria was driving up the road, towards the asylum. The license plate read G1LT-E4.
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Final Projects!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oW060Qwc94U
Here is my robot film for anybody who wants to watch it. Everyone else post their film and works in the comments section or in another post!
Monday, May 2, 2011
The Whole Shootin Match
The Whole Shooting Match was an interesting film as part of the Texas Independent FIlm Network series. Significantly it was an influencing factor in the creation of the Sundance Institute, and the prints of the film were lost for many years. While I'm well-aware of old film reels and German cinema disappearing and considered "lost" from the beginning of the 20th century, it was surprising to me to hear that a more recent film has the same fate. Fortunately however a print was found, and it was a pleasure tohave experienced the film with the star, Sonny Carl Davis. The film itself seems to be a personal vision from the director Eagle Pennel about what it meant to be a white, male, heterosexual Texan living in that era. While most of the story involves slice-of-life moments, including getting in a bar fight, discussions with the wife over money problems, and going hunting with the best friend, it has a considerable amount of humor and an articulate understanding of this context.
Additionally the film is incredibly fluid and a perfect example of independent filmmaking at that time. It's not a Hollywood production-- it was shot in Texas, and the camera is often handheld. A lot of the actors' performances are also improvisational at many points, and Sonny Carl Davis pointed out that the director had a series of notes and that the actors would rehearse to the vision of the director.
Additionally the film is incredibly fluid and a perfect example of independent filmmaking at that time. It's not a Hollywood production-- it was shot in Texas, and the camera is often handheld. A lot of the actors' performances are also improvisational at many points, and Sonny Carl Davis pointed out that the director had a series of notes and that the actors would rehearse to the vision of the director.
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Racism in Heart of Darkness?
My group's topic when we were discussing Heart of Darkness was whether or not it was racist. I know that we've discussed this topic thoroughly, but I was actually pretty interested in the opposing viewpoints' arguments. The novella seems to be blatantly racist, but the novel was written in a time when racism didn't have the same understanding as racism today. What I thought was interesting was how he wasn't concerned about the impact that colonialism would have on the savages, but rather the "deterioration of one European min caused by solitude and sickness". The novella was also told from a narrator behind a narrator, showing that perhaps the opinions held by the character was not of Conrad's (completely). I think that Conrad was using Heart of Darkness to express his disgust over colonialism and merely talked how everyone else talked during that time period.
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