Video. The combination of moving image, spoken word and music is undeniably effective in captivating our attention, transmitting a message and eliciting an emotional response. It’s the dominant art form of our century. It is flexible and powerful, and now it’s open to virtually everybody. For two thousand bucks you can have a good HD camera and a computer for editing. It’s easy to go overboard in the editing room — because it’s so cheap, so easy and fun to manipulate images and create computer generated content. It’s like being God, or a god, and messing with how reality is perceived. (Zizek has an essay about how the camera is God’s eyeball.) However, like the bad graphics from the 80′s, it’s good to remember that new technology does not result in better art. It actually poses a great temptation to go overboard.
I just saw this video at the Matador Network. It’s by some students and an emerging rap artist in New York. This little production will no doubt launch Nyle into more of a spotlight and bring some musicians and directors to the attention of deep-pocketed producers. It just goes to show what some enthusiasm, talent and coordination can do. This was done in a single take with some masterful use of lighting.
I think of M. Knight Shyamalan’s “Signs” and how not seeing the aliens is more powerful. We fear what we don’t understand. Leave it to the imagination. Probably some other good maxims to apply here, but I’m out.
So, question #1: In film and video production, is less usually more? With a limited budget, less has to equal more. But how much more can we get with how much less?
And one more question (#2): What’s the lowest (inflation adjusted) budget film to reach the big screens on at least a semi-wide release?
Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper. - Thomas Jefferson
Something about this Global Oneness video is so true but so meaningless. Where is the line between lofty truth and meaningless generalities and rhetoric? And why is it that some people hear truth and some people hear meaninglessness in the same message? The imagery in this video is stunning, and inspires some global tale of desperation, adventure, poverty with the contrast of big city opulence. But it also begs to be mocked, just a little bit. Or perhaps it’s just my conservative education that makes me laugh a little at these idealistic visions of “global oneness.” Instead of talking about global peace, let’s just deal with the concrete problems, one at a time, on a local level, helping real individuals.
Part of Slumdog Millionaire’s success was it’s vibrant portrayal of India’s slum culture. It found beauty in the trash. Did it romanticize it too much, or did it simply capture the childlike exuberance, despite the filth? It intimately brought us into another world, opening our eyes to the universality of human love (and brutality and selfishness). And it worked, because we knew our characters’ histories and childhood dreams. The central claim that I took from Slumdog was that beauty exists everywhere, for all people and that a loving providence prevails when/if we embrace selfless love.
But when a story becomes too archetypal it loses grounding in the gritty details that make it real and thus, universal. Something about this little video is too universal and lacks grounding in a clear argument.
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