The Molotov Man

This was the most interesting article that we have had to read so far this year.  I did not expect to get a little history with the article but I did and it flew by.  I am not saying it made me want to join a cause or anything but seeing someone so passionate about something is absolutely incredible.  Look in the Mototov man's eyes and you see his fury.  Look at his chops and you see his outdatedness.  I was a little confused with the two authors and both of those authors being primary sources but I reread the article and I got it.  How the article was split was really confusing.  I would read a sentence and the next one would not make sense because it really continues on the top of the page on the other side, not the big paragraph right beside it.  The painter, Joy Garnett, took photos off the internet and put them in a folder because she is cool like that.  She went back and began to filter through the ones she wanted to recreate via canvas.  I never thought of doing that but it is very clever.  The original Molotov Man was almost 6 feet talk which is too small if you ask me.  I kind of see myself as a tall strong beautiful political figure.  Oh yes oh yes.  Joy Garnett painted plenty of pictures and got a gallery to have a showcase and so she went to get permission to use the photos.  She went to some money hungry bitch that had her lawyer write a lot of threatening letters about suing and that she wanted 2000 dollars for licensing and additional fees.  Garnett's art became tainted.  Someone online found the photo and out it on his webpage and it opened the flood gates.  The bottle that the Molotov Man threw happened to be a fucking Pepsi.  Can you believe it?  I thought Coke was huge down there but no it was Pepsi.  So Pepsi goes ahead and sues the fuck out of Joy Garnett.  She is taking it from all angles.  All she wanted to do was painted a picture depicting human emotions and find a way to make it a critique of society, which would have made it ok like our found footage projects.  Which by the way I did a found footage project for Shannon in intro to editing and I was thinking about cutting it down to a minute.  What do you think?  Being a pain in the ass, the original photographer decided to write an article to defend herself and her photo.  She did not want the image to be changed in any way because she believed it took away from the art of capturing a moment in time when humans are pushed to the extreme.  So "Joywar" began.  I had no idea that the image was taken so long ago and all the problems began in 2003 if I remember correctly.  The original photographer, Susan Meiselas ended up not suing and taking any money from the artist but put up a good defense for her herself which I've kind of already explained.  They went back and found the Molotov man would owns his own truck, so apparently he is rich.  The image was been used as symbols for many political uprising in Nicaragua.  The man's real name is Pablo Arauz.  What really bothered me was that Arauz had his image sold.  The article did not touch on the fact that Arauz never gave permission for the picture to be taken or used.  It reminded me of Apocalypse Now where Dennis Hopper keeps going around Marlon brando and Brando wants to crush him like a bug.  It makes me wonder if someone took a photo of me on the toilet and then printed it and then I became the face of a joke political party called the dumbshits.  Maybe I did not want to be the image of such an organization and I would not want my face on billboards or t-shirts.  Everything seems to be on a case by case basis and in this one I think everything turned out alright.

48 hour ideas

This is probably going to be the most difficult blog topic yet because writing 600 words is difficult in the first place, I mean we are only in college Andre.  The 48 hour race to produce a respectable 1 minute film seems like a great idea right now but I am sure that when it is a race and I am scrambling to find ideas and props and people to be in the film...I will be completely fine because that is how I do all my projects.  That was a joke I am always prepared you can tell by the quality of my work.  That might also be joke.  I saw a bunch of cool ideas from last years class and really enjoyed the stop-motion films.  I was pretty impressed with the creativity of people like nate rudolf and Dustin Klein.  I think Dustin used the camera on his apple laptop, which I might steal from him depending on the prop.  I usually like what Dustin does but his technical competence is far and away better than my own.  My computer does a similar camera but it is not a laptop and I would be limited to film in areas that have outlets.  I am really tired of seeing films shot in the seahawk village apartments.  I live in one of the fine quality pill boxes.  I just shot a film last year with Tyler and Taylor and the apartment looks like every single one you will fine in every other student film.  Time is actually something that seperates the quality of the projects and I worry my sound will suffer for it.  Nate Rudolf used a digital camera, I think he shot it in black and white, which I am almost always a fan of.  Nate had taken around 200 pictures and the movement was smooth and beautiful.  I think a digital camera would take a while to do but is probably the direction I would like to go in.  I would like to make my life like a Billy Joel song.  What?  I would like to make a piece about the lack of Air Wick air freshers in my roommates rooms.  I have two and it is not because I am a ladies man and they would not come in my room if it smelled bad alright because they would come in no matter what it smelled like and some of the smells we make are not always pleasant.  They are five dollars at any local conglomerate supermarket.  They plug right into the wall and you can buy refills so it is not a big deal to change them or a wear on your wallet.  I could do a remake of Forest Gump where everyone else is slow and Forest finally understands how difficult he is to deal with day in and day out.  I could also do a reenactment of the many civil war battles with my camera phone and have a truce between the south and the north and an Indian comes out of the wood work to offer the mystery prop as incentive to let them keep some of their land.  Then both sides come together to hate the Indian.  When you think about it, Dances with Wolves really did not tell the Indians story well enough where people stop taking advantage of them.  I mean they got here first and we just took it.  They were nice to us and then we took it.  They helped us survive and then we took it, we took it all.  So yeah I think that is it.  I will use a digital camera or camera phone and shoot a one minute film where the north and south finally agree on something...the brutual useless awful killings of an innocent people.

Long shot

The long shot.  It is everything in narrative that I want to accomplish.  Orson Welles said that the long shot separates the men from the boys.  I was really really really excited to work on 16mm film for the first time.  Every single film experience has brought strange events.  I have never had film turn out quite as I wanted it 2.  It was raining, we were all ready for it.  We created a story around it.  The rain would add to the creepiness; the loneliness of the main character.  Taylor was going to be the DP and I the actor.  There was no need for a lot of direction.  My character would be drench in rain while carrying an umbrella.  To add the character he would have a high-step tip toe.  I wanted to make it look like the Cabinet of Dr. CAlligary.  Tyler thought I was being French which I don;t understand but whatever.  It was a lot of fun finding a location.  It just so happened to be right next to another group.  Our project was better haha.  Joselyn's group had a mean dance routine that had a resemblance to a good West Side Story.  They had a lot of fun playing in the rain.  We rehearsed and rehearsed until it our time was right around a minute.  We shot it at the last minute and laughed about all the time it took to do something so simple.  We ran in and developed the film and it was shit.  Useless and it was our fault.  Light is the most important aspect in cinematography and without it there is no picture.  Andre didn;t think it would come out and he was right, he always seems to be when it comes to my failures.  We had to do a reshoot after the two other groups were finished with their projects.  We had to do it off the cuff and it was shit.  I really hate DV but cant seem to do well with film.  I will do better next time by making sure I understand the F-stops and amount of light coming through the aperture.  Taylor is a good DP and Marcus is a good Dolly pusher.  I bet he could push some drugs, seriously.  I am really happy with the effort we made just not the results we had.  All the groups came out with something that was pretty good.  I can't believe that they are cutting 6 by 1 next year.  That is straight bullshit.  Everything will be digital video and a film degree is a lie.   Since using a dolly, I no longer want to do a static shot unless it is completely called for.  I am pretty sick now and I am not blaming it on the shoot but if I had to I guess I could.  I am glad that Andre gave us another chance.  If we only had more light, our first project would have been beautiful.  The crane shot was incredible but it didn't turn out.  The 360 degree arc was pretty amazing too but everyone thought we were doing a remake of The Dark Knight.  The animation turned out pretty well.  I can't decide which project I want to edit.  I guess the I will wait and see what Taylor wants to do because I trust her.  To get 600 words, I am currently listening to Ray LaMontagne and wearing only underpants and socks.  I am drinking Pepsi and recently had a bagel.