Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Reversal of Fortune





 Wisconsin Death Trip, By Michael Lesy
 
Reversal of Fortune is a short, silent film created in response to the book Wisconsin Death Trip by Michael Lesy.  The book is filled with black and white photographs and newspaper articles taken from the town of Black River Falls, Wisconsin. They take place throughout the 19th century and are captured by a photographer named Charles Van Schaick. Lesy's strategic manipulations of powerful images and newspaper clippings depict several themes such as feminism, death, and everyday hardships faced by those who live in rural areas.
 
 Reversal of Fortune

For my silent film I decided to go with my first instinct upon paging through the book and hearing the music that would be in collaboration with my film. That first instict was a sense of eeriness and anxiety. Both of these feelings can be experienced when viewing my film. Another goal for my video was to portray the strange, dark heart of American small towns, for even if they appear to be safe and friendly, underneath their surface or somewhere in their past lie haunted stories and tremendous hardships that have been overcome.

I started out this project by looking up eerie video clips on YouTube to get some inspiration for this "eerie" aura that I wanted to depict. The blue saturated clips with creepy figures was the perfect clip to manipulate because it portrayed the thoughts racing through my mind as I was paging through the book and listening to the sample music played for us in class.

As I previously mentioned, I wanted to depict a sense of anxiety to the viewers too. I accomplished this in my film by varying the speed of the clips. For example, most of the blue saturated scenes are at a fast pace, while the water droplets are pain-painstakingly slow. The water droplets are meant to serve as a hypnotizer for the viewer. The three clips of them falling in slow motion are included to mezmorize the viewer for a few seconds, so that they can simply soak in the music that is being played and think about the clips that were just presented. The choppiness of the film also adds to the anxiety level that is supposed to be felt by the viewers. 

Although several of the clips in the film may seem random, they each reflect a vision I had as I read Wisconsin Death Trip. For example, the farm clips are meant to depict the Midwestern way of life which is what is demonstrated throughout Lesy's book. Farming in rural areas was very difficult, yet despite the struggles of that way of life, some people still choose to live this way today. My uncle is an example of one of these farmers, so several of the scenes are filmed on his land. 

In addition, I include scenes of sunny and wintery days just as the photographs in the book portray. I also mimic photographs in the book through my clips of the three children in the barn, for there are a number of youth subjects in Lesy's book. Finally, I include the dog clips because Lesy also includes a number of animals throughout his book. 

Well, I hope you all enjoyed my film. I cannot wait for the collaboration on Saturday with the musical improvisations!

Evan Baden Reflection

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