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‘Week 3’ Category

  1. Trailer for “The Great Flood”

    October 22, 2013 by jarrattt@uoregon.edu

    Archival footage has the possibility and the tendency to be used without specific reference. It’s a stand in for the specific. It’s used to evoke a mood and give a general idea about how something happened or the way things might have looked at a certain point in time in distant past. This isn’t always problematic. Using it for metaphor may be the best use for it. Still, when the archival footage can actually put you in a place and time of the actual story you are witnessing it is possibly more engaging.

    This is how I felt this week when I came across the trailer for “The Great Flood.” I felt engaged because I was seeing the artifacts of the actual event. I was able to witness to the effects of the devastating flood. I think about Ken Burn’s WWII series. To ponder people running around with cameras on the battlefields while people are being shot and killed right next to them is one thing. To see the footage from people that actually did that is something else entirely.


  2. We All Need a Little Fearlessness.

    October 22, 2013 by bjh@uoregon.edu

    Carving the Mountains from Juan Rayos on Vimeo.

    Now that we are in the thick of this whole Grad School experience all sorts have work have started to come down to us, and well we have to get it all done.  So I wanted something this week to inspire me to push myself and get stuff done.  What I ended up finding might seem a little different, but to me is inspiring.  Being very much into sports I always like to see people doing something that I know if I put the work into mastering it I could do it, but I never found the time.  One of these activities is skateboarding, and the women in Carving the Mountain are damn good.

    It’s not street style skateboarding like Tony Hawk its long boarding down a hill, going fast and doing some tricks that look like they should be done on a wave in the ocean, not on blacktop.  What I really loved about this was how steady everything was despite the motion.  Rolling along down the hill with a camera is no small feat and it is done well here, though I have no idea of how.  Capturing the rider’s point of view was essential to this piece so as to really give the feeling of skateboarding with them as they pull off all of their tricks.  This video is essentially GoPro used to some of it’s best effect most likely.  It would be difficult to get a normal DSLR or video camera to be as mobile as it would have needed to be.

    There is also a certain amount of fearlessness that is needed to do this stuff at high speeds.  No fear of getting hurt and banged up, just the thrill of being able to do it.  That is what I think we all need a little of right now, maybe me more than others, a sense that anything can get done, and have no fear to step out of your comfort zone.


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