Category: Uncategorized

 

Alex Lockwood’s 73 Cows is a beautiful portrait of a close love between a man and his cows, in which the director uses POV and composition to give each sequence of shots both a literal and metaphorical meaning.

He starts the piece with a match action sequence of Jay, the main character, making his way from his farm into his home. These shots move from wide, to medium, to close within the first minute – starting at a distance with Jay as a speck on his large farm plot, and finally zooming in on a photograph of his father in the kitchen window beside him. This sequence instructs the audience how to take in the rest of the story: Jay’s farm, this big plot of land that surrounds Jay, closely impacts him on a personal level.

The next few minutes introduce us to the primary conflict of the piece – Jay is in the business of beef farming, which harms the very animals he loves. Lockwood cuts back and forth between medium shots of Jay lovingly nuzzling his cows and close ups of the cows’ eyes. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, and Lockwood uses these closeups to show us the humanity that Jay sees in these cows, making the audience empathize with Jay’s resistance toward killing them. Lockwood includes a wonderful wide shot at 1:50 to visualize the moment Jay says he can’t disconnect his feelings for the cows from his work. In the shot, Jay and the cows stand on opposite sides of a fence, Jay speaking to them lovingly despite the divide. This divide acts as both a physical and figurative one – despite Jay being human, and them animals, their love transcends the species divide, and endures the harm he causes them.

At 3:30, Jay talks about the guilt he feels for betraying the cows on the day he sends them off to be slaughtered. While he speaks, Lockwood shows us match-action shots of Jay preparing the transport wagon, oscillating back and forth between shots of Jay from inside the cage and from outside the cage. Visually, Lockwood tells us the story of Jay’s struggle between his need to make a living (outside the cage shot), and the feelings of the cows (inside shot). He also introduces close-up shots of Jay’s eyes as the story digs into the effects this is having on him, paralleling the earlier close-ups of the cows’ eyes, and again bringing to life this connection.

At 2:20, Jay uses composition to visualize the role of a new character, Katja. She has come to the farm to help Jay find a path out of this work and into something less emotionally challenging. Lockwood introduces her with a simple wide shot as she rounds a building and walks in the direction of two arrows that sit on signs by the building’s exterior. Not only is the shot gorgeous, but the movement toward these arrows acts as a nice metaphor for Katja’s purpose in helping Jay find his path.

Minute 6 marks a clear transition in the piece. The screen fades to black, after the two have decided to sell their cattle and start fresh. Beneath this narration, a crack of light appears on the screen, the door to Jay’s shed being cracked open. Lockwood was uniquely creative with this transition in a moment when many directors might just fade back into the next scene. I loved inching back into the next chapter as the door opened to reveal the next frame.

Finally, in the last chapter of the piece, Lockwood introduces mounting movements and camera movements for what feels like the first time. The shots at the beginning of the piece were simple, letting the characters move within them. Now, the camera makes motivated movements, in many cases utilizing drone footage (e.g. tracking Jay as he walks across an empty field looking for answers, moving past the two from overhead as they get to work on a new garden).  Again, Lockwood does this with intention: as Jay and Katja begin moving forward along a new path, Lockwood moves with them.

“All Things Must Pass” is an interview-style documentary film where the story of the rise and eventual fall of the Tower Records chain of stores is told by the company owner and former employees. The significance that Tower had wasn’t just on a handful of music enthusiasts in California–the company had a much more profound impact on the music industry itself, and that story is told through this film as the now departed Russ Soloman recounts how he found his way in the business.

For me, I found the warm lighting and color choices that were used, almost as if to match the archival footage from the 60s and 70s, to also evoke feelings of warmth and emotion. I grew up in the birth place of Tower Records, Sacramento, and lived there until high school. I’m not entirely sure that people outside of Northern California feel the same tie to these stores that I did, but the scenes during the 1970s of high school students at the Watt Avenue location probably include my parents. I vividly remember going to that store with them in the 1980s and 90s. When I moved to Chico for high school, I spent my lunch breaks browsing CDs at the Tower there with my friends.

This extra wide opening shot of the first Tower Records location in Sacramento establishes a sense of place. We see the large strip mall complex that’s pretty much taken over by Tower and the large parking lot it has, which tells us that’s how busy the location could get. And even though the lot is empty, there’s this warm yellow glow from the inside that makes it feel like the lights are on and someone’s home. It feels like home.

The next shot in the opening sequence is a tighter shot of the red Tower Records sign above the front doors. The sign is pulsing slowly, just like it always did. The camera pans down to the two glass doors covering the entrance, and they’re both propped wide open. The camera begins to move closer to the entrance, and the viewer can see a neon sign that says “classical,” and rows upon rows of empty shelves.

It stops there. Instead of going into the store and seeing the size of it and the rows of empty shelves, we see a cutaway of Russ Soloman’s wallet on his dresser and hear his voice begin telling a story as a woman packs a suitcase. He’s explaining how young people used to collect music, when suddenly, we pan from the dark into the empty record store on what I think must be some kind of slider.

The camera passes through a couple of rows of empty record shelves before it finds our interview subject, Russ Solomon, in what I’d say is a pretty wide shot. He’s sitting in a chair for his interview with his entire body in the frame, inside the Watt Avenue Tower Records store between rows of empty CD shelves labeled “rock/pop.” I couldn’t dream of interviewing someone more in their element. I absolutely love this shot. The slider that they use going into this shot, for me, conveyed a sense of anticipation, and I think for those unfamiliar with the store also helped contextualize the size of the location. The lighting is a combination of natural and unnatural. The natural light coming in from the behind the blinds and the way it hits the light-colored wood, as well as the warmth coming from the sign behind him are all elements that work well here.

Another great idea I picked up on in this film was how to handle visuals when your interview subject is telling a story that took place decades ago. This documentary uses a lot of great old footage, and we should all hope to be so lucky, but another trick they used was showing the scene in modern day, and then matching the frame to a historic photo. In describing how he first got started, Soloman mentions Tower Theater (a historic landmark in Sacramento) and mentions his father had a drug store there. The filmmakers went out and shot a beautiful modern era sequence of the tower theater to show as b-roll while Soloman says all of this, and this sequence ends with this particular shot of the building:

This shot sits on the screen for a couple of seconds and then it switches to this historic one instead:

The impact of doing something like this is it transitions the viewer back in time with the storyteller, who in this case is the interview subject. It’s an interesting way to get around having a lack of old footage too, since it was far more engaging to watch than to just see one or two old photos. This way, you still got a feel for the building and setting but you also got the point that it was important in the 1940s as well.

There were a number of old stills they incorporated in creative ways, and I think it’s worth showing a couple here for inspiration because they present some better-looking options than simply filling the frame with the shot. I also just think they look cool.

You can watch “All Things Must Pass” with a University of Oregon or Multnomah County Library card on Kanopy here.

–Amanda Rhoades

Written by Omar Rivera
2020 Elections: What You Need to Know by The New York Times

What these videos succeed in doing is informing their audiences of the candidates who have formally announced that they’re running for the democratic nomination of President of the United States in the 2020 election. Each video is around two minutes in length and they briefly inform their viewers of the candidates, answering any question: who are these candidates?

The first thing that is consistent within the series is the animation style. We see multiple layers of stills and archived news footage stylized with a color palette complimentary to the democratic party’s color. The consistency between the videos bring a sense of unity, one of the many things these candidates say is a theme and priority in their campaigns. The approach to the series is traditionally journalistic, using archived clips that give the viewer a synopsis of the candidate throughout the years—highlighting their strengths and the challenges they face against the other announced candidates. The videos also include what the current president thinks of the candidate, with video clips of him criticizing them and their positions on certain issues.

One thing that I do think The New York Times needs to do is feature more democratic candidates who have formally announced a 2020 bid. So far, they only have five videos, featuring Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Kirsten Gillibrand, Cory Booker, and Amy Klobuchar. According to CNN, as of February 28^th, 2019, a total of 13 candidates have announced so far.

Written by Omar Rivera

Vice News – I Got a Tattoo from One of Yelp’s Worst-Rated Tattoo Parlors

Vice News is one of the many properties under the Vice Media umbrella. The Vice News platform regularly releases video content exclusively for their YouTube channel and implement a reflexive approach to journalism. For their One Star Reviews series, reporter Taji Ameen visits business and services listed on Yelp.com with a low one-star review rating average to see if they really are as bad as people have reviewed it or if the businesses and services are just misunderstood (the unanswered question).

In this reflexive narrative, Ameen willingly lends himself as a protagonist to the story. Ameen is in search of getting his first tattoo and begins researching online for one-star reviewed tattoo parlors. Here, we see a composition method, or tool commonly used in online video which is implementing the use of computer screen capturing (or screen recording). What this does is allows the viewer to not only see what the on-camera character is looking at on their computer screen, but to also drive the narrative along as the character is searching for a possible route to take the story. Ameen scrolls through his options and comes across Fat Kat Tattoo and the artist mentioned on multiple reviews named Nate.

Next, there’s a sequence in this video that gives the illusion of a montage. As Ameen is asking Nate questions, the audio is layered over as the shots are faded in and out on top of each other to give the illusion of time passing and making Ameen seem more annoying throughout Nate’s creative process of drafting the tattoo. Question after question, shot after shot the tattoo is finally drafted and Ameen sits down on the chair ready to interview Nate and get his one-star tattoo.

The journalistic approach to the one-starred reviewed tattoo parlor shop begins to shift at the moment Ameen is being tattooed. He goes from a reflexive approach and combines interview. “I noticed some kind of, like, negative reviews on the internet in regards to working with you.” Nate then open up to the reporter and talks about struggling to be professional in his line of work, struggling to balance his personal life and his business. I believe what Ameen did to lead into the interview built the trust between himself and the “supporting character” of his narrative.

The story ends with Ameen writing a positive five-star review of Nate and Fat Kat Tattoo Parlor with a voiceover. This final voiceover wraps up the narrative nicely, teaching the viewer that we must not always judge a book by it’s cover it’s Yelp review.

Here’s a fun music video that doubles as a mini Bollywood movie. I was inspired by some of the some slick camera moves and eye-catching editing techniques I hope to use to enhance my Winter Project about a Bollywood DJ. There are several videos included in the link below. The one I’d like to highlight starts at 2:23.

The short video is a compressed storyline of  boy meets girl, does boy get girl? With a Cinéma Vérité approach the plot starts with a taxi driver passing a supermodel photo shoot – and he is struck with love at first sight. There’s a cool frame through the cabbie’s window at 2:37 providing the audience with POV showing (not telling) us what’s going on.

Next we see some matched action shots (starting around 2:40) with medium and tight shots of the taxi driver on his phone renting a luxury car thinking he might stand a better chance of getting the model’s attention if he has a cool ride. The guy goes on to totally reinvent himself to come across as some kind of jet-set super rich dude to score points with his love interest.

Slow motion is used throughout the video congruent with the pace of the music, as well as the storyline. The video editor slows down the pace with slow motion to emphasize the dreamy pursuit. An example starts around 3:08.

To convey passage of time, the editors use a series of crossfades, like these starting at 3:52. It also lends a another dreamy, romantic feeling as we watch their budding romance blossom.

Drastic and artsy angles are used throughout the video providing an edgy feel and interesting aesthetics. Here’s an example at 3:35.

Smooth and gliding gimbal and pans are used in much of the video conveying motion and congruent with the flow of the music.  Here’s an example at 3:35:

The mini Bollywood movie approach here is fun, energetic and entertaining just like the music video’s song. The gimbal shots and crossfades lend well to the dreaminess of a love story in the works and convey passage of time. Drastic angles edited to beats also emphasize the song’s style and feel. The deliberate use of slow motion sets the pace in accordance with the music and storyline. The matched action and framing gives us context and moves the story along with a ‘show don’t tell’ technique.

Now, I wouldn’t recommend faking someone out with a false persona to get a date.  But, it seemed to work for this guy and the answer to the Unanswered Question appears to be yes – he got the girl! 🙂

The 2018 midterm elections were more than just a referendum on President Donald Trump’s leadership. The election cycle will also go down as a new age of visual storytelling about the wave of women seeking office. With unprecedented numbers of women on the ballot, filmmakers used novel storytelling approaches to introduce voters to the candidates. The commercials are all notable for their storytelling prowess, their distinct visual choices, and for how the stories of women confronting the status quo were front and center.

As visual storytellers, we can learn from and imitate the sophisticated persuasive work on display to tell our own compelling stories. As journalists, understanding the successful visual language at use here helps us tell smarter stories about how candidates are connecting with voters.    

Here’s a look at several campaign videos about women, two of which went viral this election cycle.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

The Courage to Change

“Women like me aren’t supposed to run for office. I was born in a place where your zip code determines your destiny.”

That’s the start of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s get-to-know-me campaign video. This came out before the 29-year-old congresswoman from New York was a national star, and before she won a primary victory over a long-time Democrat. It’s a film that paints Ocasio-Cortez as a relatable, hard-working protagonist taking on forces larger than her, including people in her own party. There’s no doubt that this intimate origin story paved the way for her success, and introduced a new form of storytelling that is being widely copied by other women, including all the women now running for president.

It was made by Detroit filmmaker Naomi Burton, who admits she borrowed from storytelling techniques she honed while creating advertising campaigns for companies like General Motors. After the 2016 elections, Burton decided to quit her job in advertising and focus on making what she described in an interview as “leftist propaganda.”

“I was creating propaganda for all of these corporations,” Burton told New York Magazine’s podcast, The Cut on Tuesday. “What we’re trying to do is take all that we learned from that private-sector world about creating, you know, really high-end, high-quality content, and just bringing that over to the left. Create Super Bowl-level ads for leftist candidates and for this leftist movement.”

The video features Ocasio-Cortez in a traditional narrative voiceover structure. But there’s also something that hasn’t been seen much in campaign videos about a previous generation of women running for office: the ordinariness of a woman getting ready for her day and then how she spends it, from sunup to sundown. This has become Ocasio-Cortez’s trademark: an unprecedented glimpse into her personal life using social media. This film marks the debut of this sort of storytelling.

I’ll break down two specific sequences to understand why the visuals were so effective with this narrative technique:

The film begins with seven quick clips in 10 seconds of Ocasio-Cortez in her own bathroom getting ready for the day by doing her hair and putting on mascara. There’s a softness to the focus, suggesting a wide-open aperture and the use of the natural light, and it is all conveyed with handheld camera work and medium- to tight shots. (With one exterior, establishing shot of her apartment building, also shot handheld and with some artful solar flare on the lens.) These are deliberate choices that, within the first 10 seconds, convey a sense of authenticity we don’t get with older female candidates.

There’s another interesting visual choice, shot with the same hand-held, wide-open aperture. From :49 to 1:02, we see 13 quick clips of children and families. These children are holding hands with adults, playing, eating with their moms at home, and walking across the streets with their fathers in the diverse district Ocasio-Cortez was running to represent. (Again, with one solar-flared exterior in the mix, clearly a favorite technique of the filmmaker! and one that gives us that sensation of being there, in that place, as the story is told.) The final medium shot, handheld, is a video portrtait of a young girl, someone who looks like Ocasio-Cortez might have when she were 7 or 8. And then we cut to her as an adult, speaking to a group at a church. It’s time to fight for a New York that working families can afford, we hear her say.

Burton says these scenes from a woman’s life may may seem novel now only because there have been fewer women involved in creating video. More women in video means more stories get told about women, she said. “If more women were just involved in that, you’d see scenes in women’s lives,” Burton said.  

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, there’s a lot of filmmakers and campaign managers out there trying to recreate Burton’s magic. Since the video came out, and since Ocasio-Cortez’s election, we’ve seen other candidates letting people into their homes.(Kamala Harris in her kitchen, for example.) It often seems staged, and that’s because it is. You can’t imitate Ocasio-Cortez’s millennial comfort with cameras and social media. Other candidates who want to create narratives that invite voters and viewers into unguarded moments will have to find their own authentic visual language to show us scenes from their lives.  

Mary Jennings “MJ” Hegar

Doors

Like the Ocasio-Cortez film, with Mary Jennings Hegar we get the origin story of a candidate who is new to politics and needs an introduction to voters. Hegar, though, is no ordinary woman. She’s a heroic former Air Force helicopter pilot who fought to lift the ban on women serving in on-the-ground combat roles. The Texan broke down a lot of doors – and that’s the storytelling metaphor that drives the film that introduces her to voters. She needs to be made relatable, and that’s done through storytelling that portrays her as an ordinary woman in extraordinary circumstances doing whatever it takes to physically and metaphorically bust through barriers.

One of Hegar’s first memories is of a door, she tells viewers: the glass one that her father threw her mother out of when she was a child, which is depicted as a re-enactment in the early scenes of the film. Throughout her life Hegar faced barriers, and that meant “opening, using and sometimes kicking through every door that was in my way,” she says in the video.

Let’s look at how the use of a steady cam, along with visually and conceptually matched cuts, are an important part of the storytelling approach:

She tells us right away in the opening seconds of the film that it is a story about doors, and we see Hegar’s modern-day front door in Texas. It’s open, and it’s though we as viewers are invited in. In one, fluid 20-second steady cam shot, we get to walk in her front door, through her hallway and into her dining room, where her husband is delivering food to her and their two children and another adult. (We even see the tattoos on Hegar’s right upper arm, something few previous women running for Congress have dared show.) In that same long shot, the camera comes up to the door on display in her dining room, as Hegar explains how it is the door to the helicopter she was in when she was shot down in Afghanistan.

We go directly to a conceptually matched cut of an actual door on an actual helicopter, in a re-enactment of a combat scene. From here, we see scene after scene of Hegar walking through doors. (Note at 1:06 the Air Force poster on the wall of her re-created childhood bedroom, and how it cuts to the same poster outside of a re-enactment of her entering the Air Force recruitment office years later.)    

These conceptual match cuts occur throughout the piece, contributing to the narrative flow of the story, that one thing led to another in her career, and that the door she’s trying to break down now is an inevitable progression of that.

The idea for the get-to-know-MJ ad came from producer Cayce McCabe, an experienced writer and director at the political consulting firm Putnam Partners. He told Adweek that he shot on a steady cam to make the Hegar campaign video feel “very fluid” and “as though the whole spot is connected.” He also told Adweek that filmmakers can make political ads that are as cinematic and as “well-shot, well-produced, well-written, clever” and even “attention-grabbing” as those made by big corporations.

“There’s no reason that political advertising needs to be particularly boring, or particularly straightforward, or what people have been used to seeing in political ads for decades,” he said. (What a relief!)

Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda even tweeted about it. “MJ, you made the best political ad anyone’s ever seen. I should be asking YOU for help!”

Hegar was in a tough district for Democrats, even for Democrats who were awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. But 3 million people watched Hegar’s video on YouTube. It’s sure to open yet another door for her.

Heidi Heitkamp

Arm Wrestling

I include this campaign commercial because it has a striking visual technique, but it was used in a way that was likely unhelpful to the candidate. It also illustrates what might be a generational/fashion shift in  storytelling. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota was well known to her constituents – a 2012 profile of her first campaign for U.S. Senate described her hugging her way across the room because she knew so many people wherever she campaigned. Even though everyone already knew her, as a Democrat in a state where 63 percent of voters chose Trump in 2016, she faced an uphill battle against a sitting congressman with as much name recognition as her.

So it’s worth looking at the eye-catching campaign commercial she released at the end of the midterm cycle. It’s a 30-second commercial more in the vein of a traditional television spot aired at the end of a campaign. Heitkamp sits at a table, armwrestling a muscle-bound man at a table – and winning. (We never see the arm-wrestler’s face, just his meaty back and shaved head.) We hear music that’s a little reminiscent of a WWF promo video, and the lighting has that garish look of a night-time sporting event – pro basketball comes to mind. And most strikingly, the 30-second spot is shot in one take with no cuts, using a controlled dolly shot to swoop in over the arm-wrestler’s shoulder toward Heitkamp’s face in a positive action shot. “I’m Heidi Heitkamp and maybe this is how we should decide elections because it couldn’t get much more ridiculous,” she says, in a nod to the role of fake news in modern politics.

This one-shot controlled dolly shot is fun to see – it’s what caught my eye in my Facebook feed. But imagine how much more effective it could have been had it been used with the  narrative aplomb the other two women deployed? Something that demonstrated, visually, Heitkamp’s place in her state, using the landscape and her connection to it to her advantage? Something that evoked feeling for her love and familiarity with the place she hoped to continue representing in the U.S. Senate.

Heitkamp directly names her opponent, something both Hegar and Ocasio-Cortex also do in their ads. From a storytelling perspective, it gives the women adversaries to vanquish, and as viewers we are invested in the outcome. But unlike Hegar and Ocasio-Cortez, Heitkamp doesn’t give us an intimate glimpse at her womanhood. She is one of the boys, in a masculine-leaning commercial with unflattering light.

The campaign ad got little attention, and Heitkamp lost the election. I reached out to the campaign but didn’t get a response about who made the spot. It came at the same time as Heitkamp’s vote against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and she released a separate ad explaining that vote, which likely stole the thunder from her ad. Given Heitkamp’s reputation as a down-to-earth and relatable politician, the commercial was a surprising pick.

I’m hopeful that in future elections, women won’t need to show they’re one of the boys to get elected.

-Erika Bolstad

I’m a huge fan of Vox’s ambitious, explanatory video journalism utilizing a variety of camera, editing, motion graphics and storytelling approaches in producing compelling stories. Vox crew members are master tour guides in leading audience members through the journey of a person, place or thing.

A great example of this is The mass graves of Tulsa. It’s a gripping, horrific and necessary story about the 1921 massacre that took place in Tulsa, Oklahoma’s “Black Wall Street” – a once thriving community of black-owned businesses in a neighborhood called the Greenwood District. White supremacists burned more than 1,200 Greenwood buildings and killed approximately 300 people there following accusations of an African-American teenager assaulting a white teenager. Tulsa Mayor G.T. Bynum recently launched a search to find the mass graves where the murdered victims were buried and bring closure to their families.

In the opening starts with a voiceover from the video producer and drone footage with three different bird’s-eye view shots, coupled with some creepy music and the narrator/reporter saying, “Something terrible happened here…” – which gave me a sense of morbid curiosity, foreboding and definitely wanting to know What Happens Next? The drone shots make effective use of contrast by going from what looks like Small Town USA to a cemetery – bolstering the What Happens Next? tension and drawing the viewer in even more.

Introducing the Interview Style, there’s a J Cut at :09 where we here audio of an interviewee as a lead-in to the visual cut of her. It’s a seamless transition as the video producer guides us from the drone shots into the room where we meet the first interview subject and gain context.

At :14 Vox gives us an effectively abrupt and eye-catching Symmetrical Composition with the next interviewee. The composition creates a demanding, in-your-face and straight effect for a story and resolution that demands the same.

At :18 and then :21 we see a medium cut, then close up, of an MOS interviewee that makes use of Shallow Depth of Field to tone down a background that may have been distracting. However, we can see the blurred image of a police car with flashing lights in that background. It’s appropriate for the criminal nature of the subject matter at hand providing continuity. In addition, we see a cut form medium shot to a tight shot to emphasize the importance of what the interviewee is saying, “It was an absolute massacre.”

Vox also uses the Re-enactment Style in telling us what happened nearly 100 years ago with old footage, photos, newspaper articles and records documenting the racial violence. These powerful elements are peppered throughout giving us historical prospective and authenticity.

In addition, Vox employs motion graphics layered over and alongside old photos and newspaper stories to enhance the explanatory portions of the piece. It adds an interesting aesthetic element to static b-roll (still photos, records, newspaper stories, rock shots) and guides the viewer to a deeper understanding by visually connecting the dots for us as to what went down. It draws our attention to what we need to see and says LOOK AT THIS now. Below are just a couple of examples.

Sound effects conveying an antiquated/historical feel are used as well. When showing the viewer images of archived newspaper stories, we often hear the tap of an old -fashioned typewriter – bringing us back to a time when the stories were published. These segments are also edited to the beat of that sound effect creating greater impact – like audio exclamation points.

Overall, Vox’s polished, professional and highly-produced Mass graves of Tulsa leaves us with an urgent sense of call to action to provide closure to the families of the massacre’s innocent victims.

As I work to weave a poem into one of my own visual projects, I went in search of inspiration from short films that are deliberate in their use of poetry. I came across Motion Poems, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that matches poets with filmmakers to produce work that interprets poetry.

Be forewarned: The motion poems are addictive and inspiring. Each one I watched led to another. And I wanted to know more about the poets and the filmmakers who created the work. How did the filmmakers chose the imagery, and what else had they produced? How much did they collaborate with the poets? Even without words, many of the films could be considered visual poetry. But with skillful use of sound and music and words, they transcend both film and poetry to become something new.

Some of the motion poems were explicitly linear, using reenactment to tell the narrative of the poem. Others were much less overt, and I was surprised by how much I was drawn to the nonlinear visual storytelling. With these types of motion poems, images are as carefully chosen as words to evoke emotion. There is much we can take from this approach, even when we are putting together journalism-based work: images have emotional power that we can use to convey a tone and even the intent of our pieces. 

In “How to Make the Girl” by filmmaker and musician Ann Prim, we see the power of a nonlinear interpretation of a poem by a fellow multi-hyphenate: musician and artist Dessa Wander. Prim often has a nonlinear approach to her work, which is deliberately designed to provoke feelings, she said in an interview with Minnesota Public Television about one of her other films, Filmetto – Porta 241.

“I really like the person viewing it to create their own narrative,” Prim said. “The human mind always wants to make a narrative. It wants to make sense of our surroundings.”

Of her films, Prim says she is drawn to telling stories of women’s lives, “especially stories that reveal the strength needed to survive and thrive.” A common thread running through her work is a focus on characters who tend to dwell outside social norms. They also often exist in what Prim describes as “the space between and in the process of becoming.”

That’s exactly what we have in “How to Make the Girl.” The four-minute film opens with the title appearing word by word over an abstract image (and sound) of a lathe. The words disappear one by one, as though they are being deleted on a keyboard from the end of a sentence. It’s an act of visual wordplay that suggests the girl can be unmade by external forces (or creators) as easily as she can be made. Viewers may create their own narrative, but they are given a visual clue at the film’s beginning that this film is about the forces that shape women’s lives.

From the start, music and sound are powerful forces in this film, as is befitting in a piece of art made by a filmmaker and poet with musical backgrounds. The film opens with a curtain drawing from left to right and music that evokes the rhythmic sound of industrial clicking. It was only on second viewing that I realized there was a hand – unknown who it was attached to! – pulling the curtain. A bare lightbulb swings in the opposite direction, creating an artful juxtaposition of imagery.

In the background are a girl’s dress behind plastic, dirty shears, blue rubber gloves and a hose. The hypnotic lightbulb continues to swing back and forth as the camera pulls away in an unmotivated negative action shot. We are 30 seconds in, and visually, we know that a stage has been set. The emotion evoked here is that of unease, that something natural is awry.

Next, we see shadows on the floor that represent the moving light bulb. We see a sequence of the items on the wall: the dress, the shears, the hose. The camera moves closer to pan over these items. Unlike the crisp medium opening shot, these are fuzzier, their focus deliberately muddy. The light from the shining bulb continues to swing across the items. And then, at 45 seconds, Prim focuses on the moving bulb, in an extreme close up that crescendos with the sound of the sizzle and crackle of the filaments within. It is so close we see the dust on the bulb.

This shot is followed by a conceptual match cut to the smooth legs of a girl, also swinging from side to side from some fixed point above. Her pale legs are the only bright spot in this otherwise ominous room. They being to spin, and we hear once again the sound of something turning. The next shot (at 1:12) is of an analog counter.

It is here that the poem begins, with words that correspond to the counter: “One hundred turns on the lathe…”

Fear is evoked next. A raw rib scuttles from left to right across the screen, using stop motion to animate its movement. “We don’t use the rib in this new method.” Feed it to the dog, the voice of the creator says, as a growling maw lunges at the rib at 1:40.

Again, the hand of an unseen creator is at work, turning the figure of the girl wrapped in a opaque plastic tarp. Still unseen, the creator tosses the body into the trunk of an old green Buick. It contributes to the feeling that we are watching a horror film, a Frankenstein under construction. And the treatment of the girl’s body, tossed in a trunk, suggests her disposability. The garage door begins to close. In a matched action shot that takes us in a close-up to the door, it slams shut, with a powerful bang. This shot is so carefully constructed, with such an eye for detail, that we see spiders scuttling at the bottom of the frame, disturbed by the slam and the noise. (1:57) This is imagery used to evoke disgust and unease, accompanied by the sound of scuttling insects, as though a collection of cockroaches scattered, off-screen, somewhere behind us.  

The camera as the car drives away is focused midway between the foreground and the background, so the taillights and the shape of it are out of focus until the car arrives at the point of focus. This is a beautiful, 20-second shot worth replicating. It is accompanied by emphatic techo music with a strong beat, and the muscular sound of a gas-guzzling sedan accelerating away. (From about 2 to 2:25.) This is a masculine, old-fashioned car, another clue that this film is about how women have mostly lived in a world created by men.

The screen fades to black, and then there is an abrupt shift of tone and color palate and music at 2:27. “La Camparsita” by the Brazilian guitar duo Los Indios Tabajaras, kicks in. (There are no other musical credits for this film, which suggests that Prim composed most of it. It’d be interesting to know whether she and Wander collaborated on the music.)

This next shot is also a lengthy one, lasting from 2:28 to 2:48. Once again, it begins with the girl’s feet, a callback to our first glimpse at the creature under construction. Prim uses a slider to pan slowly from the girl’s feet to her head. The girl is on a lawn chair in a pool, in a pink one-piece bathing suit, “baking” to her finish.

Next, we get an extreme closeup of the girl’s face, as it turns toward the camera and she removes tanning goggles. The next shot is so tight that we can see the veins in her eyelids and the wisps of blond, baby hair at her temples. The emotion evoked here is one of marvel: something real and youthful, yet artificially constructed, is awakening. The poem, which has been absent for more than one minute, does not start up again until we get closer to the girl’s face: “A day on the drying rack and the pupils should contract.”

I do not want to spoil the final minute for anyone who wants to watch the rest of this film, so I’ll end my discussion of film techniques here, other than to say that we return to the same shot we saw at the start.

The poem, except for its last few lines, is read by a separate voiceover actor, Mikel Clifford, suggesting once again, the hand of the unseen creator. Dessa Wander reads the final lines, though, leaving us with an existential mystery, but one certainty: It is the poet who created this world.  

– Erika Bolstad

 

The Sound Of Drowning, is a poem performed by singer, poet and activist Amyra León, and is accompanied by beautifully strung together shots and cinematography in Harlem, New York. It’s a unique style of visual poem that is also met with reenactment, as Amyra is describing her upbringing in a very powerful and musical way.

From the start we are transported to winter in Harlem, New York. Beautiful shots with light snow falling that transition perfectly with the beat of a somewhat melancholy, quiet but powerful music track. When we meet Amyra she’s seen in two different shots that the producers use — the one where she’s down in the streets and another where she’s on a roof above the city. I think the two different versions and shots the producers use it brilliant and creative and gives the audience a sense into who she is, and where she comes from. Since it’s such a short video with limited amount of time, the two different shots showing her character are necessary.

Most of the video is narrated by Amyra, in a poem, that is met with a young girl reenacting as she goes along. Cameras follow the young Amyra and take us to the tough childhood and lifestyle she endured. Where her parents were unreliable and unavailable. Shots like this one below, to highlight disorder and a chaotic childhood:

Another beautiful and clever technique the filmmakers used was water reflection, at 0:37 Amyra begins to tell us that she has “tried 13 times to belong in homes that weren’t mine,” and there’s one initial shot of red brick buildings, that is followed up by a great shot of the building in the reflection of water, using very limited and slow pan up.

The video goes on with Amyra continuing to describe her upbringing through her musical spoken word, and the filmmakers capture an incredible shot that is framed by an arch as seen below at 0:49 – 1:02

At 1:09 to 1:15, the filmmakers transition into the latter part of the poem, which strikes with power and is hard-hitting. To start it off, the filmmakers use a sort of matched action between young Amyra, and grown Amyra, with a spin or dance move. It’s almost as if it’s a wind up for what’s to come in the following second half of the video.

Followed up is a sequence of the poem that begins each sentence with Amyra saying “my kind of poetry ain’t literary,” and that becomes the theme and pulling force for the next minute. Each time she drops “my kind of”, the scenes transition on queue, between close up, zoom-in shots of Amyra, mixed in with the reenactment shots.

At 1:17, “My kind of adoption ain’t real”

At 1:24, “My kind of body ain’t beauty”

At 1:33, “My kind of joy ain’t worth seeking”

At 1:46, “My kind of life ain’t worth saving”

The tone changes with the filmmakers focusing on Amyra raising her hands up, with her eyes closed at 1:56 to 2:02. Matched action abound here as she is “becoming, becoming, becoming” something new and intuitive. This transitions to a shot of where she is now today, on the stage, as a performer, activist, singer and poet, as pictured below:

The filmmakers end the video on a perfect, panning shot accompanied by her “dancing in the moonlight, and learning the sound of drowning,” and in the backdrop, they make sure to include what appears to be a mural depicting minorities that I am assuming is in Harlem or somewhere in New York (if any knows what this art is, please comment and let me know! I googled but couldn’t find it). Her hand motion is also matching the hand positioning seen in the mural, which was a nice touch if intentional.

Overall, for the limited amount of time the video is, Amyra and the filmmakers worked together brilliantly to pack this visual poem with a powerful punch. Using focused and matched reenactment shots, beautiful colors of the city, architecture and visuals of Amyra herself, and impressive transition techniques that flowed perfectly with Amyra’s impactful words. An inspiring and strong piece.

— Joe Ciolino

“Period. End of Sentence.” is a 2018 documentary short (which just won an Oscar, by the way) about a group of Indian women who receive a machine that enables them to make sanitary napkins, and therefore start to address some of the issues that menstruation had caused for them. The film is shot in the reflexive style, with the film makers asking the subjects questions as the cameras roll and leaving those conversations in the final cut.

Once the women in the film learn how to use the machine and begin making their own pads, they come up with an idea to start selling them door to door, since there’s such a stigma in their culture and women often don’t want to buy pads in front of men. This introduces the unanswered question of this film, which is “will these women be successful in their business endeavor?” There’s a second part to this conflict as well, that may not be as clear but is still present. That second conflict lies in whether or not these women, or all women in India, can start to rise up out of the patriarchal society and create new roles for themselves. This is alluded to when the young girls are talking about dropping out of school when they get their periods and also when one older woman is talking about her friend who’s a police officer and people know her for what she does, not her who her father is. She says in that interview that the female police officer has the best life because of this.

Apparently, you can’t take screenshots in Netflix. This is especially unfortunate because I did it the entire way through the film and only realized once I went to upload them that they were all black, so I’ll do the best I can without.

The film looks very cinematic in terms of the color, but there is an element of shakiness to the footage that makes it feel authentic as well. In the darker spaces inside homes, the shadows are deep. Outside, the light is not warm but very light as if it were a bright and cloudy much of the time. The shots of people are use a lot of unique angles that I enjoyed, but I can’t help but wonder if they’re the type of thing a film professor might critique. The angles were were often a bit lower or a lot more off to the side during interviews than we’re generally taught to do. It’s consistent enough throughout the piece that it appears to be a style and not a mistake, though, and I really thought they added a fresh take to an old format.

At 12:40 the videographer does an excellent job of getting ahead of the action. The camera is set up inside of a dark room before the women open up a door from the outside and walk across the frame as the space fills with daylight. The only thing my eye was craving here that I didn’t get to see was after they walked across the space they were opening another door, and I would have very much liked to see them all exit the frame as well.

The cameraperson gets very up close and personal to the women in this film, which is shocking considering how shy they all are about the subject matter, but it’s also what I admire and think we could learn the most from. So often when I’m shooting I feel like I need to catch everything that’s happening within the entire frame or it won’t make sense, but here the rely mostly on tight and medium shots to tell the story. Around the 18 minute mark, when the woman speaking says “Now tell me, who wants to change things?” the music comes in and we see hands exchanging pads for money, it feels so much more exciting than it would if it were just composed as a wide shot.

“Period. End of Sentence.” is streaming now on Netflix.

–Amanda Rhoades