Final Self Assessment
-No Title
The theme of this project is to give praise to freedom, but to also share with viewers the continuous presence of oppression- for every ethnic group, especially the minority groups. I explore how we (blacks and other ethnic groups) have become our own oppressors, or how we have become the oppressor of someone else. The merging of Life and The Wiz, both racial and identity in theme is how I try to understand the different types of oppression.
The original idea had, was to impose my sculpture onto the faces of “The Wiz” characters. The audience I intended to seek was the black community. My sculptures embody the issues I am trying to explore so I saw them as great candidates. When the time came to import the GIF’s into Final Cut Pro, the background of the Gif was not transparent. After many attempts to problem solve I finally gave up on this idea.
The theme and audience changed with the second idea. Now I wanted to convey these issues to a global audience. I always have to remind myself that African Americans (me) are not the only ethnic group confronted with racism. The second idea was to mesh clips from The Wiz with the movie Life. Life is a movie that expresses the black male struggle, it also show an existence of negativity within the black community. The Wiz I believe celebrates the end of black oppression. With the merging of clips, the roughness of the video in its tone, content, and quality of content all show my frustration with these ongoing issues; it also impersonates me as an individual. As I thought about oppression I began to think about the men and women in incarceration- how they got there, how some turn the lives around after, the treatment they receive within these facilities (by security guards, the warden, and one another), and how they are viewed in the public eye after release.
In organizing a rack of video clips I kept that very statement in mind. However, maybe this was not accomplished because the relation between white warden and prisoner in life was assumed that I was only speaking to the black community. For future projects I would try to resolve this issue – how? I have no clue yet.
This video was created using the software program Final Cut Pro. The most challenging part about creating a project with this software is always figuring out what effects to add. I wanted this video to have a personality of its own- I wanted to bring to the audience an uneasy feeling, comic. I find that I can look at race movies and just laugh about the content because I own up to who I am and the culture that belong to. And for this project I incorporated racial videos that I could laugh at/with. Uneasiness because I still wanted to express the grunginess slavery has left in most of the black community. Over laying clips and fading in and out the audio was to represent frustration, how I view myself within society. The most frustrating aspect of this project had to first import the QuickTime screen recordings into iMovie. For some reason, Final cut pro was not accepting these videos so iMovie was an extra step to the creating process that took about a great amount of time.
As a first time viewer of this project I would relate this video to depicting the oppression of blacks only. However I do not know how I would change this view because everything that I am is black. I have not had enough experience with white culture to know the existing struggles or the inside jokes that we black people have. The variety of films and their quality, and the presence of the mac doc within the videos would be noticeable. But, their presence would not distract me from seeing the artist intended message.
The finished product seemed to have surprised and caught the interest of my fellow peers. The comments it received pleased me, especially JJ expressing how the video nauseated him. However, having to work with what was available to me received a lot of indifferent comments. Because I screen recorded The Wiz, he Mac dock was present within the finished work. Many said that was distracting. Also the YouTube clip that had been a television recording was odd. It seemed odd to me as well, but there was no other videos dedicated to this specific clip. With these issues it was said that my work bounces around within the grey area. But this is not a bad comment to me because I approached this video with the intent to make it engaging by creating moments of dramatic disruptions. Because this video does not continue in a disrupting state throughout the video it brings more disruption, and frustration to the piece. And for my vision, I believe that is a great thing. To add to the disruption I as usual created audio that had an abrupt and uneasy flow to it. Surprisingly, no one did not disapprove- I felt accomplished. Most importantly, I am truly glad people were not afraid to laugh at the content within this video. Even though I create work that explores a topic no one wants to touch because of its negativity I try to express my thoughts about race not in an aggressive way that blames the opposite group. Scientist who believed that phenotypic features determined intelligence, therefore superiority constructed race. If I were to change one thing about this video, it would start with the YouTube clip that show a clear screening of Life on a television set- the static heard within the background of that recording was disturbing.
I wish my schedule allowed me more time to work on this project. I dedicated as much time to this project as I could- not sleeping to get the video just right and complete before the final critique was exhausting. Time was limited because I spent half of the creative process recording the Wiz and separating the scenes I wished to use. And there were difficulties with my external hard drive.
I would give myself an A for this project because it is original in style, and I put forth long hours to see this project and my idea through. Also, I would say that this video is the best digital video I have produced in this class. I succeeded this time in making my video come full circle; the beginning started off dark with the slam of a jail cell heard, and at the very end there was the presence of a gate with darkness after. I also believe its message was read clearly.