World Building

When it comes to building worlds, the film industry has to do a lot more than most other mediums. Learning this skill will become very valuable over the course of our careers. The one advantage that we had to create the world with real Pokémon, was that there already is a world established. However our goal was to create a world that would have realistic possibilities.

One of the key things we learned from the readings was about “thoughtful exploration.” When examining the possibilities of a world where Pokémon actually exist, we did not simply insert ourselves into the world that had already been created to enjoy the fun we would have as kids, but rather, we considered what would be the real issues. We thought about politics and education, pop culture etc. and  which of those would involve or revolve around Pokémon. We decided on what we thought would be  the key issues, created a few ideas of our own, and then considered how they would be represented or advertised in that world. Here’s what we came up with:

Recreation

For recreation we decided to show how in a world where Pokémon exist they play cards with animals from our world. I used the animal’s real name and changed a lot on the card. I chose to do this because I felt that a lot of people have fun playing Pokémon and I think they would have fun playing cards with animals.

Animal Rights

Or should I say Pokémon Rights. I thought of this because the idea of Pokémon battles is kind of barbaric. No doubt, in a world where Pokémon exist would be a Pokémon rights group. Pairing the two: Pokémon clips and Sarah McLachlan’s commercial was the perfect way of trying to show what I meant. When people just hear the music they think of that commercial right away.

Along that same vein I created a billboard ad that I modeled after some that I’ve seen from a very popular company called Domo. Although, this ad is geared towards the protection of Pokémon against poaching. With so many different species of Pokémon there is plethora of opportunity for poaching. This ad would be intended to generate awareness of Pokémon poaching and contains a website address that would allow people to help protect innocent Pokémon. Not only does it generate awareness, but it makes protecting Pokémon cool. At least, it’s supposed to.  

Magazine

When I was coming up with the concept of this world I thought about how I would show multiple things going on in a small space. There was no better place for that than a magazine. Complete with articles and advertisements that would expand the world. For the first advertisement I wanted to show a release for a new Poké Ball. I used Photoshop to create everything by first creating the outline of a pokeball then layering a galaxy and keeping only what fit inside, then did the same with the silver bottom. When that was set I tried to make it look a bit more three dimensional by adding a bit of a gradient shade. Then I just created a tag line and copy for the advertisement the same way apple would have. This was largely inspired by Apple advertisements because I pictured the eSiplh. Company to be a leading innovator in technology.

The second portion of the magazine was merely a news report about rising stars. I kind of treated this like a typical kids magazine because most Pokémon trainers are young. So I made sure the type was larger than normal and it was merely about simple stuff and their achievements. However I wanted to also make it informative and have a call back to Aralie’s video. This was all created in Adobe InDesign, I largely didn’t know what I was doing but had some good drive about how I wanted it to look. The Pictures I just took from the internet from some great Cosplayers That I felt had a good look about them for the world and Ideally if I were to create this world for a film I would have made a photoshoot with actual people.

The last part was to show how Pokémon influenced the fashion world. This doesn’t quite fit into a teen magazine but I feel that it would help influence the kids to learn better fashion but more so If this were to be a real world there would be more street worthy clothes and not so bright or flamboyant as we see in the anime. However that goes without saying that some cultures might adopt that type of style. Yet from my perspective I felt that high fashion would drive the industry. This photo was made by merely inserting a Pokémon into the already taken photo from fashion magazines and with a selected Pokémon to show a possible influence of style.

Education

When Pokémon are the animals that inhabit your world, you’re going to have to study them. Considering that there are so many types, I started at the beginning. I created a page out of textbook that shows the anatomy of the Pokémon, Bulbasaur. It includes a picture of its exterior and also the interior anatomy of how it functions. The page also includes a physical description, some interesting parts of its personality, and its evolution forms.

Remix

In the fourth grade I took art from Mr. Watson. He showed us all kinds of famous paintings, most of which I thought were very cool. But one day she showed us a painting that changed it all for me.  It was made up of millions of tiny little dots that when combined made a picture of people in a park. The painting is A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat. I had never seen something so incredible. Learning that it took over two years to complete made it all that much more amazing to me. Ever since that day, it has been my favorite painting.

Later that same year, I sat down on a Saturday morning and turned on the T.V.  Ferris Bueller’s Day Off came on. I was blown away – definitely a life-changer. Additionally, I was shocked at the scene in the film where Ferris, Sloane, and Cameron go to the Art Institute of Chicago and they look at a lot of the paintings Mr. Watson had introduced me to, including A Sunday Afternoon. That to me, was a very incredible moment. And I didn’t even actually realize it at the time, but it would be a huge influence on my decision to pursue filmmaking as a career.

That realization came later when I had decided that I wanted to make films and I began researching the film’s director, John Hughes. He too, was a huge fan of that painting and put it in the film simply for his own pleasure. He said, “...I always thought this painting was sort of like making a movie. A pointillist style, which at very very close to it, you don't have any idea what you've made until you step back from it.”[1] I literally screamed when I heard him say that because I had once thought it.

I framed this photo so that the painting and the film were the only thing inside it – no outside objects. Except, of course, for me. But the way I lined it up it could appear that I’m a part of it. It’s all one. Either way, the point was to see the layers of creativity and inspirations. Seurat inspired Hughes, Hughes inspired me. What will I create and will that inspire someone to create something of their own? I derived this idea from out discussion of the Star Wars family tree. Another element to it is that it’s two works that I love occupying the same space, simultaneously inspiring me. It’s like the painting itself: there are millions of little pieces that make up the whole picture. For me, there are so many influences that have shaped who I am and who I want to be as an artist and this moment was monumental for me.

 

 

1.      Ferris Bueller's Day Off-(Commentary by John Hughes) (DVD). Paramount Pictures. 1999-10-19.

Medium Specificity

 

For my medium I selected stand-up comedy – something I have a few years of experience in performing. In my time performing I have written a lot of different jokes, helped a lot of other people fine tune their own, and I’ve watched a lot of different comedians perform – in person and on T.V. or the internet. In all the thousands of jokes I’ve been involved with, there are several topics that seem to be covered in depth by just about every comedian. Topics include, but are not limited to: dating, marriage, differences between men and women, pregnancy, food, childhood, the difference between kids today and us, technology, social media, celebrities, politics, and current events. The reason for this is the fact that these topics are very relatable, easily understood by most members of any audience. Each comedian has a different spin on each topic, due to his or her experiences and perceptions. But as the root of it all, are those same exact topics.
In response to this I wrote a set of jokes that simply explore the most basic joke topics, and the general sentiment that most comedians have towards those topics. The difference is my jokes can simply be described as premises – ideas about those topics. Rather than explore the specifics, which are what distinguish comedians from one another, I chose instead to explore what makes them the same. Comedy at its root is simply observation about every-day things. So my set of jokes is simply observation about those observations. Although these comedians say very different things on the microscopic level, on the macro, it’s all very much the same.
I drew inspiration from both the reading and the Daffy Duck video that we watched in class. I really love the idea of a medium of art talking about itself, observing itself, identifying its origins and the different elements that make it what it is like in “Show and Tell”. Another piece that inspired me was the comedy of Demitri Martin. In one particular set, he explores the origins of his own material. He calls it the “the place where his jokes come from.” I attempted to do the same with my piece. I wanted to explore what all stand-up comedy is really saying and use stand-up comedy to say it. I really enjoyed this part of the assignment, looking deeper in to something that I’ve done for a long time now, but figuring out what makes it unique from other mediums of art. I tried to pretend that I was stand-up comedy and then I had my Zoolander moment, looking into the water and staring into my own reflection and I ask, “Who am I?”

This project was fun, to take a historical event and put a unique spin on it. It’s been said that “good artists borrow, but great artists steal.” Using a historical event as inspiration is handy because stealing from it is more socially acceptable than most alternatives, and you can take a lot of liberties. Also, it is an almost endless source of fascinating stories about true human behavior, which as we know, can often be stranger than fiction. The historical story we drew on and interpreted had kind of a ridiculousness about it, as it’s not often we hear about national, royal decrees involving potatoes, that most unshapely tuber. We chose to run with that, emphasizing the cartoonish aspects rather than the realistic aspects of the story. Originally, I heard about it from my Dad, who is an expert collector of mental lint and told it emphasizing the potato’s role as the solution to marching soldiers over the crop fields, and talking humorously about the great lengths Frederick the Great went to take advantage of them. I fixated on just one aspect of the process, this potato field, partially because it was crazy, partly because it worked, mostly because it was crazy that it worked. As I wrote it, I did some more research, and learned that Frederick the Great still has potatoes placed on his grave. And Austria, of course, still grows potatoes. I love that plans that seem crazy, both at the time and decades afterwards, can turn out to be a good thing. Our script celebrates that craziness while trying to maintain the spirit of its success. We were really glad in class when we watched “My Grandmother Ironed the King’s Shirts.” Most other examples we enjoyed were much more serious, and dealt with harsh issues in a strong, humanist light. That was good, but not super compatible with the spirit of our scripts’ premise. Granted, we could have focused on the famine and stubborn resistance to change that preceded the potato, but we think that always would have been undermined by the way Frederick the Great went about solving this admittedly grave issue. Instead of taking that route, we went the way of gentle exaggeration also utilized in “My Grandmother.” We felt like we had more confidence in our approach after watching that. We also felt like it reminded us to focus more on characters, not just events, because it’s the characters that ground the events.

Crossing the Roads of the Mundane and Beautiful

by Steven Rowe and Marshal Davis

When we got together to talk about the process assignment we both wanted to represent a simple and overlooked process that all humans have in common. We hoped by highlighting the seemingly mundane; that our sound would transcend from its overlooked state to something that has so many levels and depth and beauty.

            Our initial choice was to record the sound of brushing teeth. It was exciting as we recorded; when amplified you could hear the unanimous movement of the each and every fiber, working towards your dental cleanliness. Then on September 26^th, at 12:53 pm our worlds were rocked when we discovered that ‘getting ready for the day’ processes were not a valid option. So we had to scrap the recording and start at the beginning.

            We talked about a few options, but few really hit the ticket on the ‘seemingly mundane’ yet beautiful vibe we were going for. The day of the assignment grew closer. Discouraged, we began the long walk to Wymount, where we had previously stored the recording equipment. As we trudged along the sidewalk we glanced forward and saw a light… literally, we saw a stoplight up ahead and it hit us. We could record the sound of crossing the street. It was seemingly mundane, it is something that we all have in common, and it is definitely an ignored process.

            As we set out to record the process we ran into a few obstacles, the wind was blowing so hard that the microphone was overpowered. After playing with the gain and putting a ‘dead cat’ on the microphone we managed to capture some crisp sounds of traffic passing through, the sound of pressing the crossing button, the beep that announced our turn to cross. We had to record the footsteps at a more remote location, because the faint sound of Stevens footsteps were overpowered sounds of traffic and screaming passersby.

            This project became significant for me as we started to edit the sound and listened to the play back various times. I remembered the simple joys of childhood, racing my siblings down the sidewalk, each of us with the hope of being the one to hold the honor of pushing the button that magically illuminated the mysterious walking man on the opposite side of the street.

            I learned two things during this process, the first being that when you are in a creative stump, whether it is writing, playing music, filming or recording sound just move forward and the idea will likely come to you. Second, sound has can be very powerful, perhaps more than image. It allows us to paint the image ourselves, based off of the reflections of our own being.