James’ Web Journal

Works Cited

Blair, Lindsay. Joseph Cornell’s Vision of Spiritual Order (Reaktion Books – Essays in Art and Culture). New York: Reaktion Books, 1998.

Hauptman, Jodi. Joseph Cornell stargazing in the cinema. New Haven: Yale UP, 1999.

Pearson, Carol. Hero within six archetypes we live by. San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1986.

Ponce?, Charles. Archetype of the unconscious and the transfiguration of therapy reflections on Jungian psychology. Berkeley, Calif: North Atlantic Books, 1990.

A., Shelburne, Walter. Mythos and logos in the thought of Carl Jung the theory of the collective unconscious in scientific perspective. Albany: State University of New York P, 1988.

Short, Robert. The Age of Gold Surrealist Cinema (Persistence of Vision, 3). New York: Creation Books, 2003.

            Joseph Campbell and the power of myth [videorecording] / a production of Apostrophe S Productions, Inc. in association with Alvin H. Perlmutter, Inc. and Public Affairs Television, Inc. ; presented by WNET, New York, WTTW, Chicago

So I’ve been lucky enough to have been apart of TCTV this quarter. I am an intern with them 20 hours a week through Mediawork, so that means I am shooting for an end project that is only half as long then my peers.

I consider myself to be fortunate, I do plan on using their facilities for some of my projects, and they even have me making training videos for them. These videos are tools to help teach people the uses of such wonders as composition, or lighting. And I feel the lack of structure to approaching these training tips to be quite breath of fresh air, though I need to work getting them done sooner, but alas I need to get a lot of things done sooner. I’ve been struggling between what feels to be class and job.

Well I say no more, I am going to pick myself up, and do better then I have been these last 3 weeks.

P.S. Found this and boy does it make me happy

Greyscape

            Portrays psychological journey through a white landscape. The protagonist is in almost constant movement, walking though this strange land. In it he encounters a grove of silhouettes. Flat and rooted, these shadows display only small fragmented movements, and turn dramatically to reveal their two dimensional nature. In their simplified shape they represent to a keen eye archetypes. A mother, a businessman, a child, a jester, an elder are examples of ones we get a good view of. Though the protagonist only stops once to glance at the lovers/couple, as if to reflect on his remoteness, before continuing his journey (west) and leaving the grove behind him.

Red Chair

            The Red Chair depicts a place of mental calmness. The place is fictional, thus animated, but like Greyscape, a real person shall exist in it. This piece I consider not only be just an attempt at meditative video, but also about a splendor and apparition of nature, though be it a fictional one. A synopsis is simple, a person sits in a large fake red chair, set in a field of tall grass set between mountains on one side, rolling his and trees on the other, and a clouded sky above. I am considering changing the seasons, but that might be too ambitious and bring in a context of the ephemeral.

Person Shot

            Person Shot is a simple video where people come to represent the tools we use in life. I want to demonstrate this to an extreme, so I will have a person represent a gun, and what it has done to someone. By taking out the objects we use, I hope to display a truth of how it is people that effect people, not some middleman or in this case object. I’ve considered the use of repetition (because the video has a simple structure) with changes of scenery but the composition and actions always ending the same. This maybe the only surreal video I set in real space.

Hold Your Breath

            This video, unlike the others, chronicles a hybrid of storytelling and personal essay that details an association of a ritual from my childhood. It is what I feel to be a bittersweet reflection and deconstruction of childhood, life, and wishes. But I think the true charm of this piece come to how it is told through a kind of shadow puppetry in which the people a real casting their shadows, as sets are puppeteer(d) and constructed around them.

The Importance of Fiction

            The content of this video/essay is still being researched and reasoned. Its purpose is not only to justify the human need of the fictional, or justify the videos I have made, but also to create a discussion. In this video I will use information gleamed from Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, and hopefully a few other things. I am still unsure how to tell this essay. The visual content can either maintain the motif of the bizarre like my other videos, or it can be very straight forward making it stand out amongst the collection.

Others~

            I have conceived a total 16 videos, and counting, and here before you I have chosen 5 to do. I feel these 5 shorts fit together the best, yet show diversity in style, structure, and subject. Yet all fit within a theme I’ve created, that I am not sure how to simplify yet. To say they display elements or subjects of fiction would be true, but there is a, dare I say it, a deeper vein that connects them, which I am still trying to articulate. Depending on how production goes I may construction storyboarded telling of my other concepts, because constructing an idea, even if it hasn’t been given a body of a painting or a video still is a valid expression of surrealism (a movement I’ve been studying as part of my research).

So I know the site looks pretty basic, and you say “because you haven’t done a thing to it James,” which is true. I lead a busy life of fighting invisible things, so it will take me some time to refine this web-journaling space. Maybe by the end of my weekend I’ll have it to SNR, which is short for Standard Nifty Regulations.

To hold you (the people who should really have more important things then reading a blog of someone, who isn’t as far as you should be concerned, has even proven themselves to be interesting yet,) here’s a nifty commercial, and a link to the making that you really should enjoy.

Why not a link to the making of, why not indeed?