amanda

I have a feeling Sally is going to ask you to narrow your scrope if that’s what she sees. I understand the resistance to providing specific content based on what you’re going for, but giving examples of the theoretical assertions your talking about, even if you say it’s just for example, might be really beneficial. At the moment, I feel the treatment might be too heady and lacking a real stability in terms of what the end result is to be envisioned as. If you care to glance at mine, I met with her today and she said for the most part she felt good about what I had done. Her criticism for me however was that she wanted me to broaden my scope, which she said was curious, because she’s been having to tell everyone to narrow it. Basically my main advice is to approach maybe slightly differently. A treatment exists as an excercise in envisioning a project so that others can see what you’re going for. I feel like I get a loose feel for that, but sometimes overly wordiness (

“Though I will use some of the precepts of Structuralist-Materialist film theory, my project will not be a Structuralist-Materialist film in the predominantly formalistic sense of minimizing content and distancing the viewer, allowing the film to ‘exist’ exclusively in a dialectic between the viewer and each film moment. I will employ content premeditated to suggest certain themes and associations, however, I will allow the viewer to draw their own conclusions about the meaning and significance behind the subject matter I have chosen. In this sense, the viewer will be the producer of ideas.”

this passage is especially confusing – the use of the comma in the first stance could be indicatory of continued “not this”, but it could also be a supposition, or contrary phrase in relation to the previous negated statement. This is then also hampered by the however in the next sentence, because there’s a possible double meaning in intentionality. I’m pretty sure I know what you mean, but it should probably be cleaned up – anytime you put in a comma, bear in mind, it can construed as supplementary, contrary, or complimentary. Sorry to say so much in parenthesis… that phrase just irked me) hampers more than aids the presentation. And now that I read the last two paragraphs of your treatment I see you do give solidified content, though then my advice would be to try to incorporate those earlier in the treatment, or spread them out throughout when they particularly emphasize a certain theoretical device. It’s also wholly optional to seperate the technical specs from the rest of the piece. It may just be a preference to personal taste in that I see you have all the information there, I just feel like it’s organized oddly (theoretical, content, technical) rather than say, organized linearly as the film might progress (what the viewer might see first, what is your intention, what is yout percieved audience reaction – what the viewer sees next, etc.). This doesn’t mean laying it out as if it were a storyboard, but I think it could use some help in letting the reader know more about the form this is going to take and how it will progress. A good thing to bear in mind is that these pieces aren’t static, and unless doing a solid loop, have a definite beginning and end, at least technically speaking. As a result, you might want to put in information about how you plan to mature the concepts over time, how the piece will build up, or if it will be built up. Anyhow, it took me awhile, but I think I finally figured out what might be missing from your treatment, that sense of linear progression. Again, nothing terribly specific, but it would probably be good to lay out an example or idealized progression of events (from low content to high content, etc.). Anyway, good luck! Sorry to be a blabbermouth.

I have very few comments because, as always, you are very thourough (sp) and complete. You need not worry about being singled out for making formalism the majority of your approach. The few comments I have are:

Julia informed me that she expects the treatments to be no more then 1 page single spaced. You might want to make your treatment more consise by smashing paragraphs together and taking out some non neccessary technical information. Also, you want to be careful about the content that you do put into the video. Ask yourself: Why am I adding that? How self indulgent is that? Is that going to be just like everything else I have ever done? In what ways and in what direction am I expanding? How did I engage with the content of this class and in what ways is this peice engaging with that? We both have been known to add offensive content without thinking about it. Not that adding offensive content is neccessarily bad, it just needs to be intentional, deliberate, and transparent. We are the masters of both the form and the content and everything wether it was supposed to be there or not belongs to us…

The reason that most peole are focusing on content, and politicising their work is becasue of the extensive political content of this program. I knew that I wanted to make engaging work coming in, but the extent to which I now include politics (implict or explicit) is now greatly expanding. Not to say that everyones work has to be explicitly political. On the contrary, we find that the politics of most work are implicit in their creation and distribution. Your work is no exception. You have in intrest in these things (the content of your work) for a reason, and you want to express them for a reason. Art for you is a vehicle for (please fill in the blank) and that stament itself is a political statment.

Regardless of all that, it was expressed from the beggining that you can focus on form and content at your own discression. Since you have directly and clearly stated your focus for the content, and solidly connected this content with your form you are totally on point.

Don’t worry too much. You will not let any of your projects be bad, and you are ahead of the curve in alot of ways concerning the rest of the class (and indeed, the rest of the world). But, as always, you should be open to surprising yourself, and letting yourself be changed by the world, and your work.

If you need anything else during the coarse of the next 13 weeks (or ever) please don’t hesitate to ask me first….

Morgan

I’m a sucker for matching things to music. I’d like to do a project like this for fun sometime, but I can’t really do my own music. This looks like it is very well researched stylistically, and I don’t think you need to worry too much about how the piece will evolve over time. It’s not unusual for artists to sort of dialoge with their work, and sometimes the work will tell YOU what it’s about instead of the other way around. I doubt Sally will have many criticisms.

The barbie scene could definitely carry implicit concepts of gender roles and the like, if you’re looking for somewhere to wedge that in.