The hardest part of making any movie is coming up with the idea and planning out the story line and shots. I had gone through this process formally once before in a class I had as an undergrad. We had more time to come up with the idea and the storyboard, because that was our semester long project. This was also different because this time we were working in a group. It was nice because all of my previous storyboards consisted of stick figures. This one's a little more artistic. It was also nice to have people to bounce ideas off of each other.
To view the storyboard, click here.
I had a friend from DC come up to visit this weekend. She's always the kind of person that knows all of the cool cultural events going on around town, even when it's not her town. We started off the day with Etheopian cuisine for lunch, which I had never had before. The restaurant was on MacDougal and West 4th. Everyone orders their own dishes and then the food is all brought out on one communal tray. You eat with your hands scooping the food with the thin, spongy-like bread.
After a hearty Etheopian lunch, we made our way towards the New Museum in Chelsea. On the way we stopped off at this art gallery called Sonnabend, where they were exibiting works by Candice Breitz. The two that I saw were called "King" and "Queen". Both of these installations had video and audio of several people singing and dancing along with popular songs. The "King" has songs from Michael Jackson's album "Thriller" and "Queen" has songs from Madonna's "Immaculate Collection". Seeing this made me very happy. It reminded me of the audio piece that Jenny Chowdhury and Matt Burton created where they had tracks of people singing along to Neil Diammond's "Sweet Caroline". It reminded me of the fact that we (ITP students) have this potential to create great things.
We then made our way to the New Museum, where they had works done by Brian Jungen. He is half Native American and half Swiss. He creates Native American art, but with contemporary objects. For example, he creates these masks and animals that are similar to the faces you would see on a totem pole, but these are made out of Nike Air Jordans. He also made sculptures that looked like the dinosaur bones you would see hanging in a Natural History Museum, but these were made out of lawn chairs. It was very interesting to see these pieces made out of everyday things. I found it very inspiring.