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Edited on Sat Feb-14-04 02:30 AM by beam_me_up
Seriously, folks, to make TV worth watching, try making your own entertainment. All you need is a video camera and some time to play with it. Look at what got generated from many "ordinary" people responding to the MoveOn "Bush in 30 Seconds" contest. But you don't have to be a "pro" or even an "aspiring" video professional to make your own entertainment.
You can think about this in any way you want. For example, sometimes friends and I are hanging out together drinking, talking, smoking, and I just turn the camera on. It might just sit there on the floor pointed at nothing but somebody's old shoe and a soda pop can while recording our crazy conversation. Maybe I'll pick it up and point it at something or someone or maybe I'll had it to one of my friends. I think of it as "cinima vérité to the max. This isn't meant to make things on screen "look realistic"--it *is* realistic. It doesn't matter whether it is "chic" or "pretty" or "kewl" or whatever, it is an actual record of actual events NOT MAKE BELIEVE.
This is just one example. Another FUN things to do is to have the video camera plugged into the TV set *as it is recording* and then focusing the camera INTO the TV monitor itself. If you're lucky you'll hit some "reiteration fields" as the video signal begins to optically FEED BACK into itself in a rapidly spiraling infinity regression. It isn't imaginary, it's real--a visual revelation inherent within the technology itself. :)
If you have a digital video camera and the computer power, you can edit and play with filters-- maybe even burn to DVD -- but that isn't essential. The most important thing is to take your camera into your life and begin recording it and the things and people in it.
A friend of mine recently recorded a fascinating piece of footage that consisted of nothing but his camera looking directly out the passenger window of his car (his girl friend was driving). He's just holding the camera steady, straight out perpendicular to the direction the car is headed. The camera is pointed slightly down so the horizon is at the top of the camera field (not the middle). As the car speeds along the road (they were driving in Utah) the camera is recording the rhythm of plants and rocks, bridges and signposts; the rolls, pitches, rises and falls of the land. Soometimes the road is walled in as it cuts through an eroded hillside. Sometimes it opens up onto a vast plane with objects passing by swiftly in the near distance while proceeding slowly out toward the horizon. The whole thing is a visual "meditation" on motion, rhythm, time, light, space and land.
What ever you do, don't be overly critical of your work saying to yourself "this is boring" or "this is dumb". True it isn't likely to be as "sophisticated" as Holywood or Madison Ave or whatever. But that isn't the point. The point is to TAKE BACK THE MEDIA! (I recently bought a digital projector. Its like HOME theatre where me and my friends are the stars!)
BMU
edited for spelling and clarity
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