CRV: Fireside chat - Everyone Has a Voice

In the first few years of my life, I was a very slow speaker; not able to speak correctly until age 4 (at the latest). Continually since, I have a slight stutter in my speech which breaks off sentences in the middle. Nonetheless, I constantly think and process nearly everything I hear or see, if it distracted me from life. For my whole life I’ve had lots of distracting things run through my mind every day, most of which are actually from my memory of media: movies, TV shows, video games and songs, where people were talking. I recite them over and over again in my mind, and sometimes they come out in quiet mutters. My parents have always been working hard on teaching me to listen better to others and tuning out the voices, but it still doesn't always work. When I came to college and later went on a mission, I changed my attitude about it by telling myself that it’s my own unique voice and talent, but I still needed an outlet to let it out where it would be appropriate.

Enrolling in a Voice Over class this fall showed me something: recording myself in a soundproof studio is where I feel refreshed in being able not only to vent out these quotes as loud as I want, but also hone down my personal feelings about life. Everyone has their own voice in any form, like politics, community concerns, teaching, business, and many others. They all need their own specific mode of conveying that voice where it’s meant to be most effective. Me recording myself acting eliminates bias and public opinion - I can be completely in the mindset to express what I believe is a talent of mine.

Discovering what to believe in is always easy, since choices of what to think about life come up every day. Deciding specifically what to believe in, on the other hand, can be either easy or very hard. For some, like Errol Morris, who wrote a commentary called “There is such a thing as Truth” (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4620511), belief in what is real is simple. It can be just common sense. Otherwise, it can be difficult to figure out, such as the belief that cell phones are not for kids (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c). What I think are the most profound beliefs in life, religious or not, are ones that bring us closer to the example set by Jesus Christ; that eliminate judgement, that prepare for the future, that have us watch ourselves and do good for others, and that have us use our abilities for good.

CRV: Concerned Citizen - My Mom

Spencer Plewe

Mitch Clark

The Concerned citizen project was particularly difficult to find a workable subject for. At length though, Spencer decided on filming his mother working at a high school library. In searching for her personal motivation towards this position, she also said getting the job was mainly her searching for a school teaching job, but most the unexpected one to her was a high school librarian. When she talked with Spanish Fork High School’s principal, he told her about that job, and it interested her the most. The result was her enjoying it more than any other place because of the involvement with the students and helping them find the literature they want.

The fortunate thing is that being a librarian compared to a standard subject teacher is the freedom that comes with it. Her collaboration with the school requires her to put her creative juices and personal preferences on display to make certain books seem interesting to check out. These guide or redirect the students’ own paths of what artistic tastes they themselves have. Part of that was how she showcased books to be made into movies the following year, to raise awareness of what’s happening in the bigger world of art outside her community. In this modern world where youth are more and more inclined to movies, the librarian reveals the connection between that and physical literature.

The library is an interesting and exciting place for people.  There are so many stories and knowledge available, and we often don’t understand that.  One thing that was really cool to hear was how the librarian liked hearing if people liked a book, but also if they didn’t.  In a place where we can learn and read so much, we still have our opinion.  We can decide if we liked to classic novel that has been received so well, or if we want to learn from a book about the common elements in our solar system.  We have control of the flow of knowledge that we take in.  This might be possible without a library, but the library is like a Mecca of books that are available for anyone.

The mix of observatory and asking some questions throughout the video helps to put us in the shoes of the librarian.  It is after hours, and some of the more mundane tasks are being done.  We don’t always realize the minutia that is involved with keeping something like a library running smoothly.  This might be because we don’t visit one enough, or because we just simply haven’t bothered to think about it.  Anyway, this is a look into that somewhat unknown area of our world.  

Here's the video!

CRV: Game for Change - What To Do With News

The Game for change was a ton of fun, especially since I found a good subject early. It didn’t take long to decide that I would base my game on the common problem of major news being presented out of context and then that news would be blown out of proportion. Not that quickly jumping for news when it happens is bad on the reporter’s end, but it can turn out to be unprofessional when they don’t gather the necessary additional research. As this was once explained in the Jackson Free Press: “…adding the necessary context to a story is time-consuming, painstaking work.” (http://www.jacksonfreepress.com/news/2014/apr/02/importance-context/) This article goes on to give an example of a numerical statistic that was reported to support an argument, but no additional statistics or sources were given to back it up. We can tend to think that one simple thing can represent a bigger idea, especially one that falls in our favor. Another great example of this is in religious arguments, like this example, where a woman posted bible verses that, on their own, seem to excuse Abortion, but a separate Christian journalist proved them otherwise. (http://www.news-press.com/story/opinion/contributors/2015/11/04/text-without-context-prove-bible-pardons-abortion/75150952/)

Alternatively, the writer would care more about what the readers get more than what side they are trying to argue for. The American Press Institute says, “Another virtue of asking ‘what does my audience need to know?’ is that it can create new entry points into stories – such as asking, what background would a newcomer who is affected, or has a stake in the story, need to know so that they might care about it? (http://www.americanpressinstitute.org/journalism-essentials/makes-good-story/good-stories-provide-context/). This is very true as I have heard countless online articles going this way and that over one story, until sufficient evidence is brought forth that narrows it down to one version, or the readers just don’t care anymore.

This game I developed places one in the shoes of a reporter who is presented with what seems like a major news event about to happen. Your job is to choose the right directions to take in acting upon it. You can get very unprofessional and even idiotic, or you can get hands on and do some work. The multiple story lines definitely separate from the "single story" perspective as presented by Chimamanda Adichie in "The Danger of a Single Story". Through multiple play-throughs, we get to know this issue from multiple sides.

Here's the game!

CRV: World Building - A World of Tangible Memories

Spencer Plewe
McKinley Stauffer
Celine Anderson

The cultural artifact we collected from our world was a scrapbook kept by a young girl, Emery Long.

In our world memories are manifest in physical forms (for example: rocks, tied string, scraps of paper, any object the owner chooses). When you lose the totem, you lose the memory attached to it. If you acquire one, you gain the memories attached to it. Because of this information is extremely valuable, but so is concision in communication because everyone wants to maximize the amount of information and memories they are able to retain. Scrapbooks like the one Emery Long had would have been common in this world, a sort of external hard-drive to store memories they would want to keep. Additionally, the newspaper clippings Emery collected were fairly short in order to save space. In this world, flowery language literally adds weight. From journal entries to published articles, everything is clear-cut and to the point. The goal is to become a minimalist in this world in order to increase memory capacity. Emery’s journal entries are minimal commentaries on her world and where she fits within it.

The world aesthetically reflects the political need for prudence and conservatism in information (kept as well as spread), because there is no modern technology. You cannot simply download your memories onto a flash-drive; subsequently, paper products and trees become extremely important in the world. Blue collar jobs like the paper industry (from tree to recycling bin) are more important than white collar, informational jobs. With everyone trying to simply hold on to personal memories, mass information and organization is not in demand. So we have a political climate stuck in a sort of industrialism, but never quite able to settle into consumerism. This economic state ultimately leads to a sort of pack-rat syndrome in the population, they don’t have much, but everything they have is extremely valuable to them. Thus we have scrapbooks like Emery’s.

Memories also come in all shapes and sizes, the more physically fit you are, the more memories you can carry around with you. In this world, alzheimer's is basically the same, as people grow older, they are no longer able to physically carry the memories they used to be able to. But, uniquely, in this society grandparents can pass on their old memories to their posterity. Museum’s, like the one Emery had visited, often have memories from ancestors and people of influence. Aesthetically there is a focus on history and heritage--old family pictures kept around houses and other memorabilia.

This charming, industrial, and family centered community also needs a political structure and law enforcement system. In this world, punishment generally involves taking memories. The world generally believes that nurture affects the individual more than nature, so if you take away the memories that constrained the individual to commit a crime, they would no longer be inclined to commit it. Emery writes about this in her scrapbook; what are the ethics of removing another person’s memories? The government could conceivably completely control people by confiscating memories. Can free speech truly exist in a political climate like this? This is yet another reason why people so desperately cling to their memories: they don’t want to lose who they are. Their aesthetics are meant to express and preserve identity and personality that could be so easily stripped away.

Designing this world was an interesting process. A quote from the reading was “design makes things for people.” We could have approached this world from how it literally functions: drawn up a political system, made laws, discussed the natural resources, etc., etc. But in designing a world--fashioning it for the people that lived there--we got a very interesting perspective. Emery Long became the girl we designed the world for; in asking about what her day and life was like, we discovered the other external factors of economics and politics. The Newspaper clippings especially sculpted her outside world and gave her the motivation to write her opinions. Her aesthetic object of a scrapbook with bits of memory and information colored the political world we designed. Information was their art and it informed their world, how much of the art in our world informs us?

By designing this fictional fantasy, we were able to draw unique perspective and opportunities for reflection on our social reality. What is most valuable in our society, maybe the thing that is most easily lost? Do we take our memories for granted? The world we designed had to struggle with limited information. This world is a commentary on limitless information. With ever growing memory space, will we ever remember moments, or just collect them? Perhaps carrying memories is physically tasking and emotionally unbearable as we must pick and choose what will define us, but at least we will remember something rather than a whole lot of nothings.

Transcription:  I posted the ad two weeks ago….still no reply. I do not expect one anyways. After the Fall Ball, Trevor and I decided to make duplicates of our memory from the night. His dad let him drive the Jeep Wrangler and my dad, for once, did not assign a curfew. He twirled me exactly 31 times during the chorus of Ed Sheeran’s “Photograph”. We wrote the memory, twice, on two separate sheets of paper--one for keeping and the other for rolling up in a bottle and throwing it into the Long Island Sound. Not only did I somehow roll both of my memories into the bottle, but I forgot to cap it. Trevor swam in the Sound to try and retrieve it, but the water had claimed it. Trevor lets me hold the memory when I’m sad or whenever I ask. But one day Trevor might not be there, and one day I might never have that memory. Maybe it will wash up on some beach unscathed? Maybe.

Transcription: Met an old man today who ties strings all over his fingers and person. The strings are white, but he remembers each memory they represent without fail. It is as though he had permanent gloves on! I just thought that could be a good idea for one day. String isn’t heavy. It’s manageable. And when he cannot keep them on any longer because they are frayed, he cuts them a bit shorter and keeps them in a shoe box locked up in his house.

Recipe for Grandma Tuttle’s Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies. She would always make them for me when she was alive, and that’s what I remember her smelling like: pumpkin spice and things that were nice.

Transcription: Today we went to the grand opening of the Children’s Memories Museum. All memories were either donated or collected from Lost and Found’s after remaining unclaimed for 2 years or more. The one exhibit that resonated with me was a picture of a young boy giving a homeless woman a picture of himself  and his 1 year old puppy. In the 80s, it was legal to give the homeless or unhappy folk fond memories and light and cheer in their life. A journalist captured this moment with his camera as it was occurring. Today, it isn’t illegal to give memories to the poor and needy, but it is frowned upon. People were collecting memories rather than creating their own--creating a burden on the working class of society. Or at least that is what my dad says after dinner when he reads the paper to mom aloud. After seeing the exhibit, I wanted to be able to go out and give one of my memories to the homeless man who sits under the tree two blocks from the schoolyard, but I still cannot decide what happy memory I would be willing to give up. It was probably easy for that young boy, because he was only three. His memories were probably only happy. He had no idea how much his memories were worth. They were just photographs to him. He probably went home and made another memory with his puppy right after giving it away. Why would I let someone else remember something that I cannot? That’s the ticket Mayor Read ran on last year and he won. No one really gives memories anymore. That’s probably why we only have one homeless man in town.

Transcription: People are no longer scared of death. They will no longer have to collect, pick, or choose memories if their mind can rest. The government decided the only way to get to the people was by taking away that which they did not want to give up and make them start anew. I walk past the rioters on my way to and from school, but I don’t talk to them. A girl who sits behind me in History has a dad who is on memory wipe row. He was laundering memories and got caught in the act of fabricating reality. Kids tape newspaper articles on her locker door and ask her what it is like to have a father who will never remember her. Her name is Anne, and she just sits there. After changing for gym today, I asked her if she wanted to be on my basketball team. She said I was the first person to care to ask her about something that she wanted. No one cared to ask her if she wanted her dad to forget her forever, if she even wanted to try and establish a relationship with her father again. She looked at the ground and said, “Maybe I should just rid myself of all memories with my father once his memory has been wiped. Things wouldn’t be so heavy if I did. I wouldn’t understand what the kids are teasing me about.” I gave her the basketball and told her we shouldn’t be late. I wonder what she will do. I went home and hugged my dad after that. I wonder what I would do.

Faceless Cat: “Lucy ran away from home today. I never took her picture.”

Man Looking at Mountain: “Looking at the sunset: the only tie I don’t look at my watch.”

Tally Marks: “The # of times my dad said ‘I love you’ to my mom today."

Quote: “While they all fall in love with her smile she waits for one who will fall in love with her scars.” -The Dreamer

CRV: Webspinna Battle! - Natural vs. Artificial

Spencer Plewe

Stephanie Cook

Everything we have ever created or will ever create will be produced from earlier experiences that we’ve had, or from the creations or ideas of others. We are basically remixing existing ideas to make a new perspective on something. And because we are the ones reshaping, our new creations will have a part of us in them, ready to be thrown out into the world for someone else to take our perspective and create something else.  

The webspinna battle’s process was really fun. Picking our themes at first felt difficult, but by the time we listed a few possibilities, we realized we could mix them all together to have Natural vs. Artificial sounds. The natural side explores sounds that are entirely real, and either without man-made or electronic alteration, or discuss natural processes. The artificial side is entirely composed of man-made materials or computer synthesization. 

Searching for each of the sounds for our battle took us to plenty of different sources like sound effects websites to songs to actual movie clips.  According to the article “The Ecstasy of Influence: A Plagiarism” by Jonathan Lethem, the practice of taking inspiration from pre-existing sources is what leads to every piece of media we know. He explains how taking existing things that might be considered plagiarism, is really a way of creating something new. In this assignment, we had been asked to do just this. Thanks to the use of the internet, we were able to portray something live that was beautiful and unique from already existing sounds and music. We were able to use the inspiration that Lethem explained to make something different. Our usage of the sounds of natural events and artificial creations overlapping each other created a humorous clash between two opposites.

Just as a glitch could be considered a mistake, we too ran into our own glitches during our performance. As we played our mix of sounds to portray natural vs. artificial, it wasn’t a perfect portrayal of what we had envisioned. Using the internet as an artist’s live medium created the necessity to be flexible and patient within that sphere. Yet despite these limitations, we still received a great round of applause followed by a sense of accomplishment in our live art through sound that we had created.

Hearing others perform was also very interesting. There were moments when they seemed content with what was happening, as well as when they ran into similar “glitch” problems. We didn’t judge their mistakes though. On the contrary, it made it much more interesting and made their piece more personable and relatable. Humans are not perfect, so any live performance that we give is bound to have some mistakes, and that’s what makes it special and unique to that person. I think even if we were all given the same sounds to play, each piece would have come out drastically different because of our own interests and ways of seeing the world.

Me: the Artificial side

1. Alarm clock 2015 (2nd sound): http://www.zedge.net/ringtones/0-5-1-awesome/
2. Walking on Metal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8yhFKVvoDE
3. Motorbike start-up (5th sound down) http://www.soundsnap.com/tags/start_up
4. WALL-E movie clip (skip to 0:25) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cnv-iFhdlqE
5. Derezzed, by Daft Punk (skip to 0:43) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m4cgLL8JaVI
6. UFO Appear Examine (2nd and 3rd one down) http://www.soundsnap.com/tags/spaceship
7. Brewery Plant Packaging Equipment (2nd sound down) http://www.freesfx.co.uk/sfx/factory
8. Techno Jeep, by Julian Smith (skip to 0:16) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFybwg4wadI

CRV: Textual Poaching: Citizen Kane narrates my journal

It took me a very long time to figure out what to do for this project, as I not only had to select a video type that draws from an old piece of art, but I had to connect it with a specific aspect of my identity. The identity was the hardest to get down, as I didn’t know what examples to draw from that show remixing something for the same purpose. I knew the art I was to choose was Orson Welles’ classic film Citizen Kane, probably my favorite classic film ever. That’s not an aspect of my identity though, and neither is editing. I needed something that was close to me, something that I could never be without.

Yesterday, it dawned on me. I have kept two journals from my LDS church mission that record almost every single day of it. This can be an example of my religion, and my writing style. I just selected a sentence from one of the dates, then using that as a script, started searching through Citizen Kane to find the matching words in that sentence. Then, all I did was cut out those moments which say the words and arrange them in the right order.

This really was an example of taking something pre-existing and turning it into something personal, as Jenkins writes in his book Television Fans, “The boy’s investment in the toy will give it a meaning that was unanticipated by the toymaker.” I also found inspiration in different internet video artists such as Pogo, who takes different sounds and vocal gestures from movies, TV shows, and even real life interviews, and remixes them into techno songs to use at dance clubs. It is a huge thrill to see what different things can be produced from individual pieces of art we know so well.

CRV: Medium Specificity: Rock Painting

Painting is an artistic medium that doesn't require colored oils or a canvas. It simply requires a choice of tool, material, and color. I chose to look specifically into material and see what I can make out of something out of the ordinary. Then, I saw the bed of rocks that surrounds my apartment building, and noticed how the rocks come in at least 5 colors. I knew I was looking at a material that could be used to “paint” something. Best of all, I could just sit down and make it right then and there, without any additional equipment.

At first, for visual inspiration, I used a screenshot from an inspirational movie I’ve seen and based my first rock painting after it. Then, I decided I could take a step further in originality, remembering that I don’t need to recreate pre-existing objects to paint either. I thought of Jackson Pollock’s painting “Number 6”, which simply is splattered paint. The cover art to the single album for the song “Monogamy”, by the band Self, also came to mind, as it is just a bunch of different colored circles and rectangles against a black background. From that, I chose to create a simple image of colored stripes making use of the different colors I had.

This compliments the painting medium by adding another possible “canvas” to work on to express yourself on. In any location where rocks lay together, like a riverbed, one can make creative use of the different shades of rocks at their disposal. Different colors can still be controlled to make different designs, shapes, and movements. This even adds an element of depth to the artwork: by piling rocks to a certain height, you can achieve a custom topography that can enhance the painting, from bringing contrast between solid colors and thin lines, to fully encapsulating the shape of a person’s head.

The painting medium is an open book, not only for what you paint, but how you paint it. Scott McCloud states in his book, “Understanding Comics”, “Our attempts to define comics [or painting] are an on-going process which won’t end anytime soon.” The definition of art is an ever-changing blob of ambiguity, that is relative to style, subject, mode, or message. In this exploration to finding my own version of painting, I learned to be resourceful of my available materials, mindful of time (to use the natural light of day to see well), and respectful of my surroundings (not bothering the ground or disturbing other people using the nearby pavement).

Before:

After:

CRV: Historical Story: Confederate

Howie Burbidge:

This was an awesome assignment.  I learned a lot about the advantages of having a partner to work with when writing a script.  There is no way that I would or could have come up with something even remotely this good without having someone to bounce ideas off of and to get ideas from.  It truly is so helpful and makes stories and characters so much more interesting.  Speaking of characters, we worked hard on our main character.  He is in direct line of current political on goings at the time of the Civil War.  As a Confederate spy his beliefs are shown through his behaviors—and profession.  This correlates directly with the current political climate at the time.  Our Confederate spy enters a wartime mansion of General Grant.  The information we gathered about these locations was pivotal.

(http://www.oldhouseonline.com/preserving-a-civil-war-landmark/ & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherry_Mansion)

This house would have been a perfect place for spies to linger around and maybe even sneak into during the war – as it was only seven miles away from enemy territory and General Grant and his generals stayed there.  The house proved to be the setting of our script and made our story more believable.  We chose this location carefully because of that very element of actuality.

Spencer Plewe:

The plot depended on this character maintaining his cover for as long as he could, as well as how his cover is blown. We needed a flaw in this spy’s plan that would expose his deception to General Grant, so we found a personal piece of his history, namely about his name being a moniker from his actual birth name.

(http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/ulysses-s-grant)

It was the perfect touch of detail that many people wouldn’t know about, as well as the Confederate spy in the center of the story. The story itself was actually simple to write, so long as we had a definite direction and ending to take it to. We decided off several possible endings, and the resulting one felt the most natural.

Using details in historical fiction is exemplified from Neufeld’s After the Deluge comic, which places fictional characters into the real world of Hurricane Katrina; before, during, and after the storm. The fictional characters give a mode of safety in learning about real situations, and even semi-autobiographies such as Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis give a simple, narrative glimpse at the past.

CRV: Process Piece: Cooking

(with Mitchell Dunn)

As we got together to work on this process piece, we both became increasingly aware of the sounds made by simple processes.  In fact, many of the sounds became more interesting to listen to when isolated from their visual context.  The process of cooking is filled with a wide variety of sounds, and as most of those are rather easily identifiable and interesting, it made sense for us to choose this to document.  

Hearing the audio of various processes without actually seeing them happening is rather common in films but more obviously in podcasts.  A completely fictional podcast entitled “Hello From The Magic Tavern” has background processes going on throughout each piece.  These are composed mainly of unnamed people conversing, eating and drinking, but they are drowned out by the main characters in the podcast.  At least once in every episode, there is a track of a confused Burger King employee working at the drive-through and trying to figure out what the strange interference is which he is getting on his headset.  Another piece (this one a lot more serious) has people telling their stories as a foghorn sounds several times as a symbol (https://beta.prx.org/stories/118343).

But using more basic sounds with little to no vocals is quite a bit different.  The sounds can become ambiguous sometimes and can be mixed in new and creative ways to describe entirely different processes. Originally, an entire elaborate dinner was planned to be recorded and cut down, but after listening to all the sound recorded by both of us, we decided to use the sounds we had in common to simplify the process to harvesting, preparing, and cooking potatoes. The beginning captures the actual digging up of potatoes from the earth. The potatoes are then ran under water and chopped up before being boiled. Finally, the dinner table is set and the food is served, and at the end, the leftovers are wrapped and stored.

The dinner preparation was simple enough to record on a smartphone, with each individual sound effect divided into separate files. After transferring them to a computer, they were imported into a film-editing program and trimmed down to 1 ½ minutes. Each segment was only given up to ten seconds before transitioning to the next - it doesn’t take much to recognize or guess what it is. The whole piece together gives off the sound of food going through it’s natural course, from the earth to the plate.

CRV: Round Robin: Boy with a Paper

Collaboration on projects always seems to prove problematic, especially when a grade is involved. However, with this assignment, we felt like the project focused more on collaborating and fostering creativity than working towards a good grade despite the fact you are working with others. Something that was interesting about this project was that you did not necessarily have to continue the story, but could change the direction based on an aspect you liked within the story, such as an object or a theme. This allowed for a broader scope of ideas to make the stories change and progress more drastically until they were something completely their own, like how DJ Spooky asserts that Pacman is a mere derivative of Chutes and Ladders, comprising of samples taken from the latter to create a new, relatively original game. As long as each of us used our own artistic talent to our best ability, that made the storytelling process worth it.

Something else that made this project stimulating (and to some even challenging) was the word limit on the stories. Not only did you have to create a story from the work of someone else, but you had to do it in thirty words or less. So while the directions you could take your peers’ stories were endless, they were also limited in that they must have completed or resembled an entire story arc within those parameters, which required us to be clever and creative in the way we presented our pieces.

Working on individual stories and drawing pictures for them was fun, but seeing all the separate stories together as one series is quite enlightening, and even humorous. This definitely helped debunk a commonly held notion that all collaborations or group projects are painful. It has shed a bright light on the appeal of widespread collaborative projects, like the Tiny Book of Tiny Stories series, which was started by Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s HitRecord. It was also humbling to learn that others’ ideas and stories can take your story in a direction you may have never even considered, which can help anyone get out of a creative rut. While they may not have been decisions you personally would have made creatively, it still resulted in pieces that were entertaining, well-crafted, and new. It helped us get out of our minds and to be more open to other ideas, suggestions, and even whole worlds that are held in our stories’ potential.

No. 1: by Me

A boy drew out a piece of paper to draw on, 

but realized he ran out of things to draw with.

No. 2: by Rebekah Olson

 No. 3: by Michael Stanley

 No. 4: by Nadia Turek

Out of no where, his stuffed duck came to life 

and was very angry because there were no hats at this celebration.

 No. 5: by Rebekah Olson

He ripped a strip off the bottom of his pant-leg and rolled it in to a party hat, 

placing it on the stuffed duck's head, so the party could continue happily.

CRV: Music Mosaic: "Drive to Freedom" by Steven Price

Nothing reassures me about life more than being out in nature. Steven Price’s “Drive to Freedom” is an expression to me of the wonderment of nature and the distractions of human intervention. His use of electronic notes mixed with real instruments, piano and strings, fluctuate between each other like my own life experiences of finding excitement in a modern urban society, followed by the refreshing joy of just being in nature. There seems to be no single way to perform this song, with so many pieces to it, so I chose to have some of my pictures portray different views on common places in life.

The article “Seeing” by Annie Dillard touches heavily on learning to see things differently, or seeing things for the first time. In her section where she quoted the findings of doctors who removed cataracts of blind people, the reactions of those people to newfound sight are all very interesting and quite sad at first. They just don’t know what to do with their sight, how to attach it to things and how to use it to navigate. As one observer pointed out, they are just as babies born with sight from that point. It may take years to get used to it.

In a similar way, it takes anyone a while to get used to a new way of seeing things. Something I’m used to seeing right now is the sky, with the clouds and sun. What always makes a view of the sky unique is if something else is visible on the side, as long as it’s not the main feature. I show this in the Photoshopped image of the sun with a bird to the left of it, and the real images with different buildings off to the side of an overcast sky and a partly cloudy sky. Something else I’m used to seeing (being in college) is being in crowds of people. A way of seeing that which I’m not used to is seeing those crowds from a bird’s eye view, so I took pictures of class breaks both on the ground and from a four-story balcony.

The focus then shifts away from urban society to out in the country, where you can tell the environment has changed just from the sight of tall, dry grass. Some of the more majestic views are out where barely any people live, and the place I chose just outside of Spanish Fork, Utah comes with fields, the nearby Utah Lake, and the West Mountain. The final shot I took of my car facing right, looking down into the valley below, showcases the rewards, as well as future possibilities, of searching for escapes from human distractions.

"Drive to Freedom", by Steven Price: Spotify, YouTube (first song)

CRV: Thinking & Writing: "The Tree of Life" for Life

Independent movies that get a limited release hardly get noticed by the general public. Even rarer is when such a movie gets a Best Picture nomination at the Oscars. And even rarer beyond that, is such a nominee a huge advocate for spiritual and family values. In 2012, such a nominee came to public attention in the form of the film The Tree of Life, being written and directed by Terrence Malick, whose other films include Badlands, The Thin Red Line, and The New World. A faith-based family movie about finding the meaning of life that is critically noticed and acclaimed? One would think this would be among the top of anyone’s list, but the general people say otherwise, that it was too “artsy”, ambiguous, and couldn’t carry whatever intentions it had across to the average viewer, especially one who is more bent on fast-paced films such as Avatar or the Marvel movies. Philosophical films that actually inspire questions and respectable views on life, that deserve to be embraced, sadly drown in a world demanding the easier/edgier things, where the average idea of a family is becoming just a recipe for disaster, and it’s continually showing that it’s separating from ideal love.

The Tree of Life premiered at the 2011 Cannes Film festival, winning the Palme d’Or award, the festival’s highest honor (http://www.festival-cannes.fr/en/archives/2011/awardCompetition.html). It’s interesting to note that at that same event, the audience gave mixed feedback including applause and boos (http://www.hollywoodnews.com/2011/05/16/brad-pitt-terrence-malicks-tree-of-life-booed-in-cannes/). The resulting responses from the rest of those few who got to see it during its limited theatrical run and release on Blu-ray almost proved no different, with its RottenTomatoes.com audience score averaging at 60%. On the outside, this could easily seem to be another case of artsy movies being accepted more by the pundits than the people, but another analysis shows this as a representation of how the values of the world in general have slipped so far from the things that really matter, that they can’t recognize them anymore. One critic who sympathized with the haters summarized it with this: “Could a work of art be more handsome? Could it be more borderline profound? This movie weighs so much, yet contains so little. It’s all vault and little coin.” http://www.boston.com/ae/movies/articles/2011/06/03/movie_review_terrence_malicks_the_tree_of_life_open_to_interpretation/?page=full)

So what is The Tree of Life actually about? It’s an impressionistic story mainly focused on a Catholic Texas family in the ‘50s. The unnamed father (Brad Pitt) and mother (Jessica Chastain) are polar opposites in their household, and their three sons struggle to know what direction to follow in terms of their views on life and love. The film revolves around the eldest son, Jack (Hunter McCracken), and even inter-cuts flash-forwards to the present day (2008-ish) when adult Jack (Sean Penn) struggles to remember his incentive on pushing forward in life. We basically fly through normal-life experiences of young Jack involving him with his parents, brothers, and neighborhood friends; and see his emotions as they grow ever deeper. The film also features a few sequences from only a god-like point of view that show the creation of the universe and life as we know it, followed up by the foreseen end of the earth, and finishing with a portrayal of the paradise of Heaven.

What made this film a critical darling was mainly its story, direction and cinematography, but the key to it being so emotionally special is its underrated message of the delicate tie of family that is so easily harmed by acts of anger and bitterness; as well as the real power of humility and forgiveness applied to it. This kind of message isn’t invisible to viewers, and some critics even positively identified with it, such as in this review by Roger Ebert, who grew up in a very similar setting to what Terrence Malick did:

"…I know the imperfect family life Malick evokes. I know how even good parents sometimes lose their tempers. How children resent what seems to be the unforgivable cruelty of one parent, and the refuge seemingly offered by the other. … What Malick does in "The Tree of Life" is create the span of lives. Of birth, childhood, the flush of triumph, the anger of belittlement, the poison of resentment, the warmth of forgiving.” (http://www.rogerebert.com/rogers-journal/a-prayer-beneath-the-tree-of-life)

Granted, the film is a strangely constructed one. It’s a non-linear narrative, which is always difficult for someone to piece together and figure out the purpose of presenting the story as shuffled. There’s barely any dialogue, with half of what’s there being a “thinking voiceover” (a staple for Malick's films). Even more striking is the visuals, such as a shot of a kitchen chair moving seemingly on its own, one of the family’s mother bobbing up and down in mid-air for some contemplative reason, or another that just stares at a blank wall. The extra-narrative scenes likely confuse the most, with outer space shots being compressed with nebulas and stars, microscopic shots of cells and animal fetuses, and the final scene with familiar people walking around on a sandy beach; all backed up with ambiguously unique music comprised of a solo female opera singer and a separate choir. These examples and more only function as symbolism, and analysis of which is barely ever taught in today’s society. Thinking back, you may never find another professional movie that portrays the creation of the universe so reverently and focused, as to allude to a divine design, or a movie where Heaven is not shown as appearing on clouds but still encompassing natural beauty, and most importantly, where families are all brought back together and happily go on loving each other.

Here’s The Tree of Life’s philosophy: nothing stands still. The hustles and trouble in it mean nothing in the long run. What does mean something is happiness and kindness. That’s what makes real change in people’s hearts and minds, and it’s imperative to family growth. Who can possibly deny that our current society, let alone our world, increasingly needs that?