American Values
motion, Fall 2007
Here, Then Gone: Achim Weiland
Tags: asshattery, caricature, cynicism, gender, irony, mock-heroic, the media machine, politics, pop culture
Overview
- A reworking of a prior project.
- A cynical look at what Americans value in a hero, and the inevitable side effects.
- An experiment in how smooshing together a bunch of clips from movies, army recruitment commercials and the news can blend together to create narrative.
Process
I added and edited the clips I collected from the Army of One film, pulled it apart, and then created an entirely different tone through music and pacing.
I also removed the blood-and-gore-and-death shocker from the older film and replaced it with torture and school shootings. Still a disturbing twist, but hopefully not as needlessly exploitative.
Form
The biggest difference between this and the earlier film is the music. By ditching the techno and selecting two movements of Copland’s Rodeo – I immediately set a more melodramatic, Americana, fourth-of-July-fireworks-and-apple-pie tone which becomes increasingly more contrasted from the imagery as the film progresses.
This time, I start things out slow with black and white vintage images of wholesome young men wholesomely working out. I slip a few modern, silly things in towards the end of the opening sequence to provide contrast and foreshadowing, but mostly to keep the audience from getting bored.
Once the onslaught of imagery begins, I attempted to use looping effects to try to time punches and gun shots with the pace of the music. Even though Copland may not typically be associated with these kinds of images, I tried to make the connection for the viewer – admittedly it works better in some places than others.
Having control over the pace of the story is an advantage of using film to construct a narrative like this. Feeling compelled to speak out against the war and the stupidity of glorified heroic violence – but being cynical enough to realize that there will always be war – this sampling technique allows me to make my ambivalence apparent in subtle ways. Fictionalized heroes and villains blend right in with government propaganda and television commercials for shower gel. A building in Iraq blows up, a guy from a Mountain Dew commercial pumps his fist, the President laughs, the dance keeps playing, the world keeps turning. For now anyway.
