World Building - Sovereign State of Deseret

For behold, the Southern States shall be divided against the Northern States, and the Southern States will call on other nations, even the nation of Great Britain, as it is called, and they shall also call upon other nations, in order to defend themselves against other nations; and then war shall be poured out upon all nations." (Doctrine and Covenants 87:3)

 

And I hold forth and deign to give unto you greater riches, even a land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, upon which there shall be no curse when the Lord cometh;

(Doctrine and Covenants 38:18)

And there shall be gathered unto it out of every nation under heaven; and it shall be the only people that shall not be at war one with another.
And it shall be said among the wicked: Let us not go up to battle against Zion, for the inhabitants of Zion are terrible; wherefore we cannot stand.

(Doctrine and Covenants 45:69-70)

Artists' Statement:

“What if…” is often the beginning of a form of art called design fiction, a term coined by Julian Bleecker in his essay of the same name. What if the world was fundamentally different? What would it look like? H.G. Wells was a master in design fiction, particularly with his novel, The Time Machine, in which he describes the future state of mankind. It’s not real, but it follows real patterns and rules. It’s a fantasy world, but it has its roots in real science. So it is with design. Artifacts from these manufactured worlds both augment and represent a kind of parallel reality displayed in the world from which they come.

So what if? As students at Brigham Young University, we have a natural interest in our Mormon roots. At one point in history, a state of Deseret was proposed. It never happened because of issues with the U.S. government regarding polygamy, but what if? What if the South won the war? What if the Union was so fractured that they didn’t care about a burgeoning community far in the west? What if the Mormons pulled it off and gained sovereignty?

           The 1860s would see a drastic change in the world when the South would end up winning the Civil War.  The members in the state of Deseret would take this chance to seriously begin building their nation.  Part of being a sovereign state meant they would need their own currency for the exchanging within its economy and government.  This Currency would reflect the events of Mormon history and significance to the nation of Deseret as well as its prominent leaders.

Because of industry in the West, and the lack of Power from any opposing country, Deseret would thrive. The country would benefit from its strong support of immigration, its control of the railroad, its trading of oil and gold, its organization, its colonization, and its immense population growth. By 1900 Deseret would have become a world superpower, a land filled with promise and a community bent on growth, forward and upward. A sense of religious nationalism would have been deeply rooted, and many would frame or carry defining documents, as Americans might with copies of their constitution.

“Let us not go up to battle against Zion, for the inhabitants of Zion are terrible; wherefore we cannot stand.” - (Doctrine and Covenants 45:70)

In fulfillment of this prophecy, the people of Deseret would take a strong defensive stance during the conflicts throughout the 20th century. Though their ambassadors (i.e. missionaries) would still be sent out, they would also employ military force toward any country that sought harm to their congregations. The evolution of this thought might be expressed in a new flag. The twelve stars, representing the twelve tribes of Israel, point inward toward deseret, a honeybee, the protector of the hive. The red field represents the blood of the righteous calling for justice. The flag is a symbol of the state’s fierce defense and retribution against any that dare to come against God’s people.

Many events of our world would still “come to pass” in this world.  Hitler would still try to dominate the planet. But what if Einstein immigrated to Deseret?  What if revelation was given to our military leaders just as Captain Moroni received it in the Book of Mormon? Deseret would emerge as a world power.  We also read of the pride cycle in the Book of Mormon. If Deseret prospered for too long there would likely be much apostasy. Different factions of the faith would compete for power.

Webspinna Battle

Genres are funny things. Do they even exist? How nuanced do two similar elements have to be before they're different. How much do they influence one another? Yes, genres really are hard to pin down. For our Webspinna Battle, Amy and I decided to explore the conceptual stylistic spectrum of detective noir and horror. As sister styles, we felt that personifying and representing them would highlight their differences, but also demonstrate their similarities, showing that in some ways the idea of "genre" has some really blurred lines. We also felt that by exploring the idea of genre relations, we were taking the plagiarism theme a step further. The Battle of our personas was to some degree about plagiarizing each other's stylistic elements, and which one really has a corner on "dark" or "rain" or "screams". Although horror is older, these genres sort of developed together over the years, it's up to the audience to decide how much they used the "cut-up" method mentioned by William Burroughs in The Ecstasy of Influence.

While in the Webspinna Battle, I realized that many of the other groups did more of a "performance", with multiple tracks that corresponded heavily to actions. I was extremely impressed with this approach, but ours was somewhat different. We poured our creative energy more into overlaying multiple tracks at once to have a constant rhythm that corresponded between us, and into what the tracks themselves represented. For example, some of the specific characteristics of my genre, noir, were some more obvious ones such as rain, gunshots, a detective voice over, police sirens, but also some farther stretches such as sound effects from Batman: The Animated Series and Sean Connery introducing himself as James Bond. The reason for these is because they each carry very specific elements of noir films and have been heavily influenced by them. In this sense, they too have "cut-up" and recycled the style and are branches of the same tree. Amy had a similar approach with her sounds, using many different movie scenes that have developed into what we think of horror as today. Some of the crossover, such as screams, sirens, and rainstorms, were played interchangeably to link the two genres.

To create some sort of narrative in our battle, we tried to have key sounds that the other would respond to, indicating it was our turn. For example, Amy playing a scream caused me to turn down my tracks, and as I would fade out I would play something about a "dame." Me playing the track of a machine gun would do something similar. We both overlaid our sounds with musical remixes of noir or horror soundtracks; mine was a dance mix of a song from the video game L.A. Noire, and hers was a remix of the Psycho theme. By trying to make our performance more of a song, we emulated Pogo's approach. A similar idea is the annual Pop Remixes that mix up specific sounds and beats to emulate that year. By combining, contrasting, remixing, and remaking the elements of genres that mesh within one another, hopefully we were able to create something of our very own.

Battle Performance Tracks

Textual Poaching - Living Scriptures Re-Imagined

I once read a quote online that really struck me: "The Book of Mormon is the greatest fan-fiction of all time." While I don't actually believe that statement, the idea still impacted me, in that the Bible has inspired so many variations of religious belief, myth, translation, etc. In our reading about textual poaching, Jenkins stated that "in order to transform a work into a cult object one must be able to break, dislocate, unhinge it so that one can remember only parts of it, irrespective of their original relationship of the whole." By that definition, bible verses and books and stories have been interpreted and repeated so many times and ways as to make the Bible a truly immortal text, no pun intended.

One depiction those bible stories is the LDS Living Scripture animated series, which is personally relevant to me. I grew up watching episodes of Living Scriptures every Sunday after church. This LDS animated approach to the Bible became deeply influential to me, informing my early interpretations of the Bible not only in understanding, but emotionally, aesthetically, nostalgically. I watched them so many times that I can no longer even tell if they are good. As I got older, however, my tastes evolved. I sought artful and authentic representations of Biblical times, so much so that I felt disconnected with watered down church media. I found myself sometimes listening to the soundtrack from The Passion of the Christ, wishing for a similar interpretation from Mormonism.

Because of my connection with these each of these two retellings of the same story, I combined them for my Textual Poaching Project. The visual representation is from my childhood, and the musical is more recent. This re-scoring idea is not uncommon; I recently saw a Textual Poaching of The Shining, where someone created a fake trailer for the movie as if it was a family-friendly comedy just by changing the music. But I didn't re-score the Living Scriptures to be satirical, at least not entirely. I wanted to create a representative shadow of something I might actually enjoy.

Because the segment from the living scriptures I picked is actually a sing-along music segment, the audience is not missing out on any dialogue by hearing a different score, and is actually better able to feel the juxtaposition of the two art pieces. It is interesting for me to watch what the Living Scriptures would feel like with a Middle-Eastern influenced score and more dark and serious tone. To emphasize that feeling, I actually edited the color tones of the video to be a bit darker and desaturated.

Interestingly, I noticed that The Passion's score changes the emotional experience of the video, but at least in my case, not the religiosity. The same devotion is coming from two different places emotionally. By combining two different shades of the same color, and one that has been painted and repainted for generations, my hope is to imagine something that could actually become it's own interpretation.

Medium Specificity

You'd think that as a filmmaker, the concept of moving images would have some deeper meaning to me. The idea that a picture is worth a thousand words certainly begs the question of motion pictures. And yet, I find that as a storyteller, I constantly take the medium for granted. Because of this, I decided to revisit the most basic elements of film--multiple moving frames and sound--to explore both the advantages and limitations of this art form.

I chose sound and image specifically because they most make up the narratives that I so strongly connect with. My piece, however, is not much of a narrative. It is, rather, a set of shots that depict students experiencing a typical day on BYU campus. Within these five shots, several technical elements are immediately noticeable. Unlike McCloud's "Setting the Record Straight", my piece takes an approach to the medium that calls attention by being noticeably different. Firstly, the film is a 360 degree video. That means the viewer has the ability to interact and look around the shot. And although the sounds of what is being depicted are clear and normal, the piece is presented in one frame-per-second.

In this way, my piece explores limitations, ask questions, and ultimately celebrates the technical possibilities of motion pictures. By using 360 degrees, the project presents present limitations and potential possibilities. For example, when watching a film, the viewer typically only sees the frame she is given and is expected to accept that one rectangle as the canvas. Even in observational cinema, the shot makes a statement. I wanted to explore that aspect as a limitation; what if you could look outside the shot? What would you see? Regarding subject and intent, however, there are so many new questions to consider in a 360 degree video, that perhaps it transcends the entire point and purpose of filmmaking as we understand it and is closer to VR, such as the new media experience found at The Void. Maybe film is supposed to be more straightforward. For example, a set frame tells us something specific. It hands us the subject, and forces us to make something of it. It inspires creativity rather than curiosity.

I also wanted to explore frame rate, as that is all video is--moving pictures. While most narrative films have a frame-rate of 24 frames per second, this one has a frame rate of 1 frame per second. This frame rate calls attention to the rather narrow bridge between photography and cinematography. The frame rate is juxtaposed against the sound, which is heard in real time, calling attention to the importance of sound to provide context and work hand in hand with image. We normally don't notice sound, but sound often informs everything we are seeing. It's half of the process. 

Altogether, I hope my piece reminds us of why we want to be filmmakers for one reason or another, and shows that we have only just begun to think of the potential of our medium.

Historical Stories

In 1980, a small fire broke out in the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino’s delicatessen. The fire spread quickly and trapped many people on the upper floors of the building (LA Times “Burning Memories: Ten years later…”). Investigators blamed the fire on an electrical short, but what if they were wrong? What if the fire had more sinister origins? On Biography.com, we found out that Vegas’s most powerful mob boss-- Tony Spilotro-- was banned from casinos in 1979. Armed with this possible source of embitterment toward the MGM Grand, we constructed a story about Spilotro’s comeuppance arson.

In order to make our story seem plausible, we researched whatever we could about the hotel and the time period in which it burned. A copy of the original MGM Grand floorplan helped us orchestrate and describe scenes. The wire short that caused the fire gave us a basis for Spilotro’s involvement. We also used terminology from the time-- “Pap” was a common, almost derogatory term for paparazzi photographers in the early 1980’s.

James Higgins, our main character, is one of these “Paps”. Similar to the approach of After the Deluge, we wrote a good amount of the narrative and especially the world of James visually. Enamored by the glitz of 80’s casino life, he loves taking intimate and expository pictures of famous people.  In some way, he feels like taking these photos gives him power over people.

He enjoys the power trip he gets from taking pictures, but wants something more high class. In an effort to raise himself above his life situation, James is willing to extort anybody’s misfortune or misconduct. Shamelessly, he photographs intoxicated people in compromising circumstances. Without a second thought, he runs into a burning building to photograph the panic, destruction, and possible injury happening inside. James’s position as a paparazzi photographer enables him to witness the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino fire objectively. James uses his camera to separate himself from the terrible events, and he feels no sorrow from it.

James doesn’t have the time or the depth to feel empathetic toward the MGM Grand fire victims. When he develops his photographs and sees Tony Spilotro fleeing the scene of the crime, he doesn’t get angry or upset. He isn’t overwhelmed at the loss of life Spilotro’s actions caused. He just sees it as an opportunity to blackmail himself into mob life. James has always loved power, and here he is holding a photograph that gives him power over the most terrifying mob boss in Vegas.

James’ chip-on-the-shoulder attitude serves as a contradiction, and even push-back, against the general disdain of paparazzis during his time. His occupation serves as a symbol for anyone who is seen as the lowest of the low at the beginning of Reaganomics. Although he rails against the common perception of his profession, James himself buys into a sort of “trickle-down” ideology. He wears well-kept tuxedos and fraternizes with people from a higher class. He acts as if spending time photographing famous people somehow rubs their importance off onto him. He also separates himself from the moral implications of photographing for tabloids through a twisted sense of jaded ambition. The world looks down on paparazzi, so he might as well expose the world’s dirty secrets.

This project was a collaboration between

Barrett Burgin

and Madison Ellis

Process Piece

Initially, telling a story strictly through audio without the accompaniment of video, or any other element for that matter, might seem to be difficult and confusing. For us it certainly was. One of the elements we found most compelling about processes we watched before class such as “The Smokehouse” or “Five” were the visuals (especially of delicious food). However, upon completion of the audible sequence, the result was surprisingly beautiful.

For this project, we struggled finding the right process to present. Originally, we wanted depict what it is like trying to find something to watch on TV, but on our first attempt, we realized we wanted something a little more engaging. Certainly watching television is a common human labor, but besides the clicking of the remote and the sounds of the shows, there aren’t very many ways to go with it.

As we explored the idea, our original concept evolved into the process of going to the movie theater. Sounds of popcorn, tickets ripping, and friends and family enjoying themselves permeate the audio clip. Each sound invokes a memory, as all of us in this class have been to the movie theater. We decided to take that aspect of nostalgia one step further by creating the process of seeing a movie being shown on film. Because of this element, we had to create a composite of sounds from the past and present. Probably the most compelling aspect of the created piece hearing a film projector, giving the audio piece more of an authentic sound.

The piece follows the basic story model well. It was created as a sort of audio POV piece of the process of going to see a film at the movie theater. There are even different sounds in each ear, not unlike the “Virtual Barber Experience” found on YouTube. Our process starts with the ambiance of waiting in line to buy a ticket, then leads to ripping the ticket, buying popcorn, and finally arriving at the seats. With a distinct beginning, middle, and end, the story is able to be told without the use of dialogue.

It is interesting that a story actually can be told without a narrator holding the audience’s hand to guide through the tale, or even visuals. Instead, we experience a narrative simply through real life sound effects. The fact that the audio clip turned out realistic and rather easy to follow was a surprise because of the aforementioned beliefs on the subject.

The process of finding a process to record was the largest task. With digital films currently dominating the theater market, it is difficult to find a theater that even has a film projector anymore. After various phone calls and research, we were fortunate enough to get in touch with the one theater in Provo that still owns a film camera. They graciously gave us a tour. Possibly more enjoyable than actually creating the piece, learning about the old projector as well as taking a tour of the old SCERA Theater was an unforgettable experience. The kindness of the theater’s employees was what ultimately made this project possible.

Hopefully the audience of our process piece is able to further appreciate all that goes into screening a film, as well as reminisce on wonderful experiences of going to the pictures. We also aimed to reflect on the beautiful history of film’s progression to the point where it is now. Perhaps next time the listener goes to a movie, he will think more about the process after listening to this piece.