BLUE

Since the concept of the trailer was wide open, I spent a lot of time thinking about what my subject should be and ran through some of my interests. Food? Dogs? People? I spent hours trying to think of the “perfect” subject before looking for inspiration on my bookshelf. My favorite books talk about things without directly talking about them -

I hoped that looking there I would find inspiration that felt more poetic less concrete.

I immediately zeroed in on Maggie Nelson’s Bluets.

“Suppose I were to begin by saying that I had fallen in love with a color” 

I started thinking about translating the feeling and ideas in her poems into a video- what if my subject was the color blue?

I wanted to find video and sound that worked together to tell a new story. I spent hours sourcing videos on the internet- YouTube, blogs, and historical archives like prelinger.org. I wanted the clips to capture “blueness” in different ways. While I originally had only music in the background, I realized that I was missing a narrative voice in my trailer.

I had to figure out- how do I make these separate pieces hold together as a single new piece?

I asked myself what do I want my video to feel like and what do I want it to say? How do I make blue a lens to talk about things like loneliness, memory and time?

I went back to my bookshelf and found Joan Didion’s Blue Nights. I found an audio recording online and realized that I found the perfect narration for my mediation on the color blue.

Once I had the narration laid down I could start organizing the mountain of found footage I had compiled and started re-writing my own story with the bits and pieces I had collected.

The Final Project (make sure sound is on)