Today is the day. Rather than blog about my anxieties or expectations, summaries or thoughts, here is a piece I wrote at the beginning of our NWISC summer. At Timberline Lodge at Mount Hood, Phil and Erin asked us to interview a stranger:
When Robert Capa, the famous war photographer who stormed the shores of Normandy, was asked why he was a photographer, he merely replied, “Because I like people.” But John Kelly does it for the freedom.
Photographing his great black dog at Mt. Hood, under flocks of Tibetan Prayer Flags whispering beneath a great blue Western sky, photographer John Kelly fidgets with different buttons and dials. He searches up and down for the perfect angle, desperate to seek the perfect shot.
I soon found myself holding his surprisingly heavy Contax camera, photographing him and his two companions. I snapped, he looked, and didn’t like it, so I took another. Then he walked back, approved the shot, thanked me, and said, “You know, that is a $50,000 camera you’re holding.” All of the sudden it felt like a huge rock in my palms; this camera weighed more than several years of my college education.
He took his camera back and cradled it in his arms as he told his tale of fighting in the Vietnam War and climbing the Himalayas, all the while seeking solace through his lens. “It gives you a reason to be in a place and also it gives you an unbelievable entrée to meet people,” said Kelly. “You want to make pictures that other people will enjoy . . . and buy.”
Kelly wore a brilliant blue cowboy shirt with white diamond snap buttons, Wrangler jeans, and black and white soccer sandals that exposed his pale feet and overgrown toenails. His blue eyes sat deep under his faded red baseball cap as he lifted his camera to his brow to adjust the aperture.
Later, leaning coolly against a hollowed out tree trunk as a particularly long piece of prayer cloth above caught on the brim of his worn out cap, Kelly boasted about the celebrity photographs that have funded his savvy lifestyle. He mentioned the time he shot Bjorn Borg’s victory at Wimbledon, or when Robert Redford, a good friend, hired him to be the official still photographer in both The Horse Whisperer and A River Runs Through It. Kelly did not hesitate to describe his perfect portraits of Mick Jagger, Kevin Costner, and Princess Diana.
Yet, Kelly finds peace in his work. After discussing lifetime aspirations and feats, he looked once more upon the Tibetan Flags against the vivid Western sky and added, “I’m still looking to take a better picture, like I’m going to take a better picture right now, because I realized, this was the better angle,” and so he clicked once more.
We remained atop the snow-capped mountain swayed by a warm July breeze, but as my interview came to a close I had time for one last question.
“Why are you a photographer?” I asked.
He looked right at me and said, “It’s free. It’s freedom. I’m a free man and I do what I want to do.”
Be sure to come to the show tonight, there are some really captivating, inspiring pieces to see and hear.
It’s almost the end of a summer with the Northwest Institute for Social Change and I’m tired. I’m exhausted. I’m worn out and should be sleeping, but there’s a kindling flame within me. Why? What has this summer taught me beyond how to sit in the same room for five hours straight – listening to three different speakers discuss the moral and political consequences of social change in media? Or switching files from WAVs to MP3s in Audacity?
This summer has taught me to question. To question everything – from the very firm ground I stand on (“How do you know that the sidewalk truly exists?) to my previously deeply embedded ideals (“Why is it wrong to craft a story that leads people to a conclusion they couldn’t have reached themselves?).
I came to this program as an idealist. It was the Northwest Institute for Social Change. I interpreted “social change” as action. Action that would improve the Portland community and therefore make the world a better place. But through my eight weeks here I’ve learned something: ideals, idealism, and action can only get you so far. Without a clear intellectual foundation of your values, how will you ever know that what you’re fighting for is right? Without a game-plan and detailed organization – how will you ever solve society’s greatest issues?
Today, I turned in a video that I created with some of the most powerful, impassioned individuals I have ever met. I have never had to explain my perspective and point of view so articulately. I have never had my actions, opinions, or statements questioned so vigorously. And you know what? I also have never learned so much. I have never been so painfully aware of the weaknesses in my logic or the irrationality of my anger.
I thought this program killed my idealism. Instead, it grounded it in reality.
We – those who are impassioned for social justice and social change – can truly make a difference. The key is to acknowledging our own weaknesses. We must be willing to hear the sound of nails on chalkboard in school, feel the greasy counter-tops of our local pub, and smell the fumes of industrialization. We must acknowledge the dilapidated state of our government, the opinionated nature of our news media, and the fact that we are trapped within a capitalistic society.
Instead of giving up and hiding from what we perceive as corruption – let us seek to understand it and fathom it’s underlying structure. Instead of escaping to the purr of the television screen or the bright colors of Facebook, let us look at the dirty newspaper lying on our doorstep.
I know that the perfect world I envision may never be realized. And perhaps that is the most beautiful blessing I could ask for…to know that although what we yearn for may never exist, but the fact that we are striving to that place, the fact that we can use our minds not only to dream, but to systematically improve our surroundings…is wonderful.
Name: Galen Bernard
College: Whitman College
Major: Politics
Favorite Movie & Documentary: Forrest Gump, Invisible Children
What your video doc is on, why did you choose it?: Incight’s employment program for young adults with disabilities. I think individuals with disabilities are a profoundly neglected group who many people are to some degree uncomfortable interacting with or about, and therefore forget, ignore, or set aside. Growing up as the son of a pediatric physical therapist, I experienced how much people with disabilities have to offer, if given just the same attention and support any person has the right to expect and need. Incight is one program offering that support and working to get others to offer opportunities as well. The two program clients we got to meet are compelling persons to capture on film.
Current Favorite Thing About PDX: Food carts
Guiltiest Pleasure: American Idol
Favorite News Source: CNN.com/msnbc.com/ABCNews.com (so I know what most people are reading)
Favorite Social Changey/Political Buzzword: Apathy
Favorite Quote: Risk more than others think is safe.
Care more than others think is wise.
Dream more than others think is practical.
Expect more than others think is possible.
- Cadet Maxim
Name: rose holdorf
College: Macalester College
Major: Hummanities and Media and Culture Studies with an emphasis in Film Studies and a Minor in Environmental Studies
Favorite Movie & Documentary: Movie: At the moment a Jean-Luc Godard classic, Pierrot Le Fou
Documentary: The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes By Stan Brackhage
What your video doc is on, why did you choose it?: The Growing Gardens Organization. I love gardening, for one, and for another I think it is really interesting how vegetable gardens have increased in the time of the recession. Like Eleanor Roosevelt once did, Michelle Obama has grown her victory garden at the white house and has since inspired nation wide home grown food. Growing Gardens has been around long before the Obama’s moved in, and though Michelle’s national message is welcomed, I think it is important to display the hard work of the green thumbs in Portland who have been interested in providing food alternatives to those in need for a long time.
Current Favorite Thing About PDX: Eastbank Esplanade
Guiltest Pleasure: Goodwill
Favorite News Source: The News Hour with Jim Lehrer
Favorite Social Changey/Political Buzzword: Movement
Favorite Quote: “I
knew that nobody but a luckless man could ever need a doctor
in the face of a cyclone.” Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying
Name: Molly Bennett
College: Colby College
Major: Cultural Anthropology
Favorite Movie & Documentary: Harold and Maude, Jesus Camp
What your video doc is on, why did you choose it?: My video is on Growing Gardens, an organization that helps people plant and maintain vegetable gardens in their schools and neighborhoods. I chose it because I think across the board access to healthy food is essential for a healthier society.
Current Favorite Thing About PDX: Free live music
Guiltest Pleasure: Nude sunbathing
Favorite News Source: NPR, PRI, BBC
Favorite Social Changey/Political Buzzword: Environmental Justice
Favorite Quote: “Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything.” -Kurt Vonnegut
Name: Jensen Power
College: St. Olaf College
Major: English, Media Studies, Women’s Studies
Favorite Movie & Documentary: Cool Hand Luke, No Direction Home
What your video doc is on, why did you choose it?: Growing Gardens. I chose it because I am interested in sustainable agriculture and because to topic had an aesthetic appeal to me.
Current Favorite Thing About PDX: There is so much to do! (and all the biking)
Guiltest Pleasure: America’s Next Top Model
Favorite News Source: New York Times.com
Favorite Social Changey/Political Buzzword: Sustainable
Lessons learned producing a 5 minute documentary that college doesn’t teach you:
1) Communication, rest, and food make groups work better.
2) The clock doesn’t stop for incompetence, no matter how hard you’re trying.
1) My documentary group has worked 9-12 each day this week. Broke after too many food cart adventures, we delegate shopping and cooking. We crash at eachothers’ houses, or bike through deserted streets at 1AM, relieved to have a solitary and unthinking moment.
With so many hours of working together, we’ve learned to accommodate each other in a way I never had to in college – even while upkeeping an apartment with two roommates.
For example, it became clear that some of us shouldn’t function past 11. “I’ve learned that I have a bed time,” said one group member. After that point, hilarity, or caustic urgency ensues.
Some of us can’t think when hungry.
In our storyboarding sessions, two group members started cramping each others’ creative processes. The tension mounted until one of our seminars gave us the language to work through it. On Tuesday, we met wit Jelly Helm, a former Nike advertising guru. He explained that during brainstorming, you should shut off the judgmental, evaluative part of your brain and use only the creative side – and then you should go back and evaluate the ideas, using the other side of your brain. In our group conversations, we weren’t being clear about which phase of the creative process we were at, and thus, when one group member was throwing ideas out undeveloped and uncensored, another was critically trying to assess their feasibility. Both ended up frustrated. So we all worked out that we needed to be clear about where we were in the process, and articulate either that we were feeling anxious about feasibility, or we needed to just run with an idea—rather than shutting each other down.
2) For all our critical thinking skills, we’ve not yet established a system that lets us start our interviews on time. There are batteries to be charged, tapes to be labeled. When we arrive on site, we need to find a space with low ambient sound and an evocative, but not distracting background.
At college, books will wait. Libraries will wait. It’s been a shock to have to deal with real, things, and real people; with heavy, delicate, expensive, gear, and with people who are not being paid to share their time with us.
A few days ago I finished the film Frost/Nixon, which I had naturally heard about late last year during the Oscar nom media frenzy, but never got around to sitting and watching until now. I loved it – to say the least. It’s great when you watch a film stunningly filmed, well-acted and just generally engaging without using too many of the Hollywood techniques. It was great watching it and thinking about all the things we’ve discussed in class – especially in prep for our video doc. The power of the image and what it can instill within the viewer. One of the characters in Frost/Nixon says, after David Frost nails Nixon in the last and final interview, almost heartbreakingly so:
“You know the first and greatest sin of the deception of television is that it simplifies; it diminishes great, complex ideas, trenches of time; whole careers become reduced to a single snapshot. At first I couldn’t understand why Bob Zelnick was quite as euphoric as he was after the interviews, or why John Birt felt moved to strip naked and rush into the ocean to celebrate. But that was before I really understood the reductive power of the close-up, because David had succeeded on that final day, in getting for a fleeting moment what no investigative journalist, no state prosecutor, no judiciary committee or political enemy had managed to get; Richard Nixon’s face swollen and ravaged by loneliness, self-loathing and defeat. The rest of the project and its failings would not only be forgotten, they would totally cease to exist.”
That image – wow. I like how it shows how the medium goes beyond research, interviews, countless other very serious academic ways of exploring the Watergate scandal – and how a single facial expression can really paint an entire picture. What can we aim, as filmmakers, to capture to stir similar, striking, “reductive” moments to prove our point?
Every once in awhile I do this thing where I try to make a point, and about mid-way through my explanation I realize I’m actually proving myself wrong. It’s a little bit like putting your foot your mouth, only more enlightening and slightly less embarrassing.
We were discussing the issue of framing with Tony Iacarinno. Framing is basically how you put things to people, what vocabulary or metaphors you’ll employ when trying to get your point across. This being Public Policy Week, we’ve been discussing framing in terms of how you go about convincing people of your viewpoint, that a certain issue is important and that they should not only care, but act. Often, you’re trying to employ framing in some limited context – a speech, essay or documentary. In this context, framing essentially reduces incredibly complex issues and narrative webs down to their simplest parts. This oversimplification makes an issue easier to comprehend because it plays off of our pre-existent ideas of the way things are, and evokes emotion. While this isn’t inherently bad, it can and has been used to manipulate and mislead people.
So anyway, the conversation got to a point where we were trying to justify framing. Why is it a necessary tactic? And then I caught myself saying the most elitist thing. We need framing to garner widespread support of the issues because there is power in numbers. The average Joe, I found myself arguing, doesn’t have the time or the energy to seek out the facts, sift through the various sources and viewpoints, because he’s too busy working, paying the bills and feeding the kids. The most widely accessible media sources do an inadequate job of informing the citizenry. Progressive or controversial viewpoints in particular – stories about activism, social movements, radical ideas – often never make it to the mainstream media, or are presented in a one-dimensional, biased way. Having access to more nuanced information about these stories requires not only the time and the energy to research them, but also access to the internet, a priveledge not to be taken for granted. Staying informed and getting involved (as I’m discovering this summer at the Institute) is a lot of work! And the average Joe and Jane, I claimed, didn’t have the time or energy for it.
Of course once I gave that statment a moment of reflection, I instantly thought of a half a dozen counter examples. Suddenly I felt very sheepish. Really, what I had just done, was reacted to the issues we were discussing from my own very situated knowledge frame. What Tony and my peers were saying made me think of last summer when I worked as a waitress at an understaffed greasy-spoon diner in Polson,MT – busting my ass one $2 tip at a time. That summer my worldview came under siege – living with my Fox news devoted grandmother while simultaneously staying up all night having heated discussions about “conspiracy” theories with a new friend I had just met. What I was referring to in my incredibly convaluted, elitist explanation was not the experience of the Average Jane or Joe (what is that, anyway?), but my own personal experience, my own existing frame: exhausted and discouraged with a raging thirst for more information than I was getting from mainstream media.
As a psychology student, it wasn’t hard to convince me that framing is a valid construct to begin with- it’s a basic concept of cognitive psychology. However, I often am unaware of just how powerful and influential these frames are. We oversimplify things all the time. Otherwise, we’d all be too busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on to actually accomplish anything.
The point of framing is not to dumb things down for the masses, though sometimes it seems that’s what ends up happening. The point is, if we’re serious about this “social change” thing, we need to find shared values, ideas to bring people together, if not to agree, at least to discuss. We need to realize what we have in common and acknowledge what is at stake for each of us in supporting or neglecting the well-being of our neighbors. We don’t need to dumb things down for the Average Joe – we need to engage him in conversation, listen carefully, and for heaven’s sake, hold on to enough self-awareness to recognize what we have in common.
Accomplishing this will not be easy, but it is possible.
Last Friday the members of my documentary team and I went around town filming B-roll for our piece on Growing Gardens (an organization that does community gardens and gardening education). We wanted to get some grittyish shots of Portland as contrast to the lush vegetable gardens we’ve shot so far. As it turns out, we filmed about 40 minutes of freeways, bridges, and vacant lots. We now have about enough footage for a feature-length documentary on the freeway overpasses and healthy tomato plants of Portland.
When I think about the nearly three hours of material we already have, plus all the things we plan on filming this week, I can’t help but get a little anxious. This week we edit, and by Friday all those interviews and freeway overpasses and fresh vegetables must be squeezed into five minutes of cinematic glory. As last week’s guest speakers all told us, its vital to keep the message short and succinct if one wants to effect change. But it’s always so hard not to get caught up in a project. The conversations we’ve had with people involved with Growing Gardens have been so captivating that I want to share it all with the audience. I want them to hear all the stories and ideas I heard from behind the camera. But alas, the five minute time limit is there for a reason. I’ll have to barge headlong into editing, scissors bared (figurative scissors, of course, as this is digital editing).
On Monday we learned a harsh truth about today’s world of politics – framing. According to Robin, my fellow student, frames are “pre-existing cognitive structures that we use to make sense of incoming information.” Frames are those biases, those lingering traces of previous experiences that are invoked when someone uses certain phrases or images. Frames are what prevent us from actively taking in information or spur us to constantly consume more information to discover the “truth.” Even now, as you read this, your pre-existing frames are absorbing some words and ideas while others simply flow through your mind – falling back into the vacancy of space.
But to the point – why do we care about “frames” in social activism? Because we were told we should use them. Because all politicians use them. The conservatives. The liberals. The anarchists. The environmentalists. Every value-group that exists in our contemporary society.
Tony Iaccarino, the current Research and Policy Director for Portland’s City Club and former professor of American History at Reed College, gave us some examples of “framing” in our three hour seminar with him on Monday. His favorite example – George Bush’s use of “permission slip” during his fourth State of the Union Address on January 20th, 2004. The exact quote:
“From the beginning, America has sought international support for our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, and we have gained much support. There is a difference, however, between leading a coalition of many nations, and submitting to the objections of a few. America will never seek a permission slip to defend the security of our country.”
In other words, our former president was stating that he would not like to discuss his invasion in Iraq with the United Nations and the United States shouldn’t have to explain its motives. By using the phrase “permission slip” Bush was invoking the previous experiences of many angry parents with over-regulated and bureaucratic school systems. That or he was hoping to remind the younger generation of those times they couldn’t go to the beach because their parents hadn’t signed a piece of paper. Bush, or rather Bush’s speech writer, was toying with American emotion. He was using the frame of a “permission slip” in order to invoke an emotional rather than logical response from the American people – plunging the U.S. into war, debt, and universal hatred.
Yet Bush is not alone. Our current President Obama has recently used the term “effective government” when referring to his administration. Why? Because “big government” conjurs up Orwell’s 1984, and “limited government” frightens those fighting for universal health care.
These are gross generalizations – partially used to prompt further discussion. Just how aware are we of the “frames” in our own lives? Politics aside – what pre-existing cognitive structures do we adhere to that prevent us from deciphering our official’s words?
The Hurt Locker, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, is the latest movie on the Iraq War to seek a commercial and emotional response from what has proven in recent years to be a tough crowd–an American public that has shown little interest in these war narratives. Redacted, Stop-Loss, and The Lucky Ones all failed to earn even half their budget. It says something about The Hurt Locker, and Bigelow, that I feel an urge to watch the others after seeing the movie two Mondays ago at its screening in the Hollywood Theatre as part of the Portland Oregon Women’s Film Festival. I don’t know whether I will. And I don’t know if others will watch The Hurt Locker. But I should watch them. And you should watch The Hurt Locker. I’ll leave the plot summarizing to the critics. I want to focus on the question of engaging the viewer, a question we are confronting every day this summer in the Institute.
Writing this 10 days after viewing the film I struggle to remember specific examples, which perhaps speaks to the challenge any film faces to leave a mark in our overloaded memories, but what I am left with even after so much time is a desire to do this film justice in my description of it to others, to make others feel that it matters. Why?
Watching the film, I was nervous that I was hooked only because it was so pretty, so damn pretty in fact that you can’t help but feel it must be a little wrong. I considered challenging Bigelow when in a post-film Q&A she stated that she wanted the movie to depict war as realistically as possible. In The Hurt Locker, war becomes almost, well, sexy. And I’m still nervous that this is why I liked it. The sound is so phenomenal—pulsing and playful, yanking or guiding the viewer along; the visuals so compelling—a bullet shell flips end over end as it leaves the gun and falls to the sand; not a new idea, the slo-mo gunshot, but somehow feeling new, raw. Yet Bigelow’s film stops short of glamorizing war. To me, glamour equals style without substance. And this film definitely had substance. Proof of it could be seen with one look around the theatre. I saw more audience reactions to this film than any I can remember. Looking to either side of me, I watched my fellow fellows run the gamut of what seemed almost exaggerated responses, but real; they literally were on the edge of their seats, anticipating; they literally cringed in horror and disgust; literally sat slack-jawed, gaping in wonder; and at times even resorted to putting their head in their hands and taking a moment away from it all to shake their heads in disbelief. It took me till the Q&A to figure out what they were reacting to. The characters.
Bigelow emphasized that when she’s making a film, the characters are the most important part. It shows. Many scenes offered a fresh take on the life of a soldier, such as the scene of one soldier playing an unnamed shoot-em-up video game shortly after being in a real life shoot-em-up scene on the Iraq streets. Clearly something resonated as real, because near the end of the Q&A the wife of a veteran of the Iraq War rose in the audience and said that this film more than any other captured the experience of war that she has heard from her husband and other soldiers. Having just finished a short audio documentary on veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, I, in my far more limited knowledge, agree. Even a scene near the end that felt essentially tacked-on captured the struggles in a way that hasn’t been done before, in a very human way that I think people could relate to. The main character Staff Sergeant William James deals with the monotony of grocery shopping compared to the adrenaline-rush thrill of facing death. We all go grocery shopping. We know it’s not a daily highlight. So even though we don’t shoot strangers in alleys or call in airstrikes or disarm bombs, after two hours of tasting the excitement of war–good, bad and horrid–we felt for a moment the boredom that Staff Sgt. James must feel. We understood, even if just a little, an experience we can’t possibly comprehend. I knew before the scene faded out what the next cut would be, him marching again to war. I’m not sure how Ms. Bigelow can get so inside the hearts and heads of both her subjects and her audience, but as an aspiring creative media maker, be it writer or who knows, perhaps the highest compliment I can pay her is that I left Hollywood Theater with a desire to contact her ask if I could assist on her next project to see how she does it.
Today’s adventures at the Northwest Institute faced new obstacles on both cognitive and physical levels. We the fellows not only engaged with important political communications figures to Portland and the United States, but did so under the pounding July sunshine. If you did not get the weather update, Portland temperatures exceeded 105 degrees today . . . and I hear it will only be hotter tomorrow.
Besides the sweltering heat, today gave us insight on how our documentaries fit into the world of politics. This is who we met:
Josh Kardon, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden’s Chief of staff. Kardon advised us on grabbing political attention for our documentaries. Among other ideas, he stressed one-on-one interviews with elected officials, multi media strategies (even blogs!), and Authentic framing of our issues to not only gain credibility but to evolve our ideas in the public spectrum. When asked how he keeps his idealism in the gritty world of politics, Kardon responded that there was a point in his career when he did lose his ideals, that in D.C. it is easy to forget why one is liberal or cares at all on certain issues. While George W. Bush was in office, however, he was inspired to strive for idealism once again, and his move back to Portland has relocated those goals with reality, retaining what he says many politician in Washington can easily forget.
Adam Davis, the polling service guru. Sitting in a booth at the nearby coffee shop, I think we all gathered much from Davis’ discussion. he spoke of the significance of qualitative and quantitative data not just in our documentaries’ subjects, but also in our audience. The importance of gathering information on what your audience wants to know or gain from our videos is key to presenting an issue so that the viewer comprehends it.
Brian Young, the head of communications for Massachusetts Senator John Kerry. In our video conference with Young, though at times scattered by a poor internet connection, we discussed multi media techniques. Young displayed how important it is to either build your own network, or to find a larger social network to latch your ideas onto in order to reach a broader audience. Again blogs for instance, are growing in strength as a medium to expose our ideas and push them constantly to inspire social change.
And Pizza with Politicorps! While far too dehydrated to compete in a much anticipated softball game, the two summer programs met this afternoon at the Mississippi Pizza Pub to mingle and broaden our social networks. For me, it was awesome to hear what ambitious young people are up to this summer, learning how Politicorps fellows have been campaigning all summer for social issues, such as marriage equality and healthcare reform. Even if we never get to that softball game, I think we have all met some incredible people and hope to connect with them again soon.
In other news, Josh Kletzkin has been appointed our official video production manager. Recently seen at the Hollywood Theater for the Portland release of the film he worked on, Throw Down Your Heart (A beautifully shot feature documentary on Bela Fleck, his banjo, and the many musics of Africa), Kletzkin not only introduced us to many inspiring documentaries last week, but has taken the reins this week to aid the fellows in any video production mishaps soon before us.
