Special Problems Class

I signed up for this course to have help working through my technical problems regarding my latest video projects. Over the past year, my interests as a writer had begun to include some elements separate from the harsh realism I had spent so much time with before. I began to digest science fiction by Phillip K. Dick and other sci-fi writers with similar reputations. This mainly surfaced due to my new interest in brain science, health/fitness, and technology. Previous to these areas of study, I had spent quite some time under the influence of art films and theatre. To put it simply this has been quite a departure.

Now, as a senior at the University of Oregon, I am beginning to transition from experimentation into (hopefully) a more polished line of projects at the end of this term. To accomplish this I notified musician friends of mine that I would be willing to make them low budget music videos for their bands at no cost. A number of bands approached me about this and I have turned these projects into different stylistic pieces to help serve my exploration of the fantastical. I am working currently on one Steampunk, one Cyberpunk, and one Post-Zombie-Apocalypse videos as the bulk of my studio credits. I have given each project its own time for research into the social statements made by the style, the style itself, and my reasons for articulating a video in the style to the song chosen.

In the case of the Post-Zombie-Apocalypse video (of which I'll be reporting about in this blog) the choices were made for me in that Luke Kuzava's song "In The Forest" which I chose to create a video for, is a PZA (Post-Zombie-Apocalypse) song on a PZA concept album. The song is about a group of people who live in the forest PZA and for protection they shoot anyone who tries to enter their small peace-achieved community.

I chose this song because of the interesting societal changes created using crisis to form a new world for these people. This set of fictional circumstances works for me to metaphorically examine the psychology of a militarily protected community (on a small scale). It also serves to possibly communicate the rights and wrongs of a tragedy becoming the catalyst for a move to a sustainable way of living. I also chose this song for the forest. I love nothing more than working outside and creating dramatic works of theatre outside and filming them.