Videographer and Amateur Fimmaker

[jcullinaneiv]

Humble and Horney

So something has come up in my mind that I feel I should probably address. Not long ago I came upon a unique opportunity, a situation I’d never found myself in before. There was a girl and she wanted to have sex with me.

I’d never had a girl want to have sex with me. At least not had the opportunity to know that and know that I could have made it happen. And then something incredible happened, I screwed it up.

I failed to figure out what it was that she wanted. I failed to convince her that I was worth her vagina.

I wasn’t a big enough asshole.

The thing is every time I tell the story to someone and I explain the whole thing I remember what I felt like after the rejection. It was terrible. A sinking feeling in my stomach that my one shot, one opportunity to make it happen, something I’d wanted to have happen for years, something I told myself I would do. And I let it go, I failed.

I get the terrible feeling that perhaps that was the one shot I will get soon. That I’ll have to work hard to get the next one, it will take time and patience and ... much more than a few horney texts.

I see posts, I have conversations with people about it, about similar issues and I try not to identify. I try to play it off like it wasn’t a big deal like it didn’t affect me. Like I know that there are more girls, more opportunities. And yet at the pit of my stomach, at the back of mind I always feel like “nope, you were an idiot, you didn’t see the signs, you failed. done.”

So what do I do now? Masterbate every time the failure comes creeping? Go out partying hoping to find some girl to lose myself in? Continually try to make eye contact with every marginally pretty girl I see and check her out every time, undressing her, and hoping that a happy horney smile will return my gaze? Or just keep sitting, waiting to replicate the situation from before hoping that perhaps I will do it right the second try?

It is hard to say: give up. Its hard to accept that .......... What the fuck am I saying? I failed. I screwed it up. I should have fucked that girl but I didn’t. I was stupid, I was weak. Ok. Now I know that. I knew there was a reason to watch silver linings playbook, I will take that negativity and I will use it as fuel. Excelsior.

Watch out second semester. I’m horney and humble. That’s a combination truly dangerous.

Good night and good luck.

[jcullinaneiv]

The Truth of Species

No doubt you have heard of the website Upworthy.com. Its a brilliant site that shares videos from all over the internet and media that depict important or spread-worthy messages. I tend to scroll through my Facebook feed and if something interesting catches my eye, I will go and watch.

This has happened twice today. First video was of The Dalai Lama talking about happiness with a side note about farting. The second was an interview that Chris Rock gave for a documentary series about modern black culture. Strangely enough they relate to each other quite potently.

Chris Rock talked about the implicit racist or white supremacist attitudes that are still prevalent in America today. He said how in his neighborhood there are four black people, himself, Mary J Blige, and two hall-of-famer athletes. But yet Rock’s neighbor, a white guy, is a dentist. The story is meant to illustrate that in order for a black person to achieve social success, they have to be extraordinary. The white dentist, a normal, menial person, could achieve what only iconic black entertainers could achieve. It is a curious ideal but nonetheless one that I can understand.

Now how does that connect to The Dalai Lama’s talk about happiness? Well, perhaps I am the naive white guy who doesn’t understand cause I haven’t experienced what its like to be black. To know that your ancestors and grandparents or parents were subjected to racism and segregation, were made slaves and thought to be of the basest nature in society. Perhaps because I am a white male American, I could not fathom that. But still, I have an issue with people standing up like Chris Rock and talking about how there are these issues in the country like its a matter of fact. That, given time, they will change. Its just the world we live in. Is it right? No, that’s fine it’ll change.

The Dalai Lama talked about how for him happiness is a matter of finding a neutral deep satisfaction within yourself. And said that that satisfaction can only come from having peace of mind. We are social beings and yet we learn to be afraid and mistrust those around us. So we can not help others, we can not strive to make a better world for everyone because we create a kind of bubble of mistrust and cultural separations between ourselves and everyone else in the world. He said  that he doesn’t think of himself as The Dalai Lama, or a Buddhist, or a nobel laureate, is he is just “another one of the seven billion humans” on the planet. They are no different than him, he no different than them.

In other words, to create the peace of mind needed to find happiness, The Dalai Lama sheds the socio-cultural identifiers that make him special and he instead resorts to the single tangible identifier we all have. We are all human beings. I think this is the most important message of that video. We are each homo sapien, of the same species regardless of our color or creed, our social success or lack there of. We are humans.

I don’t like when people like Chris Rock talk about modern racism. When people draw the lines between whites and blacks, or hispanics, or arabs, Jews and Muslims, Americans and Chinese etc., they are redrawing the exact same lines that in many cases they are advocating against. You do not erase something by tracing it out with a different colored pen.

The most racist document in the United States is the census. The day it actually stops mattering what color you are. The day we don’t talk about black neighborhoods, black people, white supremacy, the jewish people, the muslim world. The day we stop reminding ourselves that racism and segregation exist is the day we abolish racism and segregation all together.

There isn’t a difference. Chris Rock is no less human than his neighborhood dentist or me or Osama Bin Laden. There are certainly differences but at the core is a truth of species. If we come to embrace that truth and stop touting our socio-cultural dirty laundry in a definitively insane attempt to clean it, then we can become better, happier people.

That was Martin Luther King jr’s dream, that was Gandhi’s cause, that was Mandela’s motivation, and the true message that is spread-worthy.

[jcullinaneiv]

The Voyeur Amour

It would seem that love is in the air. Just today I’ve seen two blossoming couples. Friends and acquaintances, staring deeply into their eyes, communicating more profoundly by their bodies than their words. A lean there, a look, a smile. A gaze unencumbered by the world around. The beginnings of beauty.

I love to watch them. Perhaps I am a kind of Voyeur Amour. But its beautiful and graceful enchanting and entertaining to watch as two people wrestle with themselves trying to maneuver into position with each other. It is not sexual, though surely it could become that. It is emotional, joyful, poetic.

I love imagining all that they are thinking and feeling, posturing and positing, wondering, “Should I do it?” “What will they do?” “Should we tell them of us?” Simple questions as they are, it takes a complex cocktail of high tuned sensors and chemicals simply to calculate if the answer is the vague vicinity of yes or of no.

It’s funny. For years I have had an odd ability to decipher these things in people. Yet I have yet to truly experience it myself. I know eventually it will happen. Undoubtedly, it has before and I just haven’t noticed. I’m poor that way. I see in others what is blind to myself. I suppose we are all like that. Every once in a while we need someone shouting in our ear, “Hey you! Yea blind man walking! Follow my voice! I’ll get you there!”

Well to all of you blind men, and women, searching out for that curb to make your next high step over.. Hear me, I will get you there. If you like them, you are spending time with them, Don’t be afraid to flirt. Make eye contact, light friendly touches, laugh together, live in the moment with each other. When you finally look back laying in bed by yourself that night. You’ll realize they were there too. Doing the same as you. And now they lay in their bed, thinking, remember as you do. Imagining if at that very moment, they were with you and you were with them. Be not afraid of this unknown but understand its existence. And then, sleep, wake, find them, and do your thing. The one thing you need to find someone to connect with, to be happy with, to love with is yourself and your willingness to be it. Your willingness to seize upon the moment that is made your own and share it with that other person. Do not let it pass unrecognized or worse, unattended. And bask in the beauty you create.

Perhaps I’ll see you and I’ll smile for the universe is a better place when you are lost the universe of their eyes and they a cosmonaut amongst your own.

Good night, and good luck.

[jcullinaneiv]

On the perception of a Genius

One question that comes often in introductory conversations is what kind of music do you like? For me, this is an interesting question because I really don’t have a specific kind of music that I enjoy more than others. Some of my favorite artists are Jason Mraz, John Lennon, The Black-eyed Peas and Eminiem. Lately I’ve been listening to a lot of Eminem. I’ve tracked the release of many of his new songs and indeed listened to the entirety of his new MMLP2 album. One of the first of these songs to be released as a single is called “Rap God.” The first time I listened to the song, I absolutely loved it. One of my favorite parts to rap, and one of the reasons I love Eminem so much, is that the poetry is so incredible. It is incredible both as poetry but also in its performance. “Rap God” is the pinnacle of that. It is masterfully written and brilliantly performed with some incredible feats of poetic genius. I am saddened however, when I hear criticism of such brilliant of poetry and music from a brilliant artist being called “homophobic,” etc. I know exactly the section of the song that they are referring to and Eminem is talking about gay people. But it is not in a homophobic nor even a negative way. And anyone who says otherwise is being pretentious asshole and has not closely listened to the song.

Gay rights, and homosexual people are very much in the public consciousness nowadays. There are multiple movements of every size and nature with regards to the subject. If you really listen to “Rap God” (and I suggest you do so with the lyrics all laid out, not in one of the Youtube lyrics videos) you’ll find that the song does nothing to discourage and demean the gay pride movements. Instead Mathers gives them some advice. His story of the “gay looking boy” essentially talks about how they don’t fight aggressively enough for what they want. The movement holds peaceful rallies for their cause but they don’t actually protest. Mathers is saying that that won’t get the job done. They won’t get anything they want unless they stand up, and aggressively fight for it. Actively protest, become outwardly offended. Mathers uses a metaphor of the gay boy watching a massacre at a church and sitting there doing nothing. He’s not angered by it, he is just there. That’s the same thing for gay rights movement. Their rights and privileges are being massacred by the government and society yet all the gay community has to say about it “YEAH I’m gay! Please give me my rights.” Mathers references how simply the fact of the gay looking boy being called gay, gives the boy a kind of false sense of accomplishment and progress. Really it means nothing unless the gay boy makes it mean something.

Eminem has for years been a proponent of gay rights. In 2000 with his first Marshall Mathers LP on the track entitled “The Real Slim Shady,” he says how if people are able to hump animals and cut up and eat humans like “cantaloupe;” things considered unnatural yet they happen are not balked at if not simply ignored, then two men can get married. Sure perhaps its unnatural in the sense that we are not supposed to have sex with animals, that’s not the natural order of things. It is not natural for two male mammals to have sex (at least not by societal definitions of natural, I suggest looking up Baba Brinkman’s rap album “The Rap Guide to Human Nature” track entitled “The Evolution of Gayness”). So how could a guy, as normal and down-to-earth as Eminem change his stance on an issue such as that after 13 years of saying it publicly? Well, that possibility seems unlikely to me. You see, people misinterpret Eminem because the artform he has mastered is physically difficult for people to understand. You can’t hear all of the words to a song unless you listen very closely or read along. And this reality is only because Eminem is so damn good at his craft. And why isn’t he some kind of a public spokesman for the gay movement if he agrees with it? Because that’s not who he is. Look up another couple songs “The way I am” from MMLP1 and “So Far..” from MMLP2. Marshall Mathers is about as honest as anyone can be. Listen closely to what he says. Understand it before jumping to conclusions. I don’t pretend to know the man, that would make me a pretentious asshole. All I do is hear what that man has to say and trust that he isn’t lying like a pretentious asshole. I’m confident that’s not the case after as he states in “the Way I am:” “I am who I say I am, and if I wasn’t, why would I say I am?”

Rap God: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7cQ3b0iqLo

Rap God Lyrics: http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/eminem/rapgod.html

The Real Slim Shady: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJO5HU_7_1w

The Way I am: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQvteoFiMlg

[jcullinaneiv]

On issues with Editing

Recently in my film history class we talked about editing techniques. We have a quiz on the subject soon and I am having trouble with it. My trouble is not wrought from a lack of understanding but a disagreement regarding the concepts we are learning about. Beyond the fact that we are learning specific technique rather than the history of editing, many of the techniques have nothing to do with editing. It is a confounding problem, but I feel it has a more generational origin than an origin coming from curriculum failure.

My conceptual or philosophical issues with this editing unit is rooted in the difference between a director and an editor. An editor, by clue of their name, edits. They take each completed shot, each frame of film, byte of video data, and they place it upon their apparatus. From there, they cut out the bad and useless, and sandwich the good and brilliant together into the sequence of frames that is ultimately seen by the audience. This is how it has worked since the invention of cinematic film (yeah! film history!). However back then they used an editing machine and today it is more common to be entirely done on a computer. Still, the act is the same. What an editor does not do is decide how their frames fit together. An editor is a purely technical position. They are no different than the cinematographer in that the cinematographer knows the technical expertise of lighting a scene, the editor has the technical expertise to execute the cuts and sandwiches. The editor has no say in the ultimate vision and style of the editing. That is the domain of the director, the visionary of the film. The director decides framing, angle, mise-en-scene, composition, meaning, etc of not just one shot at a time but of the entire film. The only person that knows exactly what the film is ultimately going to look like is the director. Yet in studying editing this week, it would seem that the editor has that power considering many of the techniques aren’t called aspects of mise-en-scene or direction, they are called editing techniques.

There are several examples for both techniques and conventions within “editing” A good example of this discrepancy is a technique called the shot/reverse-shot. It is an extremely common sequence of shots that I am pretty sure is in every movie made in the last 90 years or so. The sequence generally occurs in a dialogue between two characters. one talks with the shot probably a close up shot of them, then a cut to a reverse shot depicting the other character, and then a return to the first character. This is a pretty simple pattern and an editor is charged with executing that pattern. But why is this considered a editing technique? Just by the execution of it, the editor does not have to know this conceptual idea of it. Instead it is the director who sets up the shot. They come up with the placement of the characters, the framing, the need for a specifically placed cuts to depict certain meanings. The editor simply has to know how to do what the director requires. Another example the is the entire core of continuity editing, (the standard style of Hollywood) the 180 degree rule. The basics of this concept is there is an invisible axis of action that exists in any scene. For a semi-circle area extending from that axis, the camera has any multitude of angles it can use to ensure continuity of position and framing orientation for the objects or characters in the scene. However, if one crosses that axis of action one has committed a cardinal sin because the spatial orientation on the characters by the audiences perception will have changed. Regardless of whether or not, I truly believe that this axis of action is entirely important or not, the only time I will encounter such as issue is if I am directing a movie. If I am but the editor, I could careless about the 180 degree rule. In that case, I am simply given the shots that I am given. If those shots in a particular configuration is going to confuse the audience’s perception of the character’s space, that isn’t my problem. I am simply charged with making the best with what I have. Therefore, I see no reason why the 180 degree rule is considered an editing technique when it is obviously in the domain of the director and how they set up their shots.

Inevitably, the discrepancy between editing techniques and directing techniques and mise-en-scene is not academic. It is a matter of definition. However, I can not ignore the fact that the facts I am discrediting are decades old perhaps even a century. Therefore, I find it hard to believe that in that time, somebody, somewhere, wouldn’t have noticed that the conventional “editing techniques” are really rooted in the director’s chair. The only explanation I can find for such a blatant disregard for logic (other than a conspiracy of confoundation) is technological. For most of the history of cinema, editing has been a trade, a particular skill that required a particular technician to execute with proficiency. A director may have provided the vision, but that vision had to be executed by an editor. Thus, the things that are obviously in the realm of the director, are required trade tools for an editor. Today, that has changed. In the computer age of cinematic editing, the technician has been replaced with a program. Given an abundance of practice and some instruction anyone can learn to use this editing apparatus. Therefore, the technician that was an editor has become somewhat of an archaic position.

Having grown up in this era, I am uniquely positioned to perceive that the techniques originally associated with editors should really be the realm of the director. For my class, I fully intend to learn these techniques and gain a distinct understanding of them. I encourage anyone who wishes to be a filmmaker to do so as well. However, in the modern cinematic landscape of computational technologies, it is important to note a paradigm shift in the roles of director and editor. In the coming 21st century era of cinema, I believe it to be better for directors to do their own editing. Learning the programs and techniques is easy in this day and age. And any time one can eliminate a middleman with regards to creative vision, the more effective that vision will be realized. Better movies can be made is directors to their own editing, or at least being the primary editor on their projects. In today’s age, the archaic editor should really be replaced by the special effects artist. They are today’s technicians that allow a director’s vision to be fulfilled in a way the director may not be able to execute themselves.