5.22.11 American By Birth

A little late but here nevertheless. 4 minute video: American By Birth. Well outside my comfort zone, can't say I've ever made a video like this before, both in physical content and in contextual subject matter. It's a little more narrative than I usually attempt. At any rate, I was trying to combine elements of advertising, war, and immigration from Mexico. Oh how we love our intrusive and obnoxious advertising, to the extent that we're constantly giving away information to companies to better equip them to sell to us. But show some compassion for our fellow humans in our neighboring country to the south? NIMBY. It makes me sad and angry, and we wont even get into America's warring tendencies.

American By Birth from Hettie Kauffman on Vimeo.

Shot with a Sharp VL-WD450 which I'd never used before. It has a night vision function called Super Cat's Eye which turns the picture black and white but let's it produce an image in very low light. Then there's also an IR switch that lets you shoot in zero light (again in b+w). It was pretty fun, crawling around the floor in the dark with a bunch of toys fit for boys. In reality though, I probably spent the most time on the audio in this piece just trying to slow the tape player enough to make my voice sound close to an army dude. Lots of trial and error.

Also, now that it's technically Monday as I'm typing this entry, I rolled the die for this weeks video.

2 minutes it is