Sarah Christman
Brooklyn College
Post Production Workflow
"Dear Bill Gates"
"As Above, So Below"
Select one of the works that Sarah Christman presented.
Describe what you saw. Describe what techniques she uses to express her ideas artistically and personally, yet still communicate information such as history and data.
Christman's second video, "As Above, So Below" was most fascinating to me because of how strong its meaning was with minimal dialogue. The video is basically made of different clips, starting out with a woman who wants to use her husband's cremation into a diamond. Without words, the viewer can figure out the story line by just viewing the different video clips of the advertisement on the computer screen, old glasses which the viewer can distinguish as the husband's (she later uses dialogue/narration to inform the viewers that they are her husbands) and a box with his name on it, obviously holding the remains. In a technical matter, the video uses techniques such as close up shots, wide shots, medium shots, and distant shots all combined to create a montage of feelings. Not all the shots use words, but a lot use sound which i think really gives the film a warm, familiar feeling, even if the sound is just of the woman turning the page of a book or dialing a telephone. All together, i found this video extremely nostalgic and enjoyable (or at least what we were shown of it)
ReplyDeleteSarah Christman's short film "Dear Bill Gates" touches on how Gates bought a huge collection of photographs and buried them in an abandoned mine. She uses various techniques to show her story, of which include using public domain archival footage to explain the use of image and fades in and out between modern graffiti and cave paintings to exemplify human's evolution in communication and art. These signify history's data as images. Everything that is communicated physically is done through image, be it in typography or photographs and paintings.
ReplyDeleteIn Dear Bill Gates, we the viewers explore her journey of communication to Bill Gates. She explains to us that millions of emails are sent to him on a daily basis so the odds of him seeing the one she sent him are against her. She relates to us the fact that Bill Gates purchased thousands of archival photos and buried them in a mountain. He's trying to document and preserve our existence so that some future existence can discover us. She used a lot of wide shots but not too many graphic matches. Sara keeps us interested by keeping the film moving and never does it really become stagnant until she's typing the email to him. Archival videos are used to relate previous human interaction and a sense of past life.
ReplyDeleteSarah Christman's films incorporate both human attributes and technology. Her film titled "Dear Bill Gates" was excellent example of the smooth integration between different scenes that flowed into one another. Her use of emails and web search was combined well with the narration of her own voice. While these scenes had completely different visual settings, the transition between each scene didn't seem abrupt nor forced. Along with the choice of scenes, i enjoyed the personalization of this film. She moved the mouse along the screen, and actually typed out words for the viewer to see. This visual showed the audience that this film was very personal to the producer and that alone kept the audience engaged. Her choice to combine a copious amount of research with her own narration and a song, brought the film together as a whole and will continue to stick out in my mind.
ReplyDeleteSarah Christman uses a variety of techniques to artistically present information in her film "Dear Bill Gates." One of these techniques is using found footage from a stock film archive and intermingling it with her original shots and narration. The found footage often has some broader conceptual meaning or emotion that accurately matches the pace and mood of the monologue. Additionally, Christman uses a lot of cut shots and close-ups to increase the visual interest at many points throughout her film. For example, when the salesman from the diamond website puts her on hold, there are about 4 different angle shots Christman takes of her mom while she is waiting for the man to come back. Now, she could have just had a single, full frame shot of her mother waiting, but instead she focuses on the small interesting details - the visual beauty of the blue telephone juxtaposed against her mother's curly blonde-grey hair, the tapping of her foot, or the pattern in her sweater .
ReplyDelete"As Above, So Below" was one of Sarah Christman's films that stood out to me. During this film she uses a documentary like style while showing the process of turning your loved one into a diamond. Along with this process she shows the "recycling" of other things; the cyclic rotation of things such as lava, cans, and changing of the seasons. During this piece she uses techniques such as fades to flow into the next clip. The are done very smoothly in order to make it seems as though it is a natural occurrence. I enjoyed the subject of this work and thought it was extremely clever to include recycling of materials with turning your loved one into a diamond. These ideas share the common theme of reusing and i think she did an excellent job portraying that. She switches off between the recycling of other materials and the family. This aspect allows the piece to flow really well and provides and interesting take on a classic documentary style. These techniques communicate the story she is trying to tell in a new and innovative way making them captivating for the viewer.
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ReplyDeleteIn "Dear Bill Gates", Sarah Christman was writing emails to Bill Gates in response to burying the 11 million photo collection in the Iron Mountain Mine. Though this is non-fiction and set up as a documentary, more artistic features were included throughout the film. Instead of immediately setting up what she was going to talk about, she held off, only giving clues throughout the narration. She talked about the photographs on a more personal and human level, while still including necessary and prominent information. To accompany the narration, she used old footage of the babies and their mothers, that gradually went into a white screen as a photo turns to white as it decomposes. She also used the snippets of old footage from the mine to illustrate where these photos were going. Instead of shooting her own footage, she went used found material from a media archive, adding to the overall feel of the film. She created a nice contrast between the old and the new by using screenshots of her computer, webpages, and writing the email, paired with the old footage of families, mines, and the surrounding area. Overall, for me it was more engaging to watch than a documentary because of these artistic choices, and a pleasure to see how she worked and the multiple drafts and revisions she went through to get to the final product.
ReplyDelete"Dear Bill Gates"
ReplyDeleteThis narrative was one of the two films that Sarah showed, and was the piece I liked more than "As Above, So Below" In Dear Bill Gates, I saw a lot of things thats I thought helped the video concept wise. There was a lot of images, some that related to what her main concept was and some unrelated. She used the power of her voice to compel the piece, and was a reference to her story. What I noticed is that a lot of the time, her beginnings to her stories are, unclear then evolve into something that you understand. Its like she builds the viewer. She dosent give away the main point of her video at the very beginning, but lets the story build upon itself. She either uses her words and the power of visual references to communicate history and data, and those can work interchangeably within a piece.
In Sarah Christman's film, "Dear Bill Gates." the filmmaker uses a variety of techniques to illustrate the ideas surrounding Bill Gates' recent venture in which he buried countless numbers of photographs deep inside an abandoned mine in order to protect these archives. She collects footage in three different, distinct ways. At times, she shoots the footage herself, on location at the mine. At other times, she splices together bits of archival film. Lastly, she uses a screen capture software in order to show us her computer screen as she writes an email to Bill Gates. She then adds music to the images to set the tone of the film, and narrates the story herself. I think that her varied techniques were very effective, and gave us a sense of both her personal view on the event, (through the screen-captures and her own footage) and of the broader, historical trends that this event relates to (through the archival footage).
ReplyDeleteSarah Christman's piece "Dear Bill Gates" is a documentary film about visual history and culture of the internet generation. I found it interesting that she used found footage of pre-historical caves and babies and their mothers in the film to give the piece a difference feel rather than shooting those scenes herself. I think the fact that the archive films are not of high quality also helps with her idea because it gives a sense of history. The other technique she used that is very unique is that she didn't use a very narrative, straight forward approach as in her first version of the film. Rather, in the final version, she changes the perspective as if she is writing this email to Bill Gates personally. It makes the piece more enjoyable to watch because its more intimate. And instead of leading the audience where she wants to go with the content, she leaves the audience themselves to interpret.
ReplyDeleteSarah J. Christman's film As Above, So Below was a collage between two seemingly unrelated stories. The first about trash and recycling, the other about the death of he stepfather. The style of this video was done in a sort of documentary style. The way I think she was able to get away from that was by collaging two things together. I like how they stories seem unrelated but they actually are because the main idea is recycling and what they end up doing is recycling their own loved one's ashes into a diamond. The other thing was that they were recycling phone parts, one of the parts was gold and so the melt it all together and they can reuse gold. Both of these things are things you would not expect to come from ashes, or a cell phone, but they did, and it is a really beautiful concept. Her technique to show their relatedness was very crafty too. She would show trash on a conveyer belt and then she would cut to her mother looking through papers saying "I kept so much of his things, but I threw so much out also." So Sarah was able to show trash and at the same time have her mother talking about trash.
ReplyDeleteIn "As Above, So Below" Christman contrasts her stepfather's death with the idea of waste management in the United States. Her stepfather was cremated, and she heard of this company that turns cremated loved ones into diamonds. She talks it over with her mother, who is slightly skeptical about the idea, but agrees in the end. This idea of recycling a loved one into a pure, beautiful form is contrasted with the lack of recycling and reusing in the US. Her style of filming is slightly documentary, but with an artistic edge. For example, when she is filming her mother talking on the phone with the diamond company, she uses close up shots on different subject matter, or crops her mother in weird ways that would not be seen in a normal documentary. Christman also has great transitions from one subject matter to another throughout the film. This subject matter is still relevant to the film, but it is presented in a more artistic way.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first saw "Dear Bill Gates," I found it very interesting how she transformed the email (writing) into a video form. But when she showed us the second one, "As Above, So Below," it was more interesting to me although she only showed some parts of it. Different from the first one, she did not use her voice to describe every single situations, but instead, the video itself was informative enough to let the viewers understand the whole story even though we only watched the beginning, middle and the end. I saw the stories about her step dad' death and how her mother deals with it in the beginning. As the story goes, there was a story about turning her dad's ashes into a diamond as he mentioned about when he was alive. As the story went on, I was able to find the techniques that she used to express her ideas artistically and personally very easily. Especially this one, the story itself was very personal and I think the way she used each objects and characters (e.g.her mother) to express her personal feelings through them worked very well in this particular video. Even though she used very artistic techniques and a lot of graphic filming techniques in this video to express her emotions and to allow the viewers get the stories, I think it still communicates the story very successfully, even when I only got to watch the parts of it.
ReplyDeleteI found "As Above, So Below", or at least the small clips we watched, very interesting. Although, the tone was melancholy it captured this very quiet yet relatable beauty in life. In Sarah Christman's piece I saw clips of images that were asymmetrically balanced, parts of her subject but never a full on face shot, and shots of the environment (in house/garbage disposal). Her piece was about transformation and also disconnect. The way she shot this movie, translated these themes aesthetically. For example, transformation was shown through her juxtaposition of ashes as well as garbage. Her display of disconnect was shown through the partial shots of her Mom as well as the focus on the phone conversation. The symbol of the window also tied these two themes together as it represented a opportunity as well as a barrier. The choice she made of including the alternate garbage location site, communicated data. Having the voice over of the woman helped the audience learn about what we were looking at.
ReplyDeleteIn "As Above, So Below," Christman connected the events of her mother turning a loved one's ashes into a diamond, a landfill in New York, and a plant in Belgium that recycles old cell phone parts into gold. Christman connected these through the concept of recycling and visually by juxtaposing similar elements from each next to each other. In the trailer, an example of this was showing the close-up of the stepfather's items that included a cell phone, and then cutting to an enormous pile of cell phones at the plant in Belgium. I was most interested in the story of the diamond because of the personal touches Christman used. In a manner very different from the traditional close-ups of people in documentary, she used extreme close-ups of areas of her mother. This established a very intimate feeling because normally, you would only have that view of someone if you loved them and were able to get so close. For example, zooming in on her mother's hair moving subtly while she talked on the phone provided us with a view we would probably only have of her own mothers, and thus made us connect to her mother on a very personal level. Zooming in on the way the mother's hand nervously traced over the phone allowed us to feel her anxiety amongst potential excitement about transforming her husband's ashes into a diamond. Christman was still able to present data in these minutes by showing clips from the diamond company's website. More so in the landfill and plant was she able to communicate history and data by using longer shots.
ReplyDeleteShe showed her work, "Dear Bill Gates" first, and I was very impressed by it. At first, I did not know what was going on, and I thought there was a technical issues when little error thing popped up. The film was very different from what we usually see in the lecture. It was more like a documentary film. She combined original and archival film, video and images from internet, and showed how Bill Gates buried his photographs in an abandoned mine to preserve these archives.
ReplyDelete"As Above, So Below"
ReplyDeleteIn Christman's documentary about turning the remains of a loved one into a small diamond, she used a variety of techniques to tell the tale effectively. The film featured her mother, and her mother's voice, talking about her late husband and the process of making the diamond. We see her call the company (with some wry humor as the guy on the other line puts them on hold for a moment with some jazzy music), we hear her thoughts about why and why not to do this, we hear about her late husband. Then the film switches over to footage of recycling cell phones and other electronics. Christman used a lot of extreme close-ups, with extremely shallow depths of field, when filming her mother; this gave the impression of being in the mother's thoughts, being able to understand what she's going through. It made the narrative more intimate and understandable. There were also close-ups of objects from the late husband. These not only helped by illustrating the mother's words, but also acting as a transition (through juxtaposition in cut-edits) for the second part involving the recycling. For this, she used some close-ups, giving the material an abstract look (therefore indistinguishable from what it used to be), but more often using long-shots, to give the scale of all the objects. This reminds the view about how many people there are in the world, and that time is continually passing; cell phones that once belonged to someone are now being turned into something else, just as the late husband's ashes are being turned into diamond. Christman's artistic and personal ideas come through the qualitative choices in the shots and editing, but she is also able to give a sense of history and data through the more industrial shots in the piece, including the shots of the computer. All of the techniques came together to create a cohesive documentary.
Zoe Allen-Wickler
In Sarah Christman's film, "Dear Bill Gates," Sarah presents a letter to Bill Gates throughout the piece and talks about his life and his secret collection of photography. She narrates the letter over the scenes, which include her typing away at her computer, surfing the web, pictures, old video, and her own video. The transition between each scene is very smooth and goes along well with her narration. She uses a lot of close up shots as well as wide angled. I also like how I, a member of the audience, felt I was in her shoes writing the letter and looking at Gates' pictures, but also was an outsider looking at shots from Bill Gates' underground cave and older videos.
ReplyDeleteAs Above, So Below is a very inciting film with a very unique subject matter. I thoroughly enjoyed the originality and complexity in the story and was very impressed by her use of close up shots to communicate her point. I especially enjoyed the moments when her mother was on the phone and Christman zero'd in on her hands to communicate the fragility of her nature and how personal the story was.
ReplyDeleteI did not understand the mix between the recycling story and the story of the diamonds. This undermined the importance of her step fathers story and cluttered the film. Her use of narration is also very straight forward and often unnecessary. It does make the film more easily accessible to people who are not accustomed to viewing documentary film. She also uses an abundance of tex to communicate her point which is a very generic information communication technique.