Byron Hurt

Last semester I saw a film in the union theatre, called "Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes." I found this film very interesting and thought-provoking. It was about the issues of rap and hip hop and how they deal with so much violence in their songs. Hurt was a quarterback at the Northeastern University. He made this film because he wanted to discuss the gender roles and violence in hip hop culture. In this film he interviewed numerous people including celebrities like Busta Rhymes and Fat Joe. He also interviews people at some kind of hip hop festival. Hurt interviews Busta Rhymes about homosexuality and hip hop, in which Busta responds by saying he doesn't want to offend anybody but "what I represent culturally, doesnt condone homosexuality whatsoever." When Hurt went on to ask Busta if a homosexual rapper would ever be accepted in the culture, Busta exited the interview. It was very interesting to think about it, because I have never considered what it would be like for a gay rapper to try and enter the community. Hurt had mentioned that there are gay rappers, although they are too afraid to come out. I would think that a lot of their fans would be lost. It seems that most of the people that listen to rap act all tough and hard and if they found out their favorite rapper was gay, they probably not listen to them anymore, in fact i think they would probably be very angered as well about it. Although, I think a gay rapper would attract a lot of other fans just for the fact that they had the courage to come out and do that. At the part of the film where they were at a hip hop festival, there were so many girls being grabbed and touched as they walked down the street. Most of them just dealt with it, but there were a few who tried to fight back at the men. The guys just laughed, of course. This part of the film really angered me because of the disrespect. Part of the hip hop culture, as explained in the film, is all about trying to be the most violent, have the most money, and have lots of women and sexual attention. i think the men were acting this way at the festival because they feel it's justified at this kind of place. The girls were dressed very sexual and the men even said that they were "allowed" to do that because they were dressed so slutty. I think this film was extremely powerful and I would love to see it again. It is powerful for anyone, let alone an african american man to make a film that brings these kinds of issues to attention.

Ryan Trecartin

Last semester, I went to a screening of Ryan Trecartin's film at the UWM union theatre. It was definitely a different experience. It was far from what I expected. There was a lot of color, odd characters, and strange dialogue. There didn't seem to be much of a plotline, it was just random scenes strung together. To be honest, I kind of felt like you had to be under the influence of some kind of psychadelic drugs to watch this film. At the beginning it was sort of funny, but then it just got long and hard to watch. I don't understand what the film was about. I didn't understand if it was suppossed to be one long story or just a bunch of little things going on. Even the individual scenes themselves, I didn't get what was going on. The characters seemed to be talking really strange and not making any sense. They all seemed to talk like valley girls too. I didn't understand the significance of the body paint used either. There was just too much going on in this movie. After the film, Ryan Trecartin answered some questions about his film. He had mentioned that the film wasn't completely random, yet it is hard to get what he was saying in the film. He couldn't even answer someone's question when they asked him to explain how it wasn't random. All in all, I thought the film was interesting for being so unique, however I didn't understand it in the least and I still don't.

May 5th Lecture

The film we watched called "Hold Me While I'm Naked" was a very interesting piece. Carl told us before watching it, that it was made by George Kuchar and his friends. He mentioned that Kuchar had asked his friends to appear naked in the film. This film had a Woody Allen kind of feel for me. It seemed like it was suppossed to be this sexual film, yet had humor in it and jokes. I was curious during the movie, to know if the people in the film were couples or if Kuchar just had asked them to work together as one. I was also curious to know how apprehensive they all were to take their clothes off for his film. What were Kuchar's intentions for this film? Was this film meant to be nothing more than a comedic piece or was there a more complex meaning behind the film. I was interested in what kinds of views and feelings does Kuchar have on sex that were attributed to this film? The whole film was about being naked and sex,etc. so what inspired him to make this? This film reminded me of Woody Allen's "Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex", although Allen's movie is a little more forward. I embedded a clip from the movie, however this is the only one I could find on Youtube.com

April 28th Lecture

"Duck Soup" seemed to be more about cheap jokes in each scene. Once the joke was over, the scene was over. There was definitely a narrative to it but not all the shots seemed to forward the story. There were scenes that didn't really push the story forward. For example, the scene where the two spys were playing pranks on the peanut stand guy. The scene was humorous but it didn't push the storyline forward. "The Way Things Go" was a narrative in its own way. It didn't have an obvious story to it, however if a narrative just means that there is a "logical sequence of incidents that take us from point A to point B", then the movie definitely had a narrative to it. You were not capable of getting from point A to point B without going through all the steps of the sequence. It was its own story because everything was connected. I would say these two films are similar because without all the fluff in the middle, you couldn't get the end product. In the "duck soup" film, all the gags seemed to come up later in the film after it had been introduced already. Everything had its way of tieing together to create more laughs. Using Frampton's formula, I would say that the film "Duck Soup" is mostly about the leader who made all the jokes (I cant remember his name, Rufus maybe?), and "The Way Things Go" would probably be about fire and the bottle rocket things they used, or just chemistry in general.

April 7th Lecture

In the film "Natural Features", I noticed mostly the eerie noises. I noticed a lot of faces, the color black, and the act of painting. Based on Frampton's formula for films, I would say this film was about eerie noises because that is what I noticed the most in the film, it seemed to be what occurred most in the film. Visual wise, I would say the film is about faces because thats what seemed to appear most in the film. I don't think it was helpful to my understanding of the film to think of it this way. It was only when I put everything together when I really got a feel for the film and what it might possibly be about. I seemed to get this creepy feeling watching this film in class. I actually thought the exact same thing as someone in class discussed about this film- I got this feeling that there was some kind of psychotic murderer making noises and singing to himself and basically entertaining himself. I felt like this person was into torture, and I got this feeling because they kept showing faces and they would be painted over or deformed in certain ways. You could also hear screams every once in a while in the film, which made it feel like there were people tied up or something in a room nearby. I felt kind of like this person I had imagined in my head had some kind of mental disability because they kept singing and making car noises, etc. The part I found most disturbing was with the family portrait with the eyes all blacked out and I think this was when the singing started up.

Table Top Video- After thoughts

I thought my taping went alright. I think I went a little too fast. I was afraid that I wouldn't get it all done so I was rushing through it, and then when I got to the end I had like 30 seconds to waste. I took a long time to mix the silly putty, which was probably boring to watch, and then with the extra time I just played with the silly putty. When I practiced this at my house I kept going over the time, so when I actually did it in class I was rushing through it. I think it worked well for me that I had some silly putty along that I had let dry overnight, because otherwise I would not have been able to take it out of the cup since it was so sticky. I think I learned that 2 minutes and 30 seconds is a lot longer than I had thought.

Table Top- Artist Statement

For my table top video, I will be proving that "Chemistry Can Be Fun." I will be explaining what a polymer is and then making a polymer by making some silly putty. I did this "experiment" last year at UW-Sheboygan with my class when we put on a chemistry show for the children in our community. My intentions for the video is to show that chemistry isn't always difficult and boring work, that it can also be fun and entertaining sometimes. So the two main things I am demonstrating is that chemistry is fun and also how to make silly putty.