Media 160 Blog Post #4

"Bendito Machine" is a short film series developed in Flash by talented animator, Jossie Malis. The shorts explore philosophical issues such as human frailty, religion, and corruption. "Bendito Machine 3" acts as an attack on technology, which it frames as the new religion.

From the outset, we see a Moses-like figure climbing a great mountain. Yet, rather than receiving commandments, a godlike beam delivers a strange, beeping apparatus. In the next scene, a group of villagers trashes their previous religious relic - a statue that doubles as a radio - for this new technological wonder, which reveals itself to be a television. Jossie Malis here seems to comment on our constant, frivolous drive for better and newer technology. Throughout the rest of the video, the television machine proceeds come alive and destroy the village while the villagers worship it regardless. Malis appears to be saying that we're allowing the pursuit of technology to destroy our society.

Bendito Machine's minimalist, silhouette-style aesthetic ensures that the viewer isn't too distracted from the feature's core messages. In addition, the spareness of the scenes - with their ample employment of negative space - combined with the spindly and silly-seeming human characters reinforce that idea that humans are small and petty.

MEDP 160 Blog Post #3

For Mark Simakovsky and I, the zombie movie we created for our video project was quite an adventure, both creatively and logistically. With a shared interest in all things undead, the creative process flowed furiously, with Mark and I jumping, gesticulating, storyboarding, and faux-acting all over the place. The logistical side, however, was more of a challenge.

First came location scouting, which lead us to the Hunter Library. The location was great, but it had an innate problem...in that it was a library. How would we film a movie full of moaning and groaning zombies in a place where silence was the rule? By making a silent film, of course! Here, it was interesting to see how a logistical problem actually fed into the creative process. Since the movie would now be silent, it would also - of course - have to have film grain, contain a cheesy 1920s-esque horror movie score, and be in black and white.

Next, we focused on people, i.e. a make-up artist, zombie extras, and our sole main actor. In addition to in-person badgering, I created a Facebook event, made lots of calls, and sent lots of texts. All-in-all, this organizing stage took more time than the actual creative brainstorming.

Finally, the day of the shoot came. We arrived in the library before our lab period with 10+ zombie extras, Jessica Olsen (our make-up go-t0-girl), and Eli Cohent (our lead actor and Hunter's lone zombie plague survivor). Though Mark and I - particularly Mark - had spent considerable time planning out our shots, I had no idea how hectic things would become. Looking back, it would have been nice if I'd made a shot order and schedule; we sort of just haphazardly came up with such on the spot.

Overall, the most important thing I took away was the clearing up of a misconception about the filmmaking process. I learned that creating a film is as much of a process of organization as it is ideation.