I am always looking for examples of looking at the world differently – of making the familiar strange and the strange familiar. This is of course connected with the veja du assignments I give my students.
I just came across a couple of very interesting video examples of this on the site LikeCOOL. This site has everything from after-office neckties, to inflatable boxing gloves… but in between these crazy things are some cool videos. Here are three (in increasing order of coolness):
Slow Moscow from Andrey Stvolinsky on Vimeo.
The breathing apple
Ecological apple (experimental short) from Andreas Soderberg on Vimeo.
And my absolute favorite: The secret life of packaging
“Packaging’s Life” from Silvio Giordano on Vimeo.
A Certain Ambiguity: A Mathematical Novel is a book written by two of my high school friends, Gaurav Suri and Hartosh Singh Bal.
I love the idea of the mashup of these three videos. And thanks for the link to Just Change Point of View. Very nice. Did you see today’s NYTimes video “The Shadow’s Dream.” Very cool. I have some similar still photos that I will post someday…
http://scher.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/10/05/the-shadows-dream/
Great vids! The last one made me think of blooming plastic flowers. It would be fun to do an ecologically themed remix/mashup of these 3 and play around with juxtapositions and contradictions.
For example: Although apples are traditional symbols of life, the apple in the “breathing apple” video seems to focus more on the death part of the apple’s life cycle. That could be juxtaposed with clips of plastic bags which are well-known as agents of suffocation (i.e., death), but in the “Secret Life of Packaging” video, they function as symbols of life (they all seem to “bloom and grow” (Eidelweiss Song from Sound of Music) like strangely animate plastic flowers. The mashup could be set in a paradisical parking lot (think of the Counting Crows song “Yellow Taxi” about paving paradise to put up a parking lot) in which all the trash seems to bloom and grow and the animate things are lifeless.
You could even cut in some footage of the parking lots and pavements from the Slow Moscow video, then perhaps layer it in with contrasting footage from a couple of other cities from countries in different parts of the world.
Thanks for the chance to making a one-minute mini-movie in my head! 😉
BTW – The title of your post reminded me of this little video: Just Change Point of View http://www.theoneminutesjr.org/index.php?thissection_id=10&movie_id=200600145
Thank you for sharing those videos. I love how the music from “Slow Moscow” compliments the video. It makes you wonder what you are missing when your life is going so fast around you. What is really happening under everything.