Assignment 1 - Long Take

Assignment 1 from Andrew Kirstine on Vimeo.

Artist Statement

The clip I decided to take for my first assignment of the class is a simple tracking shot that shows my friends street, with construction of several houses on one side of the street and an old park on the other. I decided to use this for my video after he told me a story about how he used to have snowball fights with his friends in the lot, and how the construction is adversely affecting their community, by tearing down the trees and environment that was a major reason why his family moved there in the first place.

My intent of the clip was to create a juxtaposition between both sides of the street, industrial and environmental, with the long stretch of road acting as a separating line between these two different worlds. I wanted to give the viewer a sense of how the area is changing, while simultaneously remaining the same; the construction and new street signs are the new additions, while the old trees and the park have been there for ages.

In order to accomplish this comparison, I made sure that the beginning and ending imagines of my video were showing distinct aspects of the area. The opening image is one of solely the house under construction, while the final image is a shot of the old trees and the sky. The rest of the video is a melding of the two worlds, with the new and the old intertwining throughout the area. I decided not to focus on either of these worlds more than the other, to give the viewer and unbiased view into the community I chose to film.