(HD) Is It Just Me

May 2008

Is it Just Me was produced by a collaborative effort with Sean Lake and with the guidance of John Sturgeon and Kelley Bell. The short film is a mental walk, a surreal observation of an environment from ones mind, investigating our obsession of self-learning through curiosity. The act of learning is metaphorically compared to the pursuit and engagement of unraveling a piece of tangled string, untangling and processing the chaos of foreign information into manageable and understandable knowledge. Globally it can be assumed that everyone possesses a string at any given moment, containing a varied collection of foreign information, waiting for its owner to unravel.

The film, however, narrows down to one sample, one individual, who untangles his string to unravel strange events within an environment in which he lives in. These strange events become more prominent as he is released from structured learning of the museum, and into the open societal world. His curiosity of this environment also fuels his learning of the self, actively and obsessively decoding the chaotically knotted string in his possession. Though the character may not seem to be directly interacting with the environment, however, he is indirectly interacting from his action of untangling string. Upon reaching the end of his journey, his self-revelation presents him with a pivotal decision.

What do these happenings mean? Is he the only one that is willing to notice them? Are others blinded by their self-censorship?


Thanks to:
Sean Lake
Clifford Ian Workman
Christopher Moss
Carla O'Rourke
Kelley Bell
John Sturgeon
Saira Khan
UMBC Visual Arts Department
Robert Chubin
Laura Schraven
Laura Baptiste
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Bethany Bentley
Leeza Papalanis
Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery


For the techies:
- Shot with Canon XH-A1 HDV cam w/ x0.75 Lens
- Final output at 24p in 1080p
- Audio captured with Oade Brothers modified Marantz 660
- Glidecam 2000 Pro Steadicam
- Photos with Nikon D200
- Edited in Adobe Premiere Pro
- Effects in Adobe After Effects w/ Magic Bullet
- DVD authored in Adobe Encore CS3

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• string
• conceptual
• chaos
• society
• untangle
• learning
• beach
• censorship
• mind
• mental walk
• search
• life
• death
• questions
• self

[SimonFairhead]

great use of a still when your man crosses the road

[SimonFairhead]

in addition, the seaside stuff looks very similar to a UK location, Dungeness, where there is a very sinister nuclear reactor. Look it up on google earth and be freaked out

[SimonFairhead]

very good work. On a personal note, I would not have swapped the direction of the actor's walk in the early part of the film from shot to shot. It takes away the notion of a journey, of a direction. Cinematography is great, and nice to see something shot in proper cinema widescreen, not 16:9. Thumbs up!

[jrbhbr]

I think you showed the most important thing in a project which is its concept! A lot of editors and filmmakers have too much worry about special effects when it's just part of the hole project!

Man, I love to see short videos with an involving script. Sometimes, simply is everything!!!

Congratulations to the hole team!!!

[sully2909]

i didn't really get the meaning of it, but i liked it.

[sleepintheskies]

Well done, sir. I'm an XH-A1 shooter myself. :)