Here is the link to the movie that goes with this blog (If there isn't actually a link below, it is because it has not uploaded to youtube yet so I cannot post the link, but I will.) Unfortunately the video I exported to Youtube must have coded incorrectly or something because the music from some of the clips I muted when making the movie and dubbing in my own music somehow became unmuted. I am extremely annoyed about this, but hopefully you aren't as agitated by the jarring interruptions as I am:
I thought I'd post the movie I made for our group Garden project in class. Basically I ripped movies from youtube and pieced them together with iMovie. I really enjoy video editing, so I figured I would take that on and certainly got a little carried away. I also am extremely grateful to BBC's Planet Earth from which much of the cinematography came from. This montage interpretation was basically my take on the first few days in Genesis. I thought I'd put a CGI representation of the Big Bang at the beginning not only to reference God's famous line "Let there be light", but also to attach a scientific implication. This inclusion of our scientific understanding of the world in a montage work representing Genesis emphasizes my belief that a literal reading of Genesis is a rather limited one. Northrop Frye's four kinds of language; descriptive, conceptual, rhetorical, and mythic certainly speak to this.
Once the earth comes into view and begins to rapidly zoom in, the sublime laughing-scream of Pink Floyd's 'Speak to Me/ Breath' transforms to melody and day two of Genesis begins. The creation of mist from the earth is represented by the floating clouds. The introduction of cells multiplying was again the inclusion of a scientific interpretation on the creation of man or Adam. I wanted to display the development of the fetus leading up to the first line of 'Speak to Me/ Breath' when David Gilmour sings the following:
Breathe, breathe in the air.Don't be afraid to care.
Leave but don't leave me.
Look around and choose your own ground.
Long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all you touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be.
The first two words, 'Breathe, breath' reminded me of God breathing life into Adam. Just like when a baby takes its first breathe. The more I listened to the lyrics, the more they sounded like God's declaration to man, albeit a loose connection. 'Leave but don't leave me'. Hmmmm....perhaps God the Father talking to his children? If God is the ultimate patriarch and the Garden of Eden and all that is created in it (Adam and Eve included) represents the feminine, then he is also speaking to his lover. This combined with the previous suggestion, 'Don't be afraid to care' emphasizes a yearning by God not to be forgotten by his children. Reminds me of my parents when I moved out and into the dorms. The last four lines of the lyrics I used have a similar tone, but more prophetic. They recall Frye's fifth language of the bible the kerygmatic, or the language of God spoken indirectly through someone else or by God himself. These lines, especially the more depressing final two; 'And all you touch and all you see/ is all your life will ever be.' speak to the ignorance of both Adam and Eve before the eating of the fruit. Considering that "the eyes of them both were opened" (Genesis 3:7) upon eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, a connection to ignorance at the beginning of creation exists. I intentionally transitioned clips from puffy white clouds to storm clouds rapidly aproaching for these last lines. At God's (Pink Floyd's)...(and no I don't think Pink Floyd is God)...last word at the end of the second day, lightning flashes slowly across the sky. The sound of rain also crescendos in the background and before its decrescendo as a very different song is also brought in for Eden's creation on the third day. I don't mean to pat myself on the back, but I was especially proud of this transition. The sound of rain was ripped from a clip of a rainstorm I also found on youtube. The song for the third day that fades in at this transition also was ripped from a clip on youtube that I came across when searching for 'Heartbeat' in hopes of finding a sound affect for the creation of Adam, an idea I eventually abandoned. Even the transition clip of the lightning rumbling slowly across the sky had extremely poor audio quality so I found the sound of thunder recorded in other videos of storms and matched the audio/video as well as I could. Sometimes these things are really difficult, but sometimes they just fall into place...this was definitely a first attempt match up that worked perfectly.
One thing I think I should also mention before discussing my representation of the third day of creation is the emphasis on the vastness of space at the beginning of the movie and the relativity of time. I chose many time lapsed clips preceded by a cosmic zoom of the universe to emphasize the infinity of God. In some ways, this description of both God and space-time (perhaps one in the same) is a reminder of both the lessons from Phillip K Dick and the movie Waking Life as well as the latest astrophysical understandings of space-time and the universe.
The third day is basically self explanatory. I wanted to suggest the creation of the Garden of Eden as a gradual development, sort of like pond scum turning into an oak tree after a couple billion years. The scenes gradually widen as the day continues, again an attempt at gradualism to include a part by time. Two clips before the end of the day when the sunset is introduced, a circling pan of an almost glowing green tree is included. I put this clip near the climax of the day to introduce a reference to specifically the tree of life. I tried to find some good footage of pomegranates ; ) but I was surprisingly unsuccessful. After the sunset shot the scene transitions to a sunrise. I thought about including nighttime scenes between the sunset and sunrise until remembering the mantra at the end of each day's story, "And the evening and the morning were the first (or second, third, fouth, fifth, and sixth) day." (Genesis 1:8, 13, 19, 23, 31)
I transition to the fifth day at this point rather than the third. I decided that creating an additional montage showing the creation of the division of day and night, the seasons, and the first seeds, or in other words the creation of the passage of time would be redundant to include. Again, I wanted to emphasize the more modern understandings of the universe by involving time from the beginning of the film. As time and space are inseparable in space-time, they are also impossible to ignore when watching any video clip with moving images. The first perception of change or transition of the image would instantly bring about the inclusion of time, for the viewer would perceive the change... but I digress.
The fifth day is brought in with a song from the K-PAX Original Soundtrack called Taxi Ride. The first clip of the fifth day emerges the viewer in water and bubbles. I also included rain again for this transition to recall the side of pragmatism which would argue that rivers come from the cycle of evaporation of water into clouds that precipitate at mountain range faces. At the end of the fifth day the last clip taken from space shows the river separating into tributaries. This was at least an attempted and indirect reference towards multiple rivers created by God according to Genesis.
The sixth day represents God's declaration, "'Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind'" (Genesis 2:24). I introduced more basic creatures like snails into the film, then gradually brought larger species as a wave to my old friend evolution.
I left the seventh day and the Jahwist creation story for our class presentation.
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