This week I finally contacted the lady who worked in the city council’s performance office. coz this week is half-term holiday so I arrange time to meet her next week. And I, Aisha and Jeff, we leaflet campaign to every residence in Hillsfield last sunday. we also filmed how they talk with some residents.
Local, Global October 20, 2008
Local, global – treatment
Scene 1 – introduction
Fading up on subtitles of, “there are lots kind of dances in the world, some for arts, some for entertainment, the link with both is, they are all passion of life by human beings”. Then the camera shows a big, bright dance studio, there are two young professional dancers discussed their positions for the next performances. Around the stage there several heating fans are rising temperature. We turn to the other side, there are some old people chat with each other and wait for their dance teacher. Different preparation for the same thing, they yearn to dance.
Scene 2 – performance
Back to dance studio, two young dancers began to dance. They performance “paper portraits”, a kind of contemporary (dancing with painting on a paper). We can see there is a serious struggle looking on their face. All of audiences are young students; they are focus on two dancers and want to understand these visual arts. Cut to the other side, old people follow the dance teacher and start to dance with their slow ugly movement. They are smile and enjoy what they are doing, even though have no audiences, and also need to pay for these classes, just for fun.
Scene 3 – workshop
From a ground viewpoint we can see the young professional dancer, Florence, are talking with some students about performance then teach them how to dance with paper. Cut to the other room, some old people change their partner and dancing with music. The students are asked to draw their own self on a paper, they start to imagine and find true appearance about themselves in deep heart. We cut from the interview to Florence, she tell me how inspiration about students’ work.
Progress of my work October 17, 2008
This week I have done a lot of things. The first one is that i found a local issue about Disaster Capitalism. I went to a socialist party’s meeting with Talat and Aisha at monday night. During this meeting i found 2 influenced local issue: the postal system and healthy system have been influenced by American company.
In the postal sector the Communication Workers Union faces a huge battle. The entire post office network is under threat, with 1 in 3 delivery offices, including Coventry’s Bishop Street, threatened with closure. In the last 10 years 22 local post offices in Coventry have closed, with 4 more announced in recent days. The main city centre post office in Hertford Street has gone to WH Smiths. These whole things is due to the labour government and postcomm opened up the British postal market to other countries. And hundreds of local jobs are at threat.
In health New Labour wants privately owned clinics directly competing with existing GP and hospital services. It is no coincidence that US health corporations are muscling in on the NHS market. In coventry, the only one hospital has been owned by a American company. Now coventry’s residents have to pay money when they go to the hospital.
The socialist party want to win the campaign because today’s labour party is a party of the giant corporations, its policies attacked on the lives and living conditions of working-class people.
And the second thing what i did is filming the paper portraits performance by florence peake and katye coe. Then i will edit this clips to a short documentary.
Super Size Me! October 13, 2008
http://www.freedocumentaries.org/theatre.php?filmid=98&id=1016&wh=1000×720
This week i watched Morgen Spurlock’s Super Size me, the main idea of this documentary is quite interesting: the filmmaker ate nothing but McDonald’s food for a whole month and his health was getting worse. Morgen use the word ‘Super size’ which is a portion in the McDoald’s menu to indicate the fast food restaurant are making American’s bodies more fat than before.
The structure:
Use the Day 1-30 timeline and mix up with lots of interviews, footages and animations
At the first 4:45 mins, there is a instruction part which use diagrams, animations and newspapers to mention that how serious about American’s obesity and the popularity of the McDonald’s all over the world. The most attractive thing is, the filmmaker use lots of real numbers and photos to show the serious situation in the US and he will give the link with obesity and McDonald’s next part.
At the next part, the filmmaker measured his physical indicators and interview some people who has their own suggestions about obesity, from the professers to the passerby, before he start to eat McDonald’s during the whole month. Then his declining heath during that time was seen as a direct result of this unhealthy diet. During this time, he also interviewed some schools’ canteens and phoned the directors of Mcdonald’s.
At the final part, he compared his physical indicators than one month ago, to find out his body fat from 11% to 18%! And he also used a animation to explain which diseases he will have. There are also showed some people and organizations who against the fast food at the end music ’super size’.
This documentary use the humorous approach and unique idea, maybe which is the most successful point, to spread out a serious situation in America.
