ART 2604 Project 1: Aaand Go! The 48-Hour Film Project.
2024 Edition

Total run time with credits 5-7 Minutes
16:9 Aspect ratio compressed at HEVC (H.265)

All aspects of the process are to be negotiated by the group.
All original writing, directing, videography, cinematography, photography, titling, sound, color correction, and delivery are to be created by the team within the allotted time.

Late work will not be accepted.
Footage beyond 7 minutes will not be considered.

Date Assigned January 24.
Date Due  January 29. 

Tags: genre, new genres, experimental film, production, team-building, student film.

Prompt: write, produce, and deliver a 5-7 minute film from start to finish.

Hybridity continues to persist as a foundational strategy to find productive collisions, cross pollinations in music, art, and design. 
The project at hand is an exploration of two genres that bakes in a central question. This year, our question is: What is food?
You are encouraged to combine stylistic fragments from two genres from this list:

Magical Realism, Body Horror, Mockumentary, Space Opera, Medical Drama, Infomercial, Telenovela. 
Required Elements:

1. An exploration of two of the abovementioned genres.
2. The film addresses this question:() What is food?
3. It involves a curious/magical/sacred/ prop.
4. It has credits stylized to compliment the title card
5. It makes use of an artful bumper/title card. 

Formal Criteria
HD Digital Video in a 16:9 Aspect ratio exported at h.265 HEVC format.
Run-time: 5-7 minutes.
This is group work that is maybe different from what you are used to.
Each group member will have to take on multiple roles. 

Being on a team is important. 

Aside from the creative dimension, which is absolutely important,  projects like this are also an opportunity to develop your people skills in different areas. These “Soft skills” include teamwork; interpersonal skills; supportive and productive communication; problem solving, time keeping; goal setting; organization; and ability to pitch/bounce ideas to each other; build consensus; the ability to rally a team around a common goal; empathy.

Technical skills used in this project:
Writing. Analysis. Decision making. Performing. Planning. Visualziation. 
Video capture and editing, motion graphics, file management, naming and transfer.
Sound editing.   

As the ideas pour out of you, consider the main constraint, which is time. 
This is a ~48 hour (weekend) project.
Some of the more exciting ideas will be outlandish and will strain your capacities.
Don’t shy away from them! 

You will rely upon each other and be on the same page in order to realize this work.
Therefore, you’ll need to plan your project collaboratively. 
Keep track of your contributions.   

Process: Start by Determining your strengths.
Te recognize where you might be most helpful, begin by self identifying your individual strengths as a group member..
Instructor: Create a google form for the self assessment, a canvas discussion or assignment for the questions.

What do I bring to the table: Self Assessment 

On a scale of 1-5
Rate how you perceive your skills in the following areas

Writing and planning
Directing
Performance
Capture: Camera/Sound
Data and File Management.
Editing & Post-production 
Vibes and Morale
Organization
Communication 
Graphics and Post
Promotion
Stagecraft- making of props
Casting and Site Scouting.
Time and Task Management

Write down  your honest response to the following statements:

Q1 In groups or teams, I am content to do as little as possible, and even let other people do the work.

Q2 Because I do not want to appear incompetent, I seldom ask for help and take on too much. 

Q3 I will figure out the answer on my own before asking for help. 

Q4 I would rather say nothing than be wrong. 

Q5 Failure is not an option. 

Q6 Because I do not trust other people to deliver, I tend to take charge. 

Q7 Teaching is something to be done by an authority. 

THE GENRES: Magical Realism, Body Horror, Mockumentary, Space Opera, Medical Drama, Infomercial, Telenovela.

What is Genre? For an overview of how genre functions in a literary sense, check out this Australian educational video.
(VT login required) Note in particular, the conventions of story. Decide on a stylistic path. 
For your film, your team is constrained to this list.


GENRE 1 Magical Realism: Realistic world, unlikely phenomenon occur. Usually outside of the possible. I.e. Magic. 
See: Border (Gräns) 2018 Ali Abbassi dir. (trailer)
Key Scene: Tina (Eva Milander) is a security guard with a superhuman capacity for smell.
Watch how the filmmakers used simple props to communicate this supersensory capacity.

Body Horror: Aka biological horror, depicts grotesque transformations of the corpus or body. The popular genre tends towards a mapping of the amorphous anxieties of modern life onto human anatomies as an evocative strategy.

Subgenre? The term “Abject Art” is used to describe artworks which explore themes that transgress and threaten our sense of cleanliness and propriety particularly referencing the body and bodily functions.

Dir: David Cronenberg.
See: “Videodrome” 1983 (trailer)
“The Fly” 1986 (trailer)

Extending into other expressive realms modes, i.e. Animation and Sculpture.

Read: “Ick Art: Why a Rising Generation of Female Sculptors is Embracing Body Horror” 
Read: Tishan Hsu  (artforum) Note the Grotesque Forms
Artist: Lu Yang 
Read: CNN: Chinese Artist Lu Yang Breaks Taboos for Fun, Not Politics. 
See: Delusional Mandala 

Artist: Stellarc
Stelarc explores alternate anatomical architectures. He is an artist whose projects incorporate prosthetics, robotics, biotechnology, medical imaging and the internet. He has performed with a Third Hand, a Stomach Sculpture, Exoskeleton and a Prosthetic Head. Fractal Flesh, Ping Body and Parasite are internet performances that explore remote and involuntary choreography. He is surgically constructing and stem-cell growing an ear on his arm that will be internet enabled.

Artist: Jacolby Satterwhite:
Watch: Art 21: The Incredulity of Jacolby Satterwhite 

Artist: Azziz + Cucher: Synaptic Bliss 
See: Arca Non-Binary

GENRE 2: Mockumentary: Satirical take on serious presentation of information. Often relying on deadpan delivery, didactic or informative cinematic conventions. 
Best in Show. (2000). Christopher Guest. Dir. Ft. Eugene Levy, Catherine O’hara, Jennifer Coolidge, Parker Posey. 

Christopher Guest has made a career out of fictional depictions of fringe folk groups, catapulting the careers. He likes to use ensemble casts. Eugene Levy and Cahtherine O’Hara of Shitt’s Creek fame, and Jennifer Coolidge of HBO’s The White Lotus. Best in Show is a take on dog-show culture, delivered in a verite style where the cast of characters are introduced to the audience via a series of mock interviews.

Trailer: “Best in Show”

Key scene: “We met at Starbucks” Meg Swan (Parker Posey) and Hamilton Swan (Michael Hitchcock) recall the moment they met, at two different Starbucks locations across the street from each other.

Documentary Now! EP. “Menu of Perfection” 

Juan's daily menu has earned him a three-star Michelin rating.
Note the jungle restaurant and the offerings.

Where it shows up in Art?
Interventionist Twists on Fact/Fiction genre bending//culture jamming//performance art. 

Nathan For You: Nathan Fielder EP: “Dumb Starbucks”
Raising questions about legality and parody law. Fielder notoriously likes to push envelopes.

Barbie Liberation Organization: Igor Vamos
In their first campaign the BLO performed "surgery" on a reported 300–500 dolls from retail and returned them to shelves, an action they refer to as shopgiving. Thus, Teen Talk Barbie dolls would say phrases such as "Vengeance is mine", while G.I. Joe dolls would say phrases such as "The beach is the place for summer!"

Controversy//Why it’s important: In the 1990s in particular, prior to the social media turn and subsequent rise of platform capitalism, mass media was often the target of satirists who pointed the fingers at corporate interests and advertisers. Culture Jammers were artists and cultural critics who used subversive advertising to provoke audiences to consider their complicity in larger systems. Critics asserted that only 12 toys were actually switched and the rest was a cleverly arranged media hype by Vamos and his associates. This perspective indicates that the project was also a critique of the nature of the television and media culture of the 1990s, which led to other media interventions by Vamos, collaborators, and other groups in the coming years.

GENRE 3: Space Opera: a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, with use of melodramatic, risk-taking space adventures, relationships, and chivalric romance. The genre is often critiqued and derided as relying heavily on themes of colonialist expansion and military conquest.
The key being frontier- melodramas which bear a remarkable resemblance to the predictable tropes found in soap operas and formulaic westerns.

Emerging themes in the 2020’s of critical importance are an updated cyberpunk, afrofuturism, privatization of space companies, ethical consumption and ecological questions. Emerging authors seek to reclaim the genre in an age when fictional tropes have been translated into real work technologies with goals ranging from asteroid mining to species survival.  

Watch: Buck Rogers of the 25th Century (1950) “Ghost in the House” Episode ABC Television. 
Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (1979) Trailer
Flash Gordon (1936) Chapter 1 of 13 - The Planet of Peril  Minutes 6-8 in particular. 
Flash Gordon Official Trailer [4k]. 

Starship Troopers: (1997) Trailer
The Fifth Element (1997) Trailer
Star Trek: The Original Series (1967)  Season 1. Ep.1 “Arena” Clip where Kirk fights Gorn. 
Star Wars: A New Hope 1977.  Trailer

Read: (Don’t actually) More than Just Silver Underwear: The History of Space Opera.
Key takeaway: Silver Underwear of Flash Gordon, Flying Saucers on string, connection to radio, soap-opera, and cheesy westerns gave rise to mega franchised Star Trek, Star Wars. 

GENRE 4: Medical Drama
A medical drama is a television movie / or film in which events center upon a hospital, clinic, physician's office, an ambulance staff, or any medical environment.

This is good for amping up the serious, write for the melodramatic. Hesletine, John (1923-2016) Medical Drama: A Film Director Talks to Actors Playing a Surgeon, Nurse, and a Patient. Image credit Wellcome Collection ART UK. 

Examples: Grey’s Anatomy: “Tom Freezes During a Surgery”
This is Going to Hurt Trailer
House MD
General Hospital
Painter Thomas Eakins 

Facts: General Hospital is the longest-running American soap opera in production. It has less to do with 

surgery and procedure and more to do with quarreling families that somehow intersect a hospital in the fictional town of Port Charles, where dysfunction and family drama remain the focal point of this show. The current families on the show include the quarreling and wealthy Quartermaine family, the mobster crime Corinthos family, the middle class Scorpio/Jones family, the aristocratic Cassadine family, and the adventurous Spencer family.

McLuhan, Marshall: Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. Ch 31. 

Quote: “One of the most vivid examples of the tactile quality of the TV image occurs in medical experience. In closed-circuit instruction in surgery, medical students from the first reported a strange effect-that they seemed not to be watching an operation, but performing it. They felt that they were holding the scalpel. Thus the TV image, in fostering a passion for depth involvement in every aspect of experience, creates an obsession with bodily welfare.”

Infomercial: An infomercial is a form of television commercial that resembles regular TV programming yet is intended to promote or sell a product, service or idea. Problems are often exaggerated and in domestic contexts and make extensive use of hyperbole to persuade or convince an audience that the inconveniences depicted are remedied by the product being delivered. The more ridiculous the problem, the more peculiar the product.

Know your meme does a great job under the heading “infomercial fails” 

Make use of the form. It’s highly reliable.
Tropes typically define this genre.
The tangled or leaking hose.
The sudden pain trope.
Things falling out of a cabinet
Fumbling while carrying too many things. 

GENRE 5: Telenovela A genre with richly absurd, over the top melodramatic situations. Latin American serial drama similar to a soap opera in plot development but having a broader audience and airing during prime time rather than daytime subjects chosen for controversy and scandal. The plots of telenovelas broadcast after the 1970s often were variants of the Cinderella story, in which the main character was a woman from a poor family who met and fell in love with a wealthy man.

Typically you get a lot of camera pushes (zoom focus) and slow fade transitions between clips.

Suggested Essential Viewing
Ugly Betty
Jane the Virgin