Product

For this project I took a song by one of my favorite artists (Nothing Without Love by Nate Ruess) and reinterpreted it by changing its focus from romantic heartbreak to non-romantic heartbreak. I did this by creating a new music video for the song made up of clips from animated movies.

Here is my final product: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0Bzzm02DRmm5jVlZMNWhvVXkzZm8/view?usp=sharing

I created this video by downloading clips from animated movies from Youtube. I then put them to the music in Final Cut Pro.

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Intention

Here is the original video for the song, as well as some frames from the original video. It's pretty clear from the hand-holding and other interactions in the original video that it is about a romantic relationship.

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However, the only lyric in the song that implies romance is when Nate Ruess refers to someone as "baby," which is typically used as a nickname in romantic relationships. The rest of the song, however, can really refer to any type of love- romantic, platonic, familiar, etc. Because media and our culture tends to emphasize romantic relationships over most other types, I wanted to tell a story of purely non-romantic heartbreak because these other types of love are underrepresented but just as valuable and vulnerable. Therefore, my goal is to highlight the pain of losing a non-romantic relationship.

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Context

The original video content from the animated films gave me material to manipulate in this piece. Without those existing story-lines, my video would not make any sense.

Traditionally, media has been very focused on romantic relationships (consider early Disney films and their focus on a prince & princess). More recent Disney works have started to change this limited focus with films such as Frozen that instead highlight the love between sisters. Much like these more recent works, my piece aims to take something generally associated with romantic love and make it non-romantic.

My work is an example of Kearney's mimesis principle, as it is a reinterpretation of a previously told story (the original song/video).

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Process

An early version of my project included a clip from Finding Nemo. It was the scene in which Nemo is taken by the scuba diver and his dad chases after him, panicked. I decided to take this clip out because although I'm sure Nemo's father was heartbroken over his son being kidnapped, I wanted to focus instead on the pain of lost friendship, not on the pain of losing somebody because they were taken away. Similarly, I made a decision not to include scenes about the pain of death because portraying such an emotion could easily be its own project.

The hardest part of this project was finding clips that conveyed the meaning I was going for. I really wanted to show how friendships can fall apart, but I ended up including the Monster's Inc. clip that instead focuses on a goodbye scene. The meaning I was really going for is best shown in the Toy Story clip in which Emily abandons Jessie as she grows up. It's possible that the reason I had a hard time finding clips is because media traditionally focuses on romantic heartbreak instead.

At the end of the project I still had trouble finding material and so instead of using videos that didn't convey the meaning I was going for, I decided to cut the song short. In this way I could keep my meaning as close to my goal as possible.

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Reflection

My inner critic is concerned that my final project doesn't quite convey the message I was going for. The Toy Story clip does, and I think the Shrek clip is next closest because it shows a fight between friends, but the Monsters Inc. clip is less related to the meaning I was aiming for. If I could find more movies that conveyed the feelings in the Toy Story clip, I would include them instead, but unfortunately I couldn't think of any.

I learned how to change the perspective (and therefore story) of a work simply by adding to it without editing the original content itself. That is, if I consider the original content the song itself, then adding video to it can change its story. The original music video makes it a song about romantic love, but my video makes it a song about platonic love.