There. It was hard to convert to the proper size. Finally I found an apparent miracle program called "SUPER." What follows is the description I posted with the video on Youtube.
The blurb I wrote for the my UBC film program application:
"'White Boar,' made after Revelevating in 2007 for the same FIPR class, I wrote, directed, and edited it. A boy discovers that his white board can link his door to any other, and has fun with it. Aiming for anarchic whimsy, ambition exceeded organizational ability as well as actor commitment and in the end it lacks key scenes and shots that would not only have made it intelligible, but astounding. The white board idea is original, but any real story around it would have either been too pretentiously sincere, too pointlessly ironic, or just ordinary. To be original through and through, I used characters who can be anyone at any time by the virtue of having no character at all. I found out what would happen if I let them lead the story, rather than 'boy uses white board portal to win back girlfriend.'"
I wrote a bunch of good descriptions of my videos for various film applications... Maybe I should go back to the videos and change their descriptions with them. Don't feel like it now.
It's finals season here, and, as I see it, I've been doing a very creative thing, and a thing very good for me, just by sponging around, sponging facts and ideas. I'm reading again. Books. You probably know this: books that are out of copyright are on the internet, and I can then put these books on my iPod. Sure, they're old books, but there's a lot of old authors I haven't read. Somehow (dubious legally) I found a copy of Lot 49 out there, too, which I've been reading along with the Wind in the Willows and Father Goriot. There's always more old authors than new ones. I'm curious about birdwatching, although this is a crummy time to get curious, since I'm leaving in a month or something, possibly never coming back, and never coming back to all the really cool birds here in Cancouva. My listening to music is, as usual, very exploratory, and I'm probably more serious about it than ever, because I have more reason to be exploratory than ever -- it's not just whim anymore, it's whim plus intense focus. I'm listening to an ever-broader range in ever-greater depth, and it's very provocative, and that's the point. I'm thinking about music more than ever, about... the way people listen to it and the different people who do and the different musics that rub up against each other, and how those factors change together over time, and why, and what connects or separates these different eras, and does music change societies, or societies music? For instance, isn't the homespun, unambitious attitude of 80s/90s indie pop -- these fringe kids who aren't macho or -- connected in spirit, somehow, to the folk musics that ran parallel to high art classicists? What does it mean that the fringe music of today claims to be more artistically valid than the mass cultural stuff? It's not fully formed or arguable ideas by any means, it's... intuitive. And I feel I have to start writing it down, so I can draw on it later, should I need things to draw on. Most of my thinking is centered around placing the dawn of the twenty-first century in perspective and understanding the ideologies and scenes of our time as ideologies and scenes. This is largely because I'm having to read my history book a lot (in preparation for finals). It's nothing of substance, really, not in any argumentative, academic way, but, like I said, it's good fodder... weird characters, I don't know. And it means something to me. And me, oh, how I think about ME. That's certainly something for another post, in fact, and ought to go in a different journal entirely -- I've neglected it. I saw a tv biography on walt whitman (aka, A Giant), and think I ought to return to journals and daily observations and recounts of introspections and things like that... I have a pretty meaningless written record right now, it'd be pretty useless if I ever tried to write a poem. It's all -- the key realization is that it doesn't matter how wrong it is or how conceited or pretentious I am in these ideas -- I have them, therefore, I need to make a record of them. I can't be embarrassed of them or lazy about it -- this is it, this is what the artist and writer does, he stares at his soul making funny faces, the soul doing the same thing, and the work comes out depending on who blinks or laughs or cries or opens a jar of peanut butter first.
Oh there's more, by the way. I'm quite possibly going on a trip at the start of May, for a two or three nights, on this island called Savary. I have a number of fantasies and idle forecasts of what it'll be like. A kind of nonstop beach party, I will be in a cabin with what I imagine as "loads" of other kids, many of them strangers, and some acquaintances with whom I will expand my relationship thanks to this time spent together. I look forward to this trip for that but lately for other reasons. One is my newfound interest in what they call "birding." Man, there's gonna be so many cool birds, and the way I see birdwatching is as a very relaxing wander through forest paths and whatnot... basically just an excuse to drift spontaneously around looking at different things, and you do a lot of thinking, too. and that you're looking for birds just gives it kind of a cool purpose, but the point is exploration and being laid back and... well, I'm not an eastern religion kind of guy, but it's similar to oneness with everything kind of thing, because you notice so many things that you wouldn't otherwise, and it makes you wonder about what trees these are or what kind of ground you're on (makes it very easy to understand the nineteenth century evolution of biology from these bourgeois naturalists with loads of free time to trot around the english countryside). So it's also very provocative and good for thinking. But it's also like pokemon, you know, because you have those birds that you think are particularly pretty, or you identify with, or just feel are so important that you have to seem them. Like, I feel I have to see a raven. But it's real life, and you're really going through these wooded areas and beaches and whatnot, things that are so alien and exotic to me, besides which being genuinely beautiful and fine to appreciate. And doing it with people who take a similar, laid back approach, it would be very rewarding, I think, and it's something no one's doing, like, fuck, we've been sitting around in cafes for almost a hundred and fifty years now. I think being out in this savary environment might provide a fair environment for proselytizing a couple of my co-agers. With these kids there's a hippy-like aesthetic with some of them... the guys in a different way than the girls, and it depends on the person a lot. I guess most guys wouldn't be interested, but what do they know? This unthinkable pass-time actually goes along very well with a certain kind of youth (esp. female, the best ones, too, the ones I respect and think are the cutest). No doubt a small part of the whole group, if I were good at being social, I could really get along with these kids.
Now, Two, I can bring a couple of my small instruments or toy instruments, especially my melodica or recorder. and I know that if I can get a drum to come and I guess a guitar, that there could be some fun stuff there.
Three, though... Now, maybe it's an over-ambitious idea, but I think a bit of documentary would be awesome... The temptation, the first thought, is to leap at full life experience coverage, but to capture these kids in their natural habitat, so to speak, I'd have to kind of separate myself from the proceedings. That's the way I see it. Definitely I should bring my camera, and not talk or laugh while I'm holding it (something I hated in my last documentary), but since I won't be able to (and, really, don't want to) fully document the entire journey -- basically, that lacks integrity, in a way, and would come out crappy -- I think the disjointed clips of varied activities and personalities would have to be fixed up in the editing to something that is representative and revealing of this unique, little-known youth culture (among other things that it is), but by necessity of the way it was shot, unconventional. The trick would be to make the unconventional editing form meaningful in itself, to the end that I'm trying to make it meaningful, and in a way that the images represent, too. I don't know, I'm thinking as I go along here. But definitely the premise of this trip has clear, linear potential for documentary, more obvious reason for documentary than I've ever had before. But I guess I might have to buy a couple more batteries.
So this all really is about videos. I just wanted, through all this, to a) provide a written record for my personal reference or scholarly interest after I'm dead, b) get some ideas on paper that I hadn't yet put into complete sentences yet, and c) show in the here and now some of the ideas that are going to, one day or another, end up in fiction. All of the useless facts, all of the meandering thought processes, all of the idle speculation -- it's about developing personal understandings, personal understandings of a lot of things, because I'm interested in a lot of things. It's about finding personal understandings of things, making them palpable, making myself palatable, and making these understandings available -- some of them might be provocative to people. The trick is talent, the goal is to fill potential. Failing in talent is not nearly so bad as having talent and failing in potential. But these are platitudes. Hope you enjoyed this.
Sincerely, Kevin Salzig.
ps: I had the idea myself. You can do this with any justified paragraph by taking the first word (or couple/few words, as necessary) of every line and stringing them into a sentence, altering punctuation as you see fit. They turned out as taking place in parallel worlds where alternate history has produced such different variations on events and people from history that there exists strange countries, totally different words, and different usages of our words. They're particularly funny next to the original paragraphs, but sucks to be you. I only did a couple because I knew I had to keep studying.
As the new century began to crumble, a series of challenged, fered vista rupted dictability. When the Polish-French discovered the ally-emited subatomic constant, tist Max Planck theorized that radiated energy stream clumps missed Planck's ture of a changeable universe.
Popular, the diseased novelist traced once, as generations used the watching, Franco-Prussian charnel-trid.
Popular, the diseased novelist Émile Zola!
[I thought "diseased novelist" is a really great image I should remember, and I even made a note of it, so I'm transcribing that note]
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