Parker's 302 Experimental Blog

Marlon Riggs This was a particular person I was excited to discuss about. I adore Riggs' courage to create to the highest caliber. He went against the grain for what society considers "appropriate" and would unforgivably shove the fact that he was gay  and black in your face. These two identities together has long been stigmatized, and he saw his chance as an educated individual to give people like him history. He brought an understanding of the plights that gay black men face from the racism in America to the othering from the LGBT community. Marlon Riggs is the first modern individual who dared acknowledge his background and is forever an iconic individual for gay black men. Su Friedrich I really enjoyed discussing Friedrich's work. Lesbians are another highly stigmatized identity. Her work seemed very secretive, depressing, and personable. The sink or swim film where she was recounting an incident with her father almost made me choke up. I watched more of Hide ...

This is perhaps my least anicipated assignment because I'm having a hard time coming up with a possible solid idea. On one hand I want to make it a celebration of individuals who have fostered me into the person I am today. Another idea would be to focus more on me being gay, as that is something very key to my identity. But, the idea I think I'm going to decide to go with is a reading of blog posts from my personal blog that I made 3 years ago. On it, I post very personal things that are ridiculously uncensored and blunt, something I rarely am in real life. I worry about doing this though because it may be too truthful and make others feel weird. My blog has posts that talk about suicide, betrayal, sexuality, and frustration, things that we all seldom talk about casually to other people. But will disclosing these things make people think I'm a weird person, or will everyone feel less restricted conversing with me? Will I feel released from my chains as an individual, or wi...

1) I have definitely felt a sense of progression with my relationships with various individuals when working on this project. In collaborating with now 8 individuals, I have felt a progression of community, which is something that I haven't felt before. I normally detest group projects and prefer to work alone, but I've been fortunate to work with people who also strive to be successful in this industry. 
 2) To think after all that work we have done over the past few months is interesting. The entire project is essentially a roulette wheel, and when it's done spinning the result is what we've created. It's true though, that with time and determination from a small group of people, you can achieve a multitude of things without it being costly. 
 3) Generally there isn't much on a technical level that I've learned with this project. I had already worked with 80% of what we did, such as sound recording, sound editing, premiere, and cinematography. The bigg...

Shooting on film confused me. I recognize the art of snapping shots on my digital DSLR, but film is one I regard as something of the past. There are three main differences I found: 1. Permanence - On a digital camera, I can simply delete and retake the same shot. On a film camera, this is irreversable. 2. Cost - Because of this permanence, shooting on film is much more costly. On a digital camera, you can reuse the same SD card endlessly. 3. Fragility - Film is sensitive to light. If I took a picture on film and exposed it accidentally, all my time is wasted. This fragile process is terrifying, especially since in digital there is no such thing as needing to process the photos. Overall, I had fun taking photos on a film camera. Would I normally do it? No. But the novelty of it in an advanced technology era is still enjoyable enough to come back to it as a form of artistic choice. Stan Brakhage seems like a very patient and daring artist. The short film about child birth was uns...