Christmas Music Video

For one of the last assignments of the year, We were required to partner up with someone else in class we didn't regularly work with and create a seasonal music video. My partner, Will Cecil, and I came up with several ideas initially, all ranging from outside events like iceskating, to intimate settings like decorating a tree. While all the ideas we came up with were fun and festive, we found that some of their aspects weren't very practical. We weren't able to film the entire group of people we wanted, so we were forced to be creative as the time we had grew shorter and shorter. Inevitably, the last week rolled around for the assignment, and thankfully, we had our idea finalized. We decided to use the song, How the Grinch Stole Christmas and had our friend, Alec Walberg play the grinch. Through a series of comedic shots, we portrayed Alec to be just as mean as the Grinch himself. Abby Peek also made an appearance in our video, playing an adorable Cindy Lou Who. overall, Despite the slight time crunch, I believe our video was a success.

Montage

To understand the concept of montage, you must first appreciate the man who invented the technique: Sergei Eisenstein. Sergei began his career in an ideal moment in history, a time when cinematographers were utilized to relay to the general public the war that was happening around them. Sergei was a very gifted cinematographer, known for his 'intellectual montage' skills. his films, such asLa destrucción de Oaxaca (Documentary short) 

 1930Sentimental Romance (Short) (as S. M. Eisenstein) 

 1929Gore i radost zhenshchiny 

 1929The Storming of La Sarraz 

 1929Old and New 

 1928October (Ten Days that Shook the World) (as S. M. Eisenstein) 

 1925Battleship Potemkin (as S.M. Eisenstein) 

 1925Strike 

 1923

Dnevnik Glumova (Short) 


perhaps his most well known film, Battleship Potemkin represents one of his best works in development of the montage technique. Montage focuses on emotion, not time. Eisenstein spends ten minutes on a scene that only lasts two, just to demonstrate the general feelings of the people in it. Abby Peek and I decided to do our montage as a promo for our school's Musical, The Wizard of Oz. we wanted to not only capture the essence of the show, but resurrect a nostalgic emotion that everyone felt when they watched the movie as a child.