My Digital Essay!

So, as you know my essay and video were both about the poem, Bluebird, by Charles Bukowski. After debating whether or not to do an animation or using real people, I finally decided on doing an animation-despite my awful transitioning. In my first attempt, I tried drawing out each scene trying to capture motion after motion, then photograph each page and turn it into a flipbook of sorts. However, I was not just short on paper but exhausted from having to recreate the same scene 50 times with exact precision all so I can change one hand gesture. So, I scrapped what I had. Then, I moved towards an online drawing pad and tons and TONS of screenshots. Not only did it make the process much quicker, but it also made it cleaner.

As for the video itself, it is very short. At first I thought of using a reading of the poem as an audio backdrop, but it was too distracting for my actual flipbook. So, I decided to create a small little scene where Bukowski is reading a book and smoking his cigarette as he is leaning on tree, perhaps in a park somewhere. The bluebird slowly emerges, singing happily. Once Bukowski sees the bluebird, he gets annoyed and asks “who let you out of your cage?” In the final scene, I drew the bluebird being forced back into its cage, sobbing. I then thought it was fitting to put the last phrase of Bukowski’s poem: “I don’t weep/do you?”

It may not make a whole lot of sense unless you actually read the poem, but I’m hoping that through the last phrase I can get my audience to think. I tried to stay away from the idea of social norms and gender roles because not only did I discuss them in my essay, but I knew that in visual form they may be entering cliche territory. So, I hope that this imaginative and somewhat literal representation of the poem will you get you thinking.

Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=OT3FRQXvrmg