This digital essay did not turn out as I originally planned whatsoever. I had this idea that I was going to do a clay animation but as I got my materials assembled, my mini clay Amiri Baraka created, and my space for shooting set up I realized how difficult it actually is to make a stop motion animation. I didn’t realize it takes a lot of time and a lot of tools just to make a two minute video. Also, my mini Baraka ended up falling apart a couple of times because the clay wasn’t sturdy enough and I eventually gave up trying to hold him in place as I shoot and instead I used my hands to prop him up (as you can probably tell from a few pictures). Also, I didn’t know how to remove the incorrect time stamp at the bottom of the pictures so please ignore that and the fact that the voice recording is not timed precisely to each scene.
If it’s anything I’ve learned from this project is that I am not a tech-oriented person at all. I love seeing the outcome of videos and digital presentations however, the process of making this was near miserable for me especially when I realized I actually couldn’t find the right software to edit everything and I had to change my plans last minute in order to work with what I already have. Instead of venting about my frustrations in making this, I will now explain what I did exactly.
The first two scenes with the clay Baraka shows a literal interpretation of the poem “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note.” There’s a scene of the ground opening up and literally eveloping him, walking the dog, and then counting the stars. I included the years 1957 and 1961 because that was the period of time Baraka took to publish his first series of poems. The last part of the slide is directly from the movie Tree of Life in the Formation of Life “Lacrimosa” scene. This scene occurs right in the middle of the movie when a conversation suddenly stops and shifts into this 20 minute montage of what is presumably the big bang billions of years ago, black holes, death of smaller stars all in order to create the universe. This is the interpreted symbolism part of the digital presentation because my theme involves Baraka’s emotional suicide of shifting his beliefs in order to become a new person. The big bang is a form of “suicide” that involves shifting matter in order to create something new. Also, I decided to include that part of the slide at the end because at the end of the poem, Baraka mentions faith while watching his daughter pray and that reminded me of the fact that the big bang is after all just a theory and it has become so popular in science and in pop culture because we all have the faith to believe thats how the universe was actually created.
