For my final project I thought it would be a good idea to combine my first and second project. Not knowing exactly how I wanted to approach this task I decided to create a little commercial for joining the National Civilian Security Force.  I wanted to make a satire of the police state and of the real potential for a National Civilian Security Force.

I find the Police State to be a very uncanny thing because of the attitude that has been adopted concerning it. For the most part or at least from my point of view, the youth today are extremely passive and apathetic when it comes to politics. It disturbs me to no end that people are willingly accepting this omnipresent authoritarian grid being formed around them. Fear is the guiding tool used to convince the masses that they are weak and need a strong powerful central government to keep them safe from the “enemy”. The duality that exists in people’s heads is particularly uncanny. The fact that people know the government and media are lying while simultaneously behaving in a way that they believe it to be true. There is a mass psychosis occurring in which people’s consciousness is intentionally being suppressed to the point that they base their opinion on something that is well established and seemingly comforting. This is why I believe art and satire is so potent because it is able to reach people on different levels of consciousness. “The artist must ever play and experiment with new means of arranging experience, even though the majority of his audience may prefer to remain fixed in their old perceptual attitudes.” -Marshall McLuhan

Experimenting with new means of arranging experience is what I am trying to achieve with this film. By combining the nostalgic forms of super 8 and silent film with a modern issue, I am simply breaking down a rather serious and daunting concern into a comedic yet potent critique of what is actually transpiring. We do indeed have a socio-economic draft in place where the majority of people entering the military are poor and minorities. This trend will only continue to rise as people become even more enslaved from this economic collapse. Our "shadowy masters" like to use the Hegelian dialectic on the masses by having a thesis/problem then antithesis/reaction and then synthesis/solution.  Present a problem, anticipate the reaction and offer up the solution. Crisis precipitates change as the old saying goes.

I shot this film using two rolls of super 8 film. Then I self developed them and transferred them digitally. I inverted the negative image and used color correction to get a better looking exposure. I then edited the film in final cut. For final presentations I then re-transferred the edited copy back to super 8 film by filming my computer screen as the negative image of the film played. That way when I developed the film using the negative process I would actually come out with a positive image.  Please enjoy!