FINAL PROJECT -- What’s Inside the Box?
December 5, 2004
Collaboration, Compromise, & Completion...
The week after we presented our second projects, I met Praveen Ayyagari. We knew each other from class, but never actually shook hands, or said “nice to meet you,” or anything until that Monday after class in the ACTLab. He suggested working together on Project 3. I thought it was a great idea. We would be able to get a lot more accomplished, and hopefully end up with a much better project, if we worked as a team. I also had enjoyed his first two projects, and knew we would be able to make something great.
We started working on it immediately. We had a pretty good general idea of what we wanted, but actually making it happen would be a long and difficult process. We started by listing everything we could remember, and then spent several days putting it all in a rhyme. At first, it was a country song. Then, something a little more folksy. Finally (and luckily), we decided to go with a rap. Praveen’s friend, Mix Master Martin, created a beat, and built on it with other sounds (the coolest of which was an accident, where his roommate turned on the sink while we were recording). We recorded the vocals at his house – a few times – and on the Sunday before Thanksgiving, had a final cut of the song. We thought we had the hardest part behind us, until we started work on the video. After hours of planning, getting costumes, figuring out shots, drinking, making props (thanks Alex), coordinating people and places, practicing, and then actual shooting, we realized we only had about a minute’s worth of usable footage. It was at about this point that I freaked out. “We’ll never finish. We don’t have time. This is impossible. Let’s just do something else.” I said all this, over and over. Praveen kept his cool: “We will, man. It’s okay. We got a lot done tonight. We still have plenty of time. We will finish this. And it will be awesome.” So we kept at it, and worked our asses off until it was time to leave for Thanksgiving break. We came back and jumped right into editing. Capturing all our footage (about 3.5 hours) took forever, and caused several problems (one of which resulted in me getting an early Christmas present – my external hard drive). Once we sat down to edit, we realized we had grossly underestimated what it took to make a rap video. Still, we worked our asses off. We’d go at it together on some parts, and then one of us would take a break while the other one worked on another sequence. After approximately 40 full hours of editing, 7 or 8 Red Bulls, and at least 3 packs of cigarettes, the project was done (give or take about 5 seconds).
So here is our “finished-enough” product. It’s not exactly the way we wanted it, and we will continue to perfect it, but it’s close enough for now. What it is, is the black box of Blackbox. People will ask us (you and me) what this class was about, and I don’t think we’ll be able to give any sort of explanation that makes any sense. So Praveen and I just listed it all off – everything – in rhyming words, put it to a catchy beat, paused to make fun of a few projects and a few people, and made a pretty phat video to go along with it. Whether you understand it or not, I hope you enjoy it. The class sure was fun.
