Pi and A Serious Man: Two Films that Challenge the Quest for Meaning

Since I'm done with trying to make sketches for now, I'm going to use this blog to tell you guys about some of my favorite movies. Two of these movies, A Serious Man and Pi, both challenge the need for us to figure out what many consider to be the most important question in existence: What is the meaning of life? Now, by endorsing these films I'm not necessarily advocating their message. In fact, I love thinking about all of the why's in life. Still, these films are very enjoyable and thought provoking. And they don't really criticize the search for meaning, but rather the obsession of searching.

A Serious Man (directed by the always amazing Coen brothers) is an absolutely hilarious film. The story itself is like a modern-day retelling of the book of Job. The film follows Larry Gopnik, a middle-aged father of two, as his life quickly begins to fall apart. Larry reaches out to three rabbis to find out why he is suffering for seemingly no reason. Without spoiling the plot, I'll just say that the key message of the film comes from the third rabbi. When Larry's son Danny is speaking to the rabbi, the rabbi begins repeating the lyrics of the famous Jefferson Airplane song Somebody to Love. This scene is incredibly funny, but it contains an important message towards the end. The rabbi's answer to the question of "'When the truth is found to be lies and all the hope within you dies' then what?" is to "be a good boy". This is a message which I can support. No matter what the meaning of life turns out to be, it can't hurt to try to be a moral individual. The humor coupled with the message makes this one of my top 5 movies I've ever seen.

Pi is on another end of the spectrum. There is nothing funny about it and it will really get your mind working. There is a lot of uncertainty about reality found in Pi. If you like films that aren't as linearly structured as your typical movie, then you would probably really enjoy Pi. The soundtrack from the film is also really enjoyable. The music really goes with the scenes, and it all comes together to form a very stylistic whole. While A Serious Man focuses a lot on finding answers through religion, Pi is more concerned with finding answers through mathematics (There is religion involved, but it plays a lesser role than in A Serious Man). The end result is largely the same as A Serious Man. Again, without giving too much away, the message of the film is to live life rather than spend it lost in the search for meaning. Pi differs slightly in that it exalts the importance of finding pleasure in life rather than being a moral individual, but the basic message is still the same.

What I've Learned

So I haven't posted in a long while. This is partly because of my overheating issue with my laptop, and partly because of schedule conflicts. But since it is the end of the semester and I still don't have enough posts on my blog, I will be doing a few more posts. These posts will be keeping with the theme of the blog (movies), but will be about movies I've seen rather than movies I'm trying to make.

In regards to making videos, I've learned just how hard it is to get a group of people together in order to film a skit. I have plenty of rough drafts of sketches, but none of them are really up to the quality I was shooting for. Part of that is my fault. I still haven't found a good way to film indoor scenes. I just never can seem to get the lighting right. Another part of that is due to the fact the majority of my friends just can't act. When they are on camera they just freeze up. Anyway, I'm not letting that get me down. It has still been a lot of fun filming what we did do, and that's all that matters to me. Maybe some day this summer we'll actually get something that I could post online, but for now I'll just be content with the fact that we had fun trying.

Birds, Birds, and More Birds

I have recently discovered that birds are fun to film. I have no idea why. Maybe it's because, being a beginner at all of this, filming them is still a challenge for me, or maybe it has something to do with how easy it is to find birds. Like I said, I have no idea why I like filming them, I just do. Anyway, they serve as a great marker for my improvement in filming. As you may recall from one of my previous posts, I took a video of a robin that was very shaky and somewhat out of focus. It was very difficult for me to film it with a tripod, so I ended up just going without it. Over my spring break, I decided that I would try to film some birds using my tripod. At first, it was difficult. Whenever I tried to get to close to the birds, they would simply fly away. It didn't help that the birds would only remain in the same location for a very brief period of time. Usually by the time I had my camera actually mounted to the tripod, the birds would have already moved on to another branch, this time far out of my camera's reach. To fix this problem, I ended up leaving my camera connected to my tripod and keeping them in reach of my back porch. As a result, I was able to capture several different kinds of birds without them ever knowing I was there. They still would move fairly often, but I managed to get three decent shots of the birds standing still:

The first bird I was able to capture was a blue jay. Although my view of him was obstructed by branches, I was still able to maintain a decent level of focus on him.

I'm pretty sure the birds in this next video are a type of pigeon. Once again, a small branch was in my way. The branch was a lot less of a problem compared to the ones in the previous video, but it still made a difference. I was just happy to have been able to film two birds sitting next to each other. I've never been able to film that before.

This final video is of a cardinal sitting on a tree branch. Fortunately, no other branches were in the way this time. The cardinal spends most of the video sitting with his back to the camera. Towards the end, however, he turns to face the camera and chirps. At the end, the cardinal flies away.

I'm going to be filming more wildlife in the following weeks, so stay tuned for more videos....

Post-Break Update

For those of you reading, you may have noticed that I haven't posted anything since the beginning of my spring break. Unfortunately, my laptop just hasn't been able to handle the stress of editing videos. It has been overheating to the point where it just shuts off entirely whenever I do pretty much anything graphically intensive on it. So, I've just had to let all my videos sit on my video camera. 

Pictured Above: What happens when I try to get anything done

I did a bunch of research and found out that my type of computer is notorious for its overheating issues. Both the GPU and CPU in my laptop are coated with a special kind of thermal paste. This paste prevents both parts from becoming too hot. Here's the problem: Asus, the company who made my laptop, is known for their shoddy pasting jobs. The thermal paste that they used was simply not applied correctly. Thus, I'm left with a half-functioning laptop. Fortunately, the problem can be fixed relatively cheaply, so I lucked out there. In the meantime, I have temporarily fixed the issue by updating my video drivers and spraying out the fans with condensed air. I am in the process of uploading all my videos right now, so I should have multiple posts up by sometime tomorrow.

Spring Break

Spring Break is almost here, which means I will be hard at work filming several videos. First of all, I'm going to go up on Monte Sano to try to film the goats again. I was disappointed in the fact that I wasn't able to get closer to them, but hopefully this time will be different. Secondly, I have at least one sketch idea that I want to get filmed. My friend Michael, who will play the lead in this sketch, will finally be available for filming. If any of you have been keeping up with my previous posts, this will be the sketch involving the suit that Michael had left at his dorm. Finally, I will be teaming up with my friend Daniel to shoot a music video for a band. One of my favorite bands, The Mars Volta, is having a video contest for a song off their upcoming album, Nocturniquet. The winner gets a gift card to Best Buy, merchandise from the band, and most importantly, recognition from the band. I have a good feeling about the idea we have for the video, I'm just worried that we won't be able to find a suitable location in time. I'm linking the song down below for anyone who wants to check it out.

Goats!

This past weekend I went hiking up on Monte Sano, like I had mentioned in my previous post. The trip was an overall success. I ended up finding the goats that I had wanted to film, and even managed to get a few good shots of them. But more on that later.

Before setting out for the mountain, I took a few practice shots in my backyard to try to get used to the outdoor lightning on my camera. I found that late afternoon/early morning were the two best times for shooting outdoors, since the glares caused by the sun are a lot less harsh around those times.

The first video was an easy one. Just a clip of my dog laying down in the sun. Her complacency made it extremely easy to get a nice, stable shot of her:

The second series of clips were a little more difficult to film. I chose to film some birds in my backyard. All of these videos were zoomed in almost to max, because I could not get too close to the birds without them flying away. As a result, I shake the video camera a little too much than I would have liked. Still, I believe that I was still able to get some decent shots:

Finally, at around 3:00 p.m., my friend Cole and I headed up to the mountain in search of goats. After only about 30 minutes of hiking, we found them. This early success led me to believe that the hard part was over, and that the rest was going to be incredibly easy. I was very wrong. The goats, likely seeing us as predators, made sure to place a great distance between themselves and us at all times. Every time we took a few step forward, no matter how carefully placed those steps were, they quickly bounded off into the distance. Realizing that we had to change tactics, Cole and I separated so that we could corner them. Fortunately for us, it worked. Cole was able to scare the goats right to me. Unfortunately for us, I had forgotten to start recording when they bolted towards me. At this point, the goats decided to change tactics too. They hid directly underneath the rock face we were on top of. Seeing this opportunity present itself, I decided to climb down the mountain while Cole stayed up above the goats. After I made my way down to the goats, I found a decent hiding spot and began filming. In my mind, I was going to stealthily make my way towards the goats, so that I didn't have to rely solely on an extended zoom. Unbeknownst to me, however, Cole had grown impatient of waiting. He had also climbed down the rock face. Cole was able to bridge the distance between the goats and himself to a mere 10 feet, something that I was in the process of trying to do. If he had been the one with the camera, our footage would have been much more clearer than it is now. So what did Cole do with this extraordinary opportunity? He scared them. In an attempt to chase the goats towards me, Cole let out a series of yells, which caused the goats to go fleeing not towards me, but in a parallel line towards safety. It was then that I decided that the goats had had enough excitement for the day. We packed our things and headed home.

Although we didn't exactly get the shots that we wanted, we ultimately succeeded in getting what we came for. I was able to improve my grasp on outdoor lighting and even got a few semi-decent shots of three goats in the process. Plus, we now know what does and doesn't work when trying to film wildlife. Hopefully, this little excursion has made us much more prepared for round two.

Baby Steps

Since I have decided to wait until Spring break for most of my filming, I'm temporarily shifting my focus to filming techniques rather than actual material for sketches. This weekend, I will be hiking up on Monte Sano Mountain in Huntsville, AL. I will be bringing my camera along in hopes that I'll be able to shoot some visually appealing shots. I have hiked on this particular many times before, so I have some particular shots in mind that I want to capture.

A stream up on Monte Sano

For starters, I would like to be able to film some deer while I'm up there. There is a trail I take that usually has a good amount of them. Hopefully, the weather will be nice enough for them to come out. Secondly, even though I am deathly afraid of them, it would be cool to film some snakes. I have (fortunately) rarely ever seen a snake up on Monte Sano, so I doubt I'm going to be able to capture one on film. Finally, I 'd like to be able to film the goats that live on the mountain. Fortunately, I know a place a little ways off a main trail where the goats will gather from time to time. I've tried to get several videos/pictures of them before, but every time I have the opportunity I have only had my iPhone with me.

Extremely grainy photo of goats

It's kind of hard to tell that there are goats in the above picture. The first one's head and neck in poking out from behind the tree (it has a black head and a white body). The other goat is directly above it in the picture, standing on a rock face (it is mostly brown, with a dash of white).