Fireside Chat

Fireside Chat Artist’s Statement

 After we first talked about the Fireside Chat during class, I went and read the assignment description. It makes no mention of belief. It simply describes the performance of a (more or less) scripted story accompanied by media. So I went off, thinking of a good story to tell. I settled on one and began planning things out. Later in class we talked again, and this representation of belief came up. This threw me for a loop at first. What? I have to embed my story with some sort of belief? Crap. Then, I realized how stupid I was being. It came to my attention that nearly every story is founded around a belief of some kind or another. That’s why we tell them.

 Beliefs come in all different forms. They may be large and all encompassing, or small and detailed. They can be blatant, as in the series of pictures from our reading of people praying to many different gods, or they can be subtler as in I Stand Here Ironing. In thinking about the story I wanted to tell, it became clear to me that it was laced with several of my beliefs. They were concrete, they were there, and they meant something in my life. The beauty was, the more I thought, the more beliefs I though of and realized how many things you could take away from a seemingly goofy, and somewhat crass tale.

 My story was kind of inherently funny, as “bad date” stories often are. I chose to play off that as much as possible, and tried to turn my performance into a sort of stand-up comic routine. Obviously it’s a little different, and I’m no stand-up comedian, but I based some of my mannerisms of comedians I like, such as Jim Gaffigan. The thing I hesitate to reveal, as I don’t know if people would be relieved or disappointed, is that my story was not entirely true. It is in fact a culmination of multiple true experiences I have gone through. The fact that I did this could represent several of my different beliefs, the most prominent here probably being that your little experiences in life mash and collide together to make you who you are. There are others, but I’ll leave it to my audience to decide what they think the belief is… or to just sit back and laugh. That’s cool too.

 Creating my story was a lot of fun, albeit nerve-wracking. As usual, the vague assignment description led to a certain lack of confidence. Was my media sufficient? Is the story beliefy enough? Is it what I’m supposed to be doing? As with most of the assignments in this class, I would come around to the feeling yet again, that I loved the vagueness; for the Fireside Chat in particular.

 That vagueness resulted in a wide array of varying performances. Every single student’s presentation was different. I absolutely loved the Fireside Chat. I’ve never felt closer, or more interested in my classmates; every story, personal or not, felt like a deep glimpse into their lives, and obviously their beliefs. I have gotten to know these people over the course of this semester and this was a fantastic culmination to the whole experience. I thoroughly enjoyed it despite the fear and panic felt right before performing. But it was okay, because you knew everyone else was feeling the same way. It really brought us together, was completely entertaining and was a perfect culmination of the course in my opinion. I just hope whoever is grading me liked my story.

Concerned Citizen

Concerned Citizen Artists’ Statement

            After having cycled through a couple of ideas, we finally came to choose Christopher Allen as the subject for our piece, whom Elise only came in contact with a day or so before we filmed him.  It was a huge stroke of luck for us, since Christopher most exemplified the idea of a concerned citizen out of all our possible subjects by far.

            Chris lives here in Provo and is a student at BYU.  After having been raised in a conservative family, Chris found that his own opinions differed from his upbringing, and has since found a calling of sorts to advocate his beliefs by interacting heavily with his community through different means. He vlogs, attends clubs, groups, and rallies with the same beliefs, and even occasionally gives impromptu speeches at these rallies. 

            As discussed in class, we tried to keep in mind throughout both filming and editing that our piece was not about the issues being advocated by our subject, but solely about our subject and how he interacts with his community as a result of his beliefs.  This was more difficult than it sounds.  Chris is very passionate about his beliefs, and was very willing to express his opinions extensively, and we were willing to listen.  A solid amount of our footage is Chris doing this very thing and it was sometimes hard not to use it simply because it was such a bulk of our content, and because it showed so much about Chris’s character. Nonetheless, we’re pretty confident that in the end, our video simply presents the subject and his activism and does not focus on the beliefs themselves. 

            There are plenty of documentary films out there that are strongly pushing a certain ideology, some so much so that it’s a little overwhelming, even to the point of it feeling negative.  We obviously didn’t want to do this, mainly because the assignment doesn’t call for it.  We wanted to approach our piece with an air of positivity, but without having it lean one way or the other with regards to the opinions expressed by our subject.  In a way, it’s sort of like the “I’m a Mormon” ads, and not just because our subject says that line.  That’s a coincidence.  But our piece presents the subject, lets him express his beliefs, and shows the various ways in which he does so.  The lack of music is actually very significant to keeping this piece neutral, because music tells you how to feel and when to feel it.

            In our reading this last week, Goldbard says, “…artists are pointing the way to what is emerging: a new understanding of reality grounded in human stories and connection…” Though it might be a bold claim, I would say that this is the purpose of our Concerned Citizen project.  Despite the fact that our goal is not to advocate the beliefs directly being presented by the subject, we are still advocating a set of beliefs.  Our presentation may have an air of neutrality, but by simply depicting someone so actively involved in their community, we are advocating such involvement and activism, no matter the belief.  In this way, we as the artists are attempting to create “a new understanding” by grounding it in a human story, as Goldbard suggested.