Week 1: Final Project Idea

Did you know that in 1882, one of the first moving-image cameras was made in the shape of a gun? It was made by a a French scientist by the name, Étienne-Jules Marey - he passed in May 15, 1904, in Paris, France - two years after Georges Méliès’ mysterious sci-fi adventure of a film: A Trip to the Moon (1902).

The first moving images Marey made, used a fixed plate chronophotograph and the multiple exposed images still look beautiful today:

The camera he used, while it may be practical for it’s time, was not as beautiful looking, again, it was essentially a gun - you point and “shoot”, filmmakers today also call it a “shot”.

For my final project, I do not want to “shoot” people with a new gun camera, arguably like many filmmakers still do today - taking one’s pain on camera and displaying it for the world to see (I’m very guilty of this).

I want to take the relationship between the gun and camera, then extend it to exhibition so that the audience can understand the pain it took to gather the image, through the direct relationship with a weapon. I’ve made films for television with international broadcasters in the past and I want to repurpose the civil war footage I filmed to be displayed in what I feel is a more appropriate way.

Imagine standing and watching images of civil wars and mass murders around the world, then realizing the projector itself is a canon, it too is a weapon, used daily.

In short, I want to make film/video projectors that are shaped like weapons of war.

Week 2: Word Map

Here is research I’m doing on previous thoughts and other ways to link the gun with film:

• How else have artists explored this idea?

Week 3: Artillery models

Here is the artillery I am interested in remaking in this class, but for displaying the filme of damage it did to the people of Northern Somalia.

Week 5: Mid-terms content development (what film shall I project?)