Goodbye

I don't know if anyone will read this, but I just wanted to say thanks to all of you for this last semester. As most of you know, I am going on my mission to Ukraine on May 18th. I never expected to be so blessed as to be admitted into my major and among so many talented people so soon in my college career.

You all really are very talented. I have been so humbled to see the works you produce and the way you think. Especially Nephi with your animations for storyboards, those blew my mind. Drew and Babetta too, you guys will go far with your talents.

I tend to learn by shutting up and watching what those around me are doing. You guys never disappointed in providing terrific insights and making me push my vision of the world.

To those who I have worked with, thank you for the amazing experiences. Fun times and enriching field experience, I loved every project. The last one was especially cool when I had the opportunity to work with Brenna and Mariana. And those of you that I never worked with, I regret not having enough time to get to know you better. You all had better be doing mind-blowing things with your education by the time I get back. I don't doubt that you will.

Amy, you have made a great class. It has been a very friendly environment, which is more than I can say for most of my classes this year. I have been challenged in each assignment. Overall, I have really enjoyed this experience. Good work with the educating.

Again, thank you all. It's been real. It's been cool. Thanks for letting me share in your media experience. Good luck to you all, and I hope to see most of you in 2013. Friend me on Facebook if you think of it.

-Brandon Porter

FINAL blog post

I feel very strongly that my final project really reflects who I am as a Mormon artist and shows a glimpse of my goals for future projects as a Mormon artist and as a member of the BYU film program. I feel very passionately about both my explicit and implicit projects for different reasons. My implicit project really comes from my heart. There is a lot of room for interpretation on the part of the audience. There is no specific sin committed that is overtaking the main character’s being. This open ended sin allows the audience to place themselves in the main character’s shoes because we have all been in a place like that before. We have all felt like our sins have gotten out of control and caused us deep despair that brings us to our knees. I really wanted the character to seem relatable and inspirational in the sense that his sins are forgiven him and they are also forsaken. My goal was to make the repentance process seem possible and worth the despair because we can be happy again if we repent and become clean. Personal interpretation is a huge part of my implicit piece which I hoped to intrigue the audience with.

My explicit project is a documentary about children’s view on the repentance process. This was slightly more difficult because the kids did not respond in ways that we were expecting. This is a lesson that we as young filmmakers needed to learn at some point—things do not always work out the way that you expect them to. Sometimes you have to go with the flow, make do, or maybe even change your story based on the material that you are able to capture. However, I feel like we were still able to capture the point of the documentary. I really wanted to show repentance through the eyes of children because of how spiritual and inspiring children are. All of these kids will one day have to repent if they have not already and it is important for them to know the importance of repentance as well. Also, there is a lot that adults can learn from children, even in the gospel and I wanted to exalt the children’s views and opinions because often times they are overlooked by adults even when they have such important things to say. Sometimes we just need to kneel down and listen, which was my goal of our explicit documentary.

Working in a group was extremely helpful and wonderful. I love collaborating on projects because I feel like the possibilities of the projects grow with the more people that are involved. I know that there is a lot that I need to learn that I can learn from working with my classmates so I really enjoyed collaborating on my ideas with my group members. It is always a pleasure to work with other aspiring Mormon artists and to incorporate all of our ideas really takes our projects to the next level.

Mormon Artist Response

Collin--I was very interested in hearing your father; a successful Mormon artist, talk about the hard work that it takes to actually be successful in writing. He was able to help me understand that most of the time success comes out of a lot of planning and sacrifice. I thought that you edited the interview quite well and showed us his work in a very visually interesting way and I just really enjoyed hearing about him. Thank you! Job well done!

Casen--I really loved your brothers work. I personally love the sky as well, so I can understand what he see's in it and why he chooses to photograph it. I thought that it was well edited and very fun and interesting to watch! It was a great example of art where you go for the things that feel good and right and focus on the things that give you joy and make you feel the spirit and through that, make others feel the spirit when they view you art.

#9 Extension

Hey, sorry, I forgot to comment on your presentations guys, but better late than never.

Casen- I really liked your presentation and even though you just used your brother, it didn't feel like he was a cop out artist. I would have even loved to have done a podcast about his work. Especially because its so unique. He's even more awesome than I thought. I really liked how you overlaid the part where he says he sees the world differently now over some really cool photos of landscapes that extenuate how unique the landscape can appear to be.

Rhonda- Can I just say that your artist was honestly my favorite of the day. At least your presentation was the most inspiring to me. He was a young mormon artist whose art makes more sense to him than I feel like mine has in a long time. I want to emulate what I saw when I raise my own children. He certainly wouldn't have such a unique creative talent at such a young age if it hadn't been cultivated in the right environment, and I think that says a whole lot about what a mormon artist really is.

Mormon Artist Reply

Rhonda: I loved your project! It was a unique and refreshing project to see your young son as a Mormon Artist. I was impressed with his spiritual maturity, his deep thinking, and his sculpting talent at such a young age. How old is your son? How long has he been modeling with clay? At this point in his life, does he want to pursue sculpting as an artist? Your project definitely stood out and caught my attention! Yours was so different than the rest of the interviews, which I think is a positive thing; it will not be easily forgotten.

Nicholas: What I really liked about your project is the questions you had prepared going into the interview. I like how you asked questions about how being a Mormon has influenced her artwork and then countering that with questions about how her artwork and perspective would be different if she wasn't a Mormon. I enjoyed hearing her responses because both answers were interesting. Part of what makes a Mormon Artist interesting is their set of beliefs that influence their art. I noticed the distinction between the two most readily in your interview. How do you know her? She is very talented!

Someone to read my draft

One of my biggest weaknesses in my writing is just plain old everyday grammar errors. So, if I don’t have someone look over my writing, I just end up looking like a total idiot. Luckily, I married a man who is kind of geniusey when it comes to writing and I’ve always had him check my work for basic grammar errors. But, when it comes to him checking whether the subject matter in my writing was strong or weak or what not, that’s a different matter, I tend to get a bit upset when I feel like he’s criticizing my work.

In the reading the author mentions the fear that people have that if someone looks at your writing that they might think that it was so bad that you would have to totally start over again. That is actually a huge fear for me. Having to take something that you have already written and completely change it is the scariest thing in the world to me and I’m not sure why.

I guess that at some point in my life I must have gotten the crazy idea that writing was something along the lines of an abstract painting; the kind where you throw a bunch of paint on a canvas and then just see what happens and where everything falls and that once all the splattered paint is in place that you can’t change anything because… then it wouldn’t be art. At some point I got the idea that the more planning and structure that you put into your writing the less magical or spiritual that it would be but that’s obviously not true.

Since I’ve been in the media arts program though, I’ve had the opportunity to have a lot of my work be viewed by other people and it was kind of hard at first but now I’ve come to really appreciate it because most of the time it is meant well and has actually helped me to do better work.

So, after reading the reading and after having experienced how valuable my peers’ feedback has been this semester, I’m going to try and be more open to showing my work to other people because all it can do is help me do better work.

9?!?!

Someone To Read Your Drafts is one of the best and potentially the most useful thing I've read this year. I am not much of a writer, myself, but I suddenly have the urge to write a story just so that I can find a person who fits well with me who will criticize my work honestly and gently. I remember Amy saying something about this a couple of weeks ago, telling us to, "Find someone whose work we admire and try to collaborate with that person."

This article tells us to find someone of our same level. That is a really good idea, come to think of it. I've always assumed that I want a professional to edit my work since that is what I aspire to. I think that it just may work out better for me in the long run if I am a bit more consistent in who I have edit my work. If it is someone who is learning and growing with me, they will be more likely to have the time to edit something I write, and will be much more understanding about my own shortcomings.

I think that collaboration is the greatest thing ever invented. I love piecing together a story with several other people whom I respect and admire. I have been doing this a lot lately, and feel that it increases the odds that the final creation is actually awesome. I always thought that if one person thinks a thing is cool, then it may be, or it may not be. But if two or three people think that the same thing is cool, odds are it actually is cool.

I like to cite Star Wars as an example of this. George Lucas did a ton of collaborating one the earlier IV V and VI films years ago. He did not direct the fifth or sixth films, and had a lot of help with the creation of his story. However, on the more recent films I, II and III, he is listed as the sole writer, director and executive producer of all three films. Let me just say that I did not enjoy the more recent three films near as much as I did the initial three. Collaboration. That’s where it’s at.