Worked it in to my first DEVELOPMENT:
Familiarise myself with all 3D packages – package the first – 3D Studio Max
Aztec Motion Graphic (Aztext!) from Matthew Wood on Vimeo.
Not quite fast enough with the text pushing through but I didn’t want to lose any of my 12-seconds-to-render-frames ((Aztec) god(s) help me when I need to edit frames that took hours to render!). And sorry I didn’t fade the music (which I got here – no copyright infringement intended, will immediately allow you to press the mute button if you contest ownership rights). Would have been nice to have a textured matte for the patterns crawling across the screen - just some notes I’m giving past me.
My brother is a champion of the oppressed, past tents. So he’s been reading up on indigenous peoples to be better informed for his next confrontation with an oppressive nation of the past.
He has a lot to say about oppression and discrimination. I don’t.
What do I have to say? A working – lower middle class white male, politically disenchanted. I feel as if I have no cultural grievances to highlight, my ‘voice’ lacks a history, it even lacks a personal history, no life lived is without its own tale but does my perspective contribute something new or worthwhile?
The answer is yes. I have overcome debilitating illness, I believe myself to have a good understanding of what it is to be human, I have my grievances to highlight, my loves to share, my own warped lens to cast over ....digital visual effects! I plan on honing (developing if you will) my skill in CG - live action integration and compositing, in the process I will try to find my voice.
An interesting note on Aztec slavery:
[One] method for a slave to recover liberty was described by Manuel Orozco y Berra in La civilización azteca (1860): if, at the marketplace a slave could escape the vigilance of their master, run outside the walls of the market and step on a piece of human excrement, and then present their case to the judges, who would grant freedom. They would then be washed, provided with new clothes not owned by the master, and declared free. Because a person who was not a relative of the master could be declared a slave for trying to prevent a slave's escape, people typically would not help the master prevent the slave's escape.‘washed’ because presumably they needed to preserve evidence for the trial. I found no such laws in the legislation of slaves in Britain, though I did find one case of Irish people being taken as slaves to Africa so my knowledge of slavery is not as well informed as I had thought...which was 'not very' in the first place.
Lifted from Wikipedia:
On 20 June 1631, in an event known as the Sack of Baltimore, the village of Baltimore in County Cork, Ireland was attacked by Algerian pirates from the North African Barbary Coast. The pirates killed two villagers and captured almost the whole population of over 100 people, who were put in irons and taken to a life of slavery in North Africa.
Guilt. That is to be my focus for now. I feel personal guilt very acutely, it burns my stomach and presses on my head, that’s why I hardly ever do anything wrong – I’m just not built for it (what is ‘wrong’? – ‘wrong’ is a discussion for another day) I don’t feel guilty for the slavery of people, because I had no part to play in slavery. I reap the benefits, as do many African Americans, as do every nation in the world; we build upon the foundations of our for-bearers, hopefully making progress - 'cept we're not on foundation any more...we're more like those Spanish houses with flat roofs so that you can build another floor when you get that big bonus (in this metaphor I think facebook will be our bonus and digitisation will be our bricks and mortar (people are going to be able to see in!)). But I do feel guilty for contemporary events not directly affected by me, probably because I could potentially contribute.
I’m going to abruptly cur(l) my tail there for because this is now more than a good A4’s worth of text I reckon. I may amend this post in the future once I have thought more on the subject, which, for those of you who weren’t paying attention, was:
‘you gotta step in shit to be free’
