Early Morning Ohio Countryside in Winter / Yost & Fraim
John Fraim
Using discovered own contents of photo images on my MacBook Air as my personal database of photos to draw from. This includes video clips, music and photos as well as voices filmed in live action or by VO.
For years, I’ve studied and written articles and books on symbolism. I was editor of the section of the once great online screenwriting magazine. Script. I wrote a regular column for the popular online publication for screenwriters. Irt was called Script Symbology (& can be found via searching these two words).
I’ve been exploring new ways of expression on a regular basis through my website Midnight Oil Studios as well as active participation in media and the work of Marshall McLuhan’s legacy, the Media Ecology Association.
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All three of the recent short films I’ve made have been almost a rejection of the Nolan spectaculars and the pursuit of his own inner needs rather than the “Heros” he creates in his films. This is in the view of many leading critics into the films he has made.
I’ve watched a wide range of films the past week from the French film Matryrs to the top gospel film I Can Only Imagine on Netflix. So many others in the past week. The terrible Last House last night and today the pr stunt of Netflix on Hollywood Blvd. in a live display ad fifty feet above everything. There is the insides of a home and a man has been up here for a few days now in the hot LA weather. People gather below the huge live PR student of Netflix. They need it very much.
Recently, in three short films from Midnight Oil, the decision was very differently made than most decisions made in creating a movie or narrative line of images or symbols.
All of the images in these films were already in my own photo library which is sadly the last place new cineamatographers and filmmakers, screenwriters and I increasingly suspect modern story tellers look at. The internal look. Their gaze today seems almost like a trance connection to the outside world at the avoidance of the inside world.
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The one thing I can say that I stand behind one hundred percent: all of the three short films below were created from media within our current computers or external hard drives. All were created with little planning. Nothing written down. Just a sense of what to put into each of these short films.
And here I am the author of the huge manuscript called Hollywood Safari we have yet tried to market. A form of “safari” through the main screenwriting theories in Hollywood so the up-and coming screenwriter will not follow some guru off the main course to the old ranch in the hills. The book attempts to give an over-view of all schools of screenwriting. My model for it was Management Safari by Henry Mintzerg.
The three short films were not really any of the various genres of film I discuss in Hollywood Safari. (Thanks so much to Heather for making this manuscript what it is). If anything, there was much serendipity and synchronicity that pulled the below images together. This made the process somewhat mysterious and even magical for me.
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The below are in the order I created them. My first attempt was New Albany (in the NE area of Columbus, Ohio) where we’ve been living for ten years. Recently bought a second home in Ft. Collins, CO. The film inspired by this slow drone shot I made over the town. I was wise enough in the first take on the drone camera to stay with the shot and continue downward until a type of milky dissolve into a camera on the front of a car that is traveling through a neighborhood on the left and the town golf course on the right. in the early covid years. The film is a mixture of video clips with photos with lettering over images. A story of a town is told;
The next was the association of the wind spirit (shot with the new DJI Mission 1 Pro I was testing Lapse photos with. Thanks to my Oscar winning cousin Dave for his advice on this. I decided to flip the cloud scenes so they would no longer seem from the world above, but the world below. Perhaps where they really should be placed. The great cycles of the year are expressed from above. Yet, they need ecpression from below. Here, almost like the steamy cauldron perhaps of some “withches brew.” It it really for the viewer to make this call. Where they really should be placed. Why is stormy interterall psychces of people Perhaps the swirling of the cloudy storms in the video.
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The last of the three short snippets of films is one totally put together when the muse of synchronicity takes over. This shot film is perhaps the most spontaneous of all the three films. I set out to test downloading files from my iPhone to my MacBook Air computer. Found footage of me filming a take-off at night from LAX. I copied and pasted elements together. The only AI used in the video is the image of Coltrane at the end of the video looking out the window.
This features this gracefulness and prayer music of John Coltane. Here, his most beautiful composition. His marriage to his first wife Naima in the mid-50s when Coltrane was fighting that always grand villain of lives called drugs and alcohol. Mixed with Coltrane’s genius for creating lyrics and melodies.
Here, a track from a Christian artist I’ve had in my music collection. Singing Naima perhaps the loveliest that I’ve ever heard it. I decided a time of reflection for Trane. On a jet flight to somewhere in the mid 60s. Now. Considering that first woman and wife in his life.
The video of taking off from LAX was copied a few times to make it longer. Google search brought in a few photos. AI created one of the images. All put together in less than ten minutes I would say.
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My ideas of these short narratives on life continues to develop. For the above three short slices of life in photos and film, where I am fso far. First looking to one’s internal content. The images and videos and music and voices I was drawing from came from within my own ecology of captured medi content.