(2001, Fantasy / Surreal, 15m:40s)
Thomas, a college student, faces a crisis of personality. Inside his mind, he is confronted by two opposing sides of his character. He must reconcile the dichotomy, before he loses control.
James Ofsink, Sergio Rodrigues and I made "Dichotomy" as our final project for the 2001 Media Studio class at Harvey Mudd College. This being the largest video project that I'd ever participated in, it was quite a daunting task. But, in the end it was a great experience.
The concept for the video came from our desire to metaphorically express some of the struggles we had in trying to do creative and artistic works in a very technical environment (HMC being fundamentally a hardcore math, science, and engineering school). We wanted to permeate the video with this conflict using strong contrasts in the visuals, music, and dialog. Though, at the same time, we wanted to present the contrasts as artificial, where the implication was a more natural state of balance could exist.
We spent a lot of time thinking of metaphors to use for each side of the dichotomy, as well as how to execute those metaphors. The writing process was particularly challenging, as the dialog was (by design) very unnatural. Furthermore, the constant switching between technical and lyrical speaking was a recipe for writer's block. We probably erred on the side of too much dialog, though this was partly by design as we wanted the dialog to add texture to the work, like music. Pulling specific plot points from the dialog is less important than letting it blur into the whole. At least, that was the hope.
We had some experience from "Test Run" in doing visual effects, but there was still a lot to learn for what we wanted to accomplish in "Dichotomy". Our biggest obstacle between vision and product was probably in only using 2D effects. 3D was beyond our knowledge, time, and resources. Even so, we used what 2D knowledge and resources we had to have fun creating the visual dichotomy from the footage. We also learned lightning effects can be very addictive.
Many sleepless nights went into this production, though unfortunately they didn't result in a finished product to present to our audience at the Media Studio final show. We did have some semblance of scenes, with fast-forwarding and tape-jockeying along the way. It was fairly well received, and upon talking with people afterwards it seemed to have provoked thought and kept people interested, even though it was unfinished.
After the showing, the main obstacle to finishing "Dichotomy" was shooting a new ending scene. Our original ending scene involved the sudden introduction of a couple of new characters, including Thomas' girlfriend, as he awoke from his journey. Back during the showing this scene prompted some laughs from the audience, which was understandable given its incongruity. The new scene portrays better our desired sense of the rejoining of Thomas.
After delays due to class loads and work on our next production, "Reflections of Self", "Dichotomy" was finally finished around the summer of 2002.
All of the video in this piece we shot or created. However, as you can see in the credits above, we used several copyrighted songs. We don't hold any copyrights on those songs.
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