The Game of Imitation

VIDEO DESCRIPTION:

Play, download and edit the free video The Game of Imitation.

By David Yang, Mike Shao, Ejin Jeong, Jake Leary

Artist Statement:
For this week’s childhood scene assignment, we depict a little boy’s attempts to court his classmate by imitating movie scenes. The boy wants to get the attention of the girl he likes, so he tries to find help from the internet. After finding “guidelines” from classic movie scenes (Love Actually’s cue cards, Say Anything’s boombox serenade, and Heroine Disqualified’s “Kabe-don” scene), he tries them out for himself. Unlike his expectations, the girl simply rejects all his advances and he becomes discouraged of learning from pop culture.

Children are innocent and are easily left an impression to. We wanted to show how easy it is for children to turn to adults as an example and imitate their actions, and how pop culture can be misleading. It can create unrealistic ideas about topics like love. Even adults who consume pop culture daily are prone to be misled. We wanted to show how what happens in movies like the ones shown does not actually translate into real life. The truth is that real life, especially with love, for an adult is not as easy as it appears in films or in the eyes of children.

We brainstormed and filmed the project together, and Jake edited the final shots. We experimented with techniques like high and low angles to show the power dynamic between teacher and children, as well as film within a film.

Song Credit: "Every Breath You Take" by The Police

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