In class last Friday, we received the assignment brief for the final in New Media class. The assignment is called “The Beehive Blender Project.”  The first step was to divide into teams of three, preferably with all the branches of the program represented (publishing arts, photography and graphic design).  Then Marc had every team submit an idea for a prop, character and line on the sticky side of a post-it. Facing the white board, each group picked from this newly created random group of props and such and there is now a video (also could be a series of slides) 1-2 minutes long due next week friday based on these three things.

My group has been assigned the task of making cohesiveness out of “Beer,” “SailorMoon, Champion of Justice” and “Are your legs tired? Because you’ve been running through my dream all night.”

Brainstorming

Initially, we all sat around and separately came up with ideas for the movie. I was practically married to one where SailorMoon is running through a forest and wakes up and realizes she is not SailorMoon and starts to cry.

Pete suggested we head to the whiteboard to do some better collaboration. (My last video, I felt a little disjointed because we didn’t come up with the idea as collectively — aka, I wasn’t there when we storyboarded for the second time.)

How to Brainstorm: (Just one method of many)

Firstly, divide up the “bones” of the project into lists where you say whatever comes to mind when thinking of that particular word/phrase. We had a word association list for “beer,” “SailorMoon,” “Legs tired?,” “Dream” and “All Night.”

Then, take that list and get rid of the ones that don’t resonate with some if not all team members. Some of them I wasn’t too keen on, but after an explanation from the people that liked it, it sparked a good deal of conversation and ideation. After you cull the list, each team member circle (or otherwise mark) two from each category that they especially like (more than one person can pick the same thing, for example, every one in the group picked the phrase “party people”).

Then stare at those phrases and keep trying to find connections between them. We had an idea for a hallucinatory informercial, Belgian SailorMoon and I mentioned puppets before we came onto the idea of “drinking party” which later morphed into “Secret Society Meeting.”

The Pitch

We presented our idea to Tim (because a staff member had to sign off on it, to guide us, to keep us safe from our own ideas) and he said that he was with us until we mentioned “beer and pictionary.” He said he was more intrigued by the “Secret Society” aspect, Eyes Wide Shut type of stuff and we should find ways to make everything ritualized. (To be fair, we had that idea, but we wanted to break down the severity with pictionary.)

The Party

(Pictured above) Aftermath of the party. We invited people to come over to my house for beer and fake rituals. It was perfectly attended. Ten people filled my living room nicely. We bought pizza, beer and candles. We made masks for each attendee. We played party games and had a bit of a trouble because one of our teammates, the one who borrowed a DSLR from the school, did not arrive (and wouldn’t– for good reasons, mind you, but at the time, we did not know if he’d show up later or what.). My housemate (and lifesaver) Jon brought his Go camera (or something named to that effect) and it’s a detachable helmetcam. At first, I was not sure why he brought it, our camera man would be arriving any minute, but around 8:30, it became the best idea ever.

Life is beautiful like that. Art is like that. At least for me anyways. If life spills ketchup on your canvas, make it blood. (I just came up with that… needs work, I know.) So, Jon got the shots we needed, we circled him, all of us wearing our haunting masks, eerie in their frozen gaiety, with a chandelier and a fireplace blazing with light.

Everyone was more than cooperative, seeing the humor in the fake rituals, everyone eager to do silly things. I think wearing the masks, the guests felt anonymized and in a way liberated and at the same time, united.

And this week, we’ll edit the footage, do some music over the top, add subtitles, and that will be the story of our success with the Beehive Blender Project.