Rafael Fajardo
Director, SWEAT collaborative
Associate Professor,
Emergent Digital Practices
University of Denver

 

Projects: Walking Behind Old People

Walking Behind Old People was the first attempt to collaborate with members of the first generation of SWEAT. I was attracted by the tight deadline and the technological challenge. The movie was made specifically for the Aggressively Boring Film Festival – the first ever for the class of hand held computers typified by the Palm PDA. While the resulting digital video did not win the jury prize, it did hold the lead in the popular vote for the first six months that the website was up.

A warning to those who would watch the movie. It is intended to drive the the viewer nuts. We subtitled the film “things that make you go ‘ARRRRRRRRRRGH!’”

Walking Behind Old People
2000
1.6 MB QuickTime™ Movie
320 x 240 x 70 sec (loop) greyscale silent
will load progressively then begin playing automatically and then loop indefinitely
Project Director: Rafael Fajardo (I initiated the project and proposed a colloborative process. I had the most experience of the group with digital video and so took a leadership role. We engaged in a brainstorming exercise where every collaborator offered a vignette for the overall work, and then a critique phaze where the vignettes were refined. Carmen made significant contributions to the narrative and then had to drop out because of family commitments. Tomás animated the bits that simulate a computer loading window. Francisco offered special effects expertise and fly-wrangling talents. Miguel was cinematographer. Ryan and Marco took on lighting and rigging tasks. I was director. In post production I guided the creation of a temporally asymmetric and syncopated rhythm for the piece. Miguel and Marco sat down to do the actual “cutting” in software. As a group we critiqued several iterations. I compressed the final product an uploaded it when it was done.)
Collaborators in writing and filming: Carmen Escobar, Tomas Marquez-Carmona, Ryan Benjamin Molloy, Francisco Ortega-Grimaldo, Marco Antonio Ortega, Miguel Angel Tarango