The opening poem in Breakdown: Banjo Poems gets a video at last! And for once, there’s no banjo (or banjo-like instrument) in the soundtrack at all, for obvious reasons. I played around with industrial noises for a while, but ultimately settled on something much more angelic, courtesy of a young Irish composer of film and video scores named Steven O’Brien who gives his work away on SoundCloud under an attribution-only Creative Commons license. This particular track, interestingly enough, was used in a humor video that went viral, True Facts about Morgan Freeman. Given the god-like powers attributed to Mr. Freedman in that video, if any viewers of this videopoem are reminded of that, so much the better.
The imagery comes from a World War II propaganda film made by Warner Bros. for the U.S. Maritime Commission (and therefore in the public domain): A Ship is Born, directed by Jean Negulesco. I am indebted to Rachel for the suggestion to try using shipbuilding imagery for this poem.
OTHER POSTS IN THE SERIES
- Catskin Banjo (videopoem)
- Medicine Show (videopoem)
- Shackleton’s Banjo (videopoem)
- The Banjo Apocalypse (videopoem)
- The Silent Banjo (videopoem)
- How Jefferson Heard Banjar (videopoem)
- Banjo vs. Guitar and Out of Tune (videopoems)
- Luck (videopoem)
- Banjo Origins (3): Jesusland
- The Fifth String (videopoem)
- Banjo Proverbs (videopoem)
- The Banjo Apocalypse
- Medicine Show (1)
- How Jefferson Heard Banjar
- Catskin Banjo
- The Dueling Banjo
- Medicine Show (2)
- Open-Backed Banjo
- Banjo vs. Guitar
- Banjo Origins (1): The American Instrument
- Luck
- Medicine Show (3)
- Banjo Proverbs
- Banjo Origins (2): The Fifth String
- Medicine Show (4): A Spell to Ward Off Banjos
- The Silent Banjo
- Sugar Baby
- Banjo Origins (3): Jesusland
- Medicine Show (5): Shackleton’s Banjo
- Where Bluegrass Comes From
- Becoming Banjo
- The Fretless Banjo
- Out of Tune
- Ohio man accused of killing wife with banjos
Love this, Dave. I have yet to venture into video poetry. could you point me in the right direction?
Thanks, Dick. I guess my list of free online resources would be the best place to start: http://discussion.movingpoems.com/web-resources-for-videopoem-makers/ I’ve been doing these banjo videopoems exclusively with found footage, and also using the quite primitive video editing software on my machine, Windows Movie Maker, which I believe is slightly less advanced than iMovie if you have a Mac, or Quicktime. I use Audacity, which is free to download, for audio mixing. I have a somewhat pricey microphone, a Zoom H2, for recording my readings, though the first three were done just with the microphone on a Logitech webcam, and I thought they were adequate (though Rachel, with her background in radio, felt otherwise).
I don’t think these videos actually sell many more books; that’s not the point, for me. The point is they represent a new form of creative endeavor involving poetry, and they’re a blast to make!