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archived-vidoes Can an animal killing make a good art film. WARNING: GRUESOME CONTENT.

Wow. That was gggrrruuusome.

I'm not sure animal killing can be good art. They did kill an animal in Apocalypse now. But it didn't feel quite so personal, the way the animal died. This almost felt like murder

I'm not passing judgment. I grew up in a religion where this happens once a year, to honor Abraham trying to sacrifice his son but failing. I can tell you, you get numb to it, after watching it over and over as you grow up. You don't even think about it. But I haven't seen it in a while, and it felt kind of terrible watching it. I can only imagine what someone who has never seen something like that can feel. I cannot imagine it as art. As a documentary maybe of how we kill the things we eat :(
 
I didn't delete it, it's still on the other post in the Welcome forum. This is a different post, we're now in the Screening Room. lol.
 
Not said:
And hey! Cool Videos. What kind of war film you making? I understand war is a pretty disgusting thing, even worst than my video.
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It's called fiction! There is no way to compare those. What you do isn't filmmaking. It's called pointing a camera at slaughter! Yes, it's a way for families to stay alive and they need to kill animals to do that, but to try and sell it as an art film? NO!
 
Anything can be art. Would that make a good art though? Nope. In my opinion it's highly pretentious, truly disgusting and inhumane to take a life for the sake of "art" and if I'd see an "artist" showing his video of how he is slaughtering an animal for the name of art - i'm personally going to beat the f**k out of them because it is crossing the line.

Your video is a typical home video. Nothing really to talk or think about. Cool. You ate a pig.

I have no problem with the video, because the animal was killed so people can eat, but if you've killed an animal with a sole purpose to make "art" - i'd be concerned about your mental health (and that is not a joke).

I'd suggest to add a disclamer in your original post "documenting an animal slaughter for dinner", not just "Gruesome content".
 
See the thing is, you're clearly excited about the 'gruesome content' of 'animal killing'. So, rather than being a potentially interesting cinematic document about the Latin American butchery practices, this is, instead, an insanely violent piece of, regrettably, pointless theatre.

I think your intentions are good and I know that you just filmed this as any interested observer would. But what you should learn about documentary filmmaking is that it's just like narrative filmmaking- tell a story. What you do it you linger on the spectacle of animals being killed and bleeding. That's not interesting except on a human/social/emotional level. But you don't address that level, instead you just photograph the animal dying.

I'm not saying you've done a bad job, I just think you should try and make documentary films more about the response and consequence, rather than the immediate shock impulse.
 
High school is plenty old enough for you to know that posting a graphic slaughter of a pig is going to get some harsh replies. I suspect you might've been going for that.

I also believe that you were honestly trying to send a message with this film. You let your artistic flag fly, using symbolism and other such stuff.

But it was lost on me. I don't have the slightest idea what you're trying to say with this film. Maybe that's cuz all I could focus on was the poor pig being slaughtered.

You wanna connect with your audience? You might try toning-down the sheer repulsion factor.
 
personally i dont think it does.

slaughtering an animal for food is a necessity, not a spectacle for someone with a video camera.

by filming it and calling it art you disrepect the contribution the animal is making for the person needing the food.
 
darty said:
....by filming it and calling it art you disrepect the contribution the animal is making for the person needing the food.
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I agree that this is the fundamental "truth".


Friedrich Nietzsche said:
We have our Arts so we won’t die of Truth.
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Everyone understands that life feeds off life, it's a basic truth and tenet of the brutality of living. Art, and it's earlier incarnations; magic and myth, could be argued (and has been) to have been conceived to help mankind resolve this issue of killing in order to live...like pretty coping mechanisms.



As mentioned above, content and intention are other factors within presentation. As a documentary on the brutality of *mass harvesting*; or as a killing in a social documentary of a lost peoples' culture (ie Nanook of the North), both would be considered a form of *art* because these works seek to ...
Maria Popova on the power of Art said:
... transcend our own self-interest, our solipsistic zoom-lens on life, and relate to the world and each other with more integrity, more curiosity, more wholeheartedness.
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Filming a slaughter, sensationalistically, is not an act of integrity.


My simple belief of the duty of art mirrors that of the late, great, Frank Lloyd Wright....
Frank Lloyd Wright said:
Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for human use.
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From all the comments I've been seeing, I think I'll pass.

Just for the record though, I've seen pigs/chickens/goats get killed in the Philippines by my uncles/cousins. Were they doing it for art? Nope. They did it because we were hungry.
 
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