process

My first thought upon visiting the Prelinger Archives was to be surprised at the sheer amount of Cold War era nuclear propaganda. Many of the videos totally shocked me with their very blatantly obvious biased messages about nuclear war: trying to convince the general public that it would not be a serious threat while simultaneously teaching safety precautions. When I heard the audio for Bye Bye Blues, I decided that it would be really interesting to juxtapose this quick, generally upbeat piece of music with the inherent darkness of nuclear war. I tried to take the fun in the music and flip it on its head, confusing the viewer. The blues begin to sound very sinister when paired with images of nuclear fallout and children learning to duck and cover.

While editing my video, I paid very close attention to the interspersion of cartoons with real clips. I wanted to start with cartoon depictions of nuclear attacks, because they seem less “real” and do fit with the music. However, as the music progressed, I wanted to put in the actual clips of real people, with the explosions occurring at the climax of the song. I also noticed a huge drop at the very end of the music, so I wanted to bring back the initial cartoons in that moment, to erase the threatening visuals but leave the viewer with a haunting symbol that will remind them of the tragedies they just witnessed. I also repeated a clip of a newscaster in front of an American map: to me, this was a constant repetition of the idea of American propaganda, government messaging. I’m pretty happy with the end result: I think I captured everything I wanted to and twisted the audio in a unique way that one wouldn’t exactly associate with it on first listen. It was really fun to take audio and visual and combine it in a strange, different way!