Thursday 20 November 2014
What i aim to do with this post is to try and articulate a logical explanation for the reason behind me adapting the theme from "Anthem for doomed youth" into my fight training video.
I'll give you an extended explination of my understanding of the out of sight out of mind theme for the poem, and then show the themes comparison to a sportsperson and their training.
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| out of sight out of mind |
Anthem for Doomed Youth Theme
Out of sight out of mind
The main theme from the Wilfred Owen poem that i'm looking to adapt is the whole out of sight out of mind idea, as stated in a previous post.
The reason why i've drawn towards this theme is because one of the reasons Wilfed Owen wrote this poem was to let people know the true grim reality of what war entails, where a lot of people don't understand what happens during war, and the physical and mental implications that happen to the soldiers as a result of war. The civilians will either celebrate in success of defeat, or criticise some form of negative connotation towards the army, not necessarily taking into account the individual soldiers wellbeing and what they might of put themselves through in order to achieve their results; because when they're(civilians) told about war they're given figures not individual names (as Wilfred Owen says in his poem "What passing-bells for these who die as cattle")
So in a sense what this shows us is that, yea it's possible that they might celebrate in appreciation of what might have been achieved, or criticise the moral implications of war, but they're not truly appreciating the training and hard work that the soldiers have put themselves through in order to not only carry out their mission, but to survive on the battle field. And in this poem, this is one of the points i feel that Wilfred Owen is trying to tell.
Pro fighter training
When it comes to a professional fighter and the intense training they put themselves through in order to win a fight, the same notion of the theme for "Anthem for doomed youth" could be applied to their scenario, in that the spectators only see the fighters for what they are at the event, but do not truly know the extreme measures the fighter has gone through in order to perform well on the night to guarantee their victory.
The dedication, strict routinely training, body straining hard work that the fighters put themselves through during preparation for a fight, is something that is overlooked by the spectators as they cheer and hurl comments towards the fighters during their fight. Only after a victory is declared do the spectators hear a glimpse of the training that the fighter/victor has gone through, if the victor decides to describe it, but often that is overlooked by the victory and celebration of the match, and the looser of the match and their effort is often overlooked too, only noting that they've lost the match; with everybody giving their opinion on where that person went wrong, again, not taking into consideration the training that person has put themselves through, and that they might have sustained injuries whilst preparing for the fight.
Finally, after the event is over, the spectators go home back to their ordinary lives, the victor of the fight goes home a winner, whose victory will probably resonate in peoples minds for a while, whilst the looser of the fight would be forgotten, just another number to add to the fight card, another person who's "died as cattle" with no "passing bells" to acknowledge the hard work in preparation for the fight.
Plan of execution
With the fight training video i'm going to produce, i want to adapt this theme and show it visually, with the fighter training in various locations whilst he's preparing for his fight.
The training will include Cardio training, boxing, and strength conditioning.
There will be a narrator guiding the narrative of the visuals reading out the poem, however!! I'm not looking for the narrator to be the main focus of the production, just a voice to guide the visuals! The main focus will be on the visuals itself and also the soundscape from the various locations that the fighter is training at, focusing on the onomatopoeia that the poem uses, making an appropriated iconic adaptation of the sounds to give new meaning to the text, whilst still paying homage to the integrity of the meaning of the texts theme... For example "Only the stuttering rifles rapid rattle" this would be the boxer punching the punch bag with the chains violently shaking and rattling in oscillation.
Hopefully, with this post you have a general idea of what this short film is going to be about, and how it's going to be done.
