Trek Assessment #3

Describe three surprises or unexpected situations you encountered on your Treks and in the days that followed. The surprise could stem from your expectations that conflicted with "on the ground" realities, cultural or social issues of which you were previously unaware, feelings and reactions that you did not expect to have, appearances and soundings of things you did not expect, good or bad outcomes of "on the spot" decisions you had to make, or the discovery of "deeper" realities in the materials you brought home. (Again, skip anything technology-related!)

Situation 1: The first thing that comes to my mind is when I went out on my Trek 01 and lost all the recordings I had made that day. It was a surprising situation that I was in but I don’t think it was a bad because I had to redo my Trek 01 and get new sounds. I say it wasn’t a bad thing because I went out again with this new equipment and got to explore new places and get different sounds.

Situation 2: Another situation that surprised me was when we were viewing our Trek 02 films and I had showed my, “A Good Soldier”, film the people around me said they had liked it. My instructor Lilly had said she liked it and the shots in it, she had asked me if I was making political statement about the war as it seems that that was the impression my film had made. I was surprised when I was asked that by my instructor because it wasn’t meant to be political at all at least that is what I thought while filming it. Because I had filmed a G.I. Joe and the film was more about this soldier slipping into the death and what he saw as he was slipping away into the great beyond. The idea of making a political film and statement hadn’t ever crossed my mind up until that point.

Situation 3: when I was out on my Trek 03 I remember the only thing I was sure about was what my final movie would look like. I wasn’t sure what I would do for my other rough draft movies. So I went out on a walk around the area I figured I would go on for my Trek 03. As I walked I did find some interesting things to shoot but nothing that really caught my interest. Until I saw this tree that had all of its major limbs removed and a portion of its side either cut or torn away from it. For some reason I was draw to the tree and so I started to film it. This was an unexpected situation I was in because I wasn’t sure what else I was going to film and then I found this deformed tree. It was one of those moments were you said to your self, I need to film this!