Shot 1: dying flower bush
Shot 2: decaying pumpkin
Shot 3: tree skyline
Shot 4: gate
Shot 5: pan up tree
Shot 6: cat
Shot 7: underneath the leaves
Shot 8: treehouse
Shot 9: skeleton tree
Shot 10: chair
To create this video I thought about the themes I related to fall. I thought of death, and decay, and chose those as my themes. Then I explored some, and found some shots of the decaying leaves and dying flowers. To go along with those, I found a decaying pumpkin, showing the coming winter, and two decaying human-made objects: a chair and a treehouse. I thought these things our in nature went along with the season quite well.
Overall, I feel as though I captured the essence of what fall means to me. I found music that fit with the theme. I'm very pleased with the final video.
The trees are in their autumn beauty, The woodland paths are dry Under the October twilight the water Mirrors a still sky
--William Butler Yeats
For this assignment, I'm taking a break from the theme of this blog, and writing about my favorite season: fall.
To create this video, I thought about what fall brought to mind for me. Fall, I decided, is mostly about change. The type of change that the season of fall brings about is death. The leaves die and fall - giving the season its name - and every piece of nature prepares for the oncoming winter by either following the leaves and dying, or finding a way to hibernate.
Fall is my favorite season for precisely this reason: I love seeing the change around me happening. It makes me feel more in control of my own life. And I find the death and sleep of the natural world fascinating. I love decaying things, old things, broken things. Things that are left around to crumble on their own. Fall creates many of these images in my mind.
Leaves are captivating on their own. They grow from buds on trees into green plants. When the weather gets colder they turn golden, red, orange, and finally brown. Then they fall to the ground to become soil, so that new plants can grow. Leaves are beautiful. They are the perfect example of how life isn't a line, and doesn't revolve around one subject. Life consists of many circles and loops and it revolves around every being in the world.
Fall is cold sometimes and warm sometimes. It is the time for apple cider and hayrides and corn mazes. For carving pumpkins and eating pie and getting lost in the woods and writing a novel. It's sweaters and wool socks and sometimes shorts instead. It's everything good about winter, without being too cold.
Autumn is a great reminder about a lot of things having to do with life. That it evolves, and ends, but never fully dies. Life gives way to new life, and leaves are all part of one cycle of helping life to continue on.
In honor of her recent birthday, I've decided to write about one of the most interesting time periods in history, the French Revolution, through the lens of Marie Antoinette, an excellent example of the falling aristocracy of the period.
Marie Antoinette, last Queen of France
Marie was born Maria Antonia Josepha Joanna on November 2nd, 1775 in her homeland of Austria. She was the fifteenth child in her family, and the second to last. Her mother was the Empress of Austria, and her father was the Holy Roman Emperor. She was well educated, but not extremely so. She was educated in the areas viewed as fitting for a woman, such as religion and morality. To preserve a waning alliance between Austria and France, Marie was betrothed to an eleven-year-old boy, Louis Auguste, the heir to the French throne. The King sent Marie a new tutor, who remarked that she was not unintelligent, but, "rather lazy and extremely frivolous, she is hard to teach." She was sent to France at the age of fourteen to marry a boy she had never met, and to one day rule a country she had never seen. She was said to have missed both her parents and the privacy of her home, and wept for days at a time in the French court. When the King died five years after her marriage, Marie became the Queen of France. Marie was not everything that people desired in their Queen. She was outspoken for a woman, and often reported to be improper in her actions and words. She enjoyed the same activities as men, but also spent a large amount of her time working on her appearance, and enjoyed balls more than anyone else at court. Her husband, however, loathed social gatherings, and found court life too exciting and improper.
When Marie was twenty two, she gave birth to her first child, a daughter. After that she grew distant from her husband, often abandoning court life in favor of her own private estate, where she did not have to worry about ruling or gossip, two things that she despised about the French court.
She could do nothing, however, to deter the gossip back at court. Many said that she was having an affair with Count Axel von Fersen, a Swede in the court. Others simply said that she was unintelligent, improper, and not a suitable Queen. At the same time, the economy in France was at one of its worst points of all time, and people blamed that on the rulers, both Marie and her husband.
After the diamond necklace scandal many of the French found themselves disillusioned. Almost all
European governments in that period gave their blind trust to the reigning monarchs. But the French no longer trusted Marie, and by default, did not trust Louis either. This troubled Marie deeply, and she took to hiding away, even building another retreat to turn to. In 1789, a group of commoners stormed Bastille Prison. This action started the French Revolution. Marie knew that her husband would do nothing to stop the rebellion, and so she called on her connections in other countries to help. But no one could do anything to save them. They were arrested. Louis was tried for treason and found guilty in January 1793. He was executed. In October of the same year, Marie was put on trial for treason, theft, and sexual abuse of her son. The male jury found her guilty of these crimes, and she was beheaded on October 16th. Even the day before her death, Marie would not admit to any crimes. She claimed that she had a free conscience. When the priest told her to have courage in the face of her death, she responded by saying, "The moment that my ills are going to end is not the moment when my courage is going to fail me."
Marie Antoinette was an important political figure of her time and played a decisive role in the French Revolution. However, in history she is often villainized as being selfish and speaking her mind. It is important to remember when speaking about such matters that what is written about women of the past was written by those living then, and most often they were men whose views were clouded by misogyny. Marie Antoinette could not be faulted for the French Revolution, it was the inherent sexism present at court that caused any part she may have played i nthe downfall of her country.
