Profile By. R.W. Perkins from R.W. Perkins on YouTube.

General Description

Profile is a stream of consciousness combination of poetry and prose. The visuals of the film were intended to represent the chaos of thought.

Overall Description

There are several stories behind this film. Let's start with the genesis of this film poem. A friend had looked over some of my past written works, then started comparing it to my new films. He made an observation; that much of my older work would be considered stream of consciousness, and that I should try implementing that style in some of my film poems.

As the conversation evolved, this suggestion became more of a challenge; as we then tried to implement rules as to how something stream of consciousness could or would be filmed.

My first thought was the film would have to be written, shot and edited simultaneously, I still like the idea, but for my first attempt I decided it was a little ambitious.

So we decided that the rules would be based mostly around the written word. There were only 2 rules, but they were tough. I had 30 minutes to write, then 30 minutes to do a reading. Whatever I came up with in that hour would be the gospel, no edits or rewrites.

At his website, R.W. Perkins writes, "Both the subject and name of the poem where directly influenced by online social identities, blurbs about one's life creating a narrative of their day. I feel as though many people have begun to reveal themselves through still images and abbreviated phrases, it's almost as though brevity is becoming a new language. This "abbreviated language" in many ways reminds me of poetry. I started thinking of William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just To Say" as a text, a tweet, or blog post. Then I started thinking of the ridiculousness of someone sharing every waking moment of one's life. "Holy shit!" I thought. Sounds a lot like a poet or a writer. What great inspiration for a poem."

R.W. Perkins speaks about the process he underwent making this videopoem, from its inception through to the challenge he gave himself to write and record the poems within a tight timeframe of one hour, changes in the style after watching The Boston Strangler one night, "I was now shooting a 1960-70 action, adventure spy film inspired videopoem,"and the Kerouac and Nietzsche quotes. He says, "I wanted something that felt very gritty and real, like something that you would shoot and post on your facebook page to laugh at with your family and friends. So I started filming and shooting pictures from my iphone. I had just recently fell in love with my new hipstamatic app..."

R.W. Perkins has it all in this video. When I saw it I felt it was a marker of our era. That surely many films of this type will follow, but his was the first. Identity in the twenty-first century is shaped by social media sites. Your life is not contained in your private diaries and photo albums anymore; it's all on-line now. The notion of who we are has never been more global or more revealing.

One's Facebook profile updates and photo albums provide many snapshots of a life. R.W. Perkins has captured that sense of a collided life, a life of snapshots and home videos and snatches of writing. It is a fast-paced life. We describe ourselves to each other. There are millions of us. Facebook is approaching 1/7th of the world's population. It is a social media site that is creating a twenty-first sense of self.

Put it all together and you get, PROFILE. On his website, R.W. Perkins offers his essay on his videopoem, Profiles, as his Profile.
R.W. Perkins "is a filmmaker and poet living and working in Fort Collins, Colorado. A relative newcomer to the independent film scene and literary community, he has worked in video production for five years, producing many television and web commercials as well as many small business documentaries. In late 2009 Perkins created Juteback Productions as a means to showcase some of his more creative endeavors."

Profile is slick, professionally edited - superb timing, a dancing timeline of photos and videos, nothing hand-held here, so a profile that's already public, bare shots of the intimate here and there, a poem of depth that's echoes the Facebook Timeline. Look at the creation and expression of identity; our shifting subjectivities.

Writing this article I went through the videopoem slowly making detailed notes. Rather than summarize, I share with you my notes:

…begins with the speaking lips, moustache and beard appearing… Pink title lettering… then split screens, some present tense, the author/filmmaker, and others from stock footage, older, yet intense… by the end of the introductory title we know we are in the hands of a professional filmmaker, R.W. Perkins comes by this through his day job making commercials and documentaries, but brings those techniques to film poetry. The music has a great beat, tribal ambient. He cuts the video to the music, and it is very effective.

"PROFILE. I am awake," he begins, at the bathroom mirror. There are two images of him, from behind and reflected in the mirror, "prepared and ready for the day, prepared for the onslaught." The dogs get fed on a stage in which the curtains are their lines of stainless steel dog bowls.

The interspersion of Hipstamatic cell phone photos is brilliant. Coloured brightly, they stand out as markers of the photographed and post-processed world we live in.

Coffee is footage from an old diner… and so it goes. The lettering, when it appears, is consistent, and it becomes a striking visual element on par with the video clips and the snappy photos.

The working day is clips of factories from the 1940s: "Laborious: Working Hard OR Hardly Working" and the ubiquitous smiley.

The small pleasures to come of one's life roll up the side like a slowed film series of snapshots colourized in the Hipstamatic app.

He goes forward into the day; then we find out he hasn't left the morning mirror yet. There is a screen where he has a bathroom mirror video in colour, one running in black and white, and two bright red and yellow Hipstamatic iPhone photos. This is the modern Profile, indeed.

"Cut to: PROFILE." And there are a fast series of snapshots, some perhaps of the author/filmmaker, some of found stock footage, fast

"The existence of forgetting has never been proved: we only know that some things do not come to our mind when we want them to." Friedrich Nietzsche

Cut to. Lots of close-ups of the eyes of the author/filmmaker/

The supermarket makes an appearance in black and white with a change in music, to what I'd call 'skating at the park on friday night' music. Musak.

Yes, we all think about saving .20cents off a brand of yoghurt we know we won't like. This is very real. Songs get stuck in our heads.

Snap back to, PROFILE.

Beach scene, and the ear. Listening. We began with the mouth. Then the mirror.

Tints change on found footage and photos. There is a visual aesthetic that is honed to get your attention. Nothing drags, or is slow. Colours jump out of the screen. We are kept awake throughout.

"I exist as a solitary creature that craves the company and troubles of others." R.W.Perkins.

Then we are with him in his house staring up at the blue sky, "birds, clouds and jet airplanes". He watches neighbours who are out, a jogger, a woman in sun glasses pushing a stroller. "I do not feel small, rather… feel like a giant." And the word giant appears in white lettering in a split screen that has a black and white bird on the left and an unpolarized shot of his neighbourhood on the right.

"Perspective is important here. When compared to a virtual nothing I think you'll find I have finger, nose, toes and eyes, and …I am quite prodigious."

PROFILE

"I am a voyeur. From the comfort of my couch, my dogs at my feet, I can see the neighbours pace in front of their window" and we get terrific split screen of the voyeur in black and white watching as if from behind curtains a jogger… again split screens with different times of the events the author is relating… "She sees me; she is glaring back at me with the suggestive gaze, she is saying, 'her day is going about as well as can be expected… and she is thrilled she looks so good in her new sun glasses." they are in their homes and the jet airplane overhead is full of self-important… but I can't help but wonder-

can they see me?"

PROFILE

"I am awake. I can think, and I exist. And I can see that today I am prodigious. The sky and all that surrounds it will come and go, as I see fit."

PROFILE

PROFILE is a keeper - a defining film poem on our era. This videopoem may spawn a host of videos and films exploring the modern social media identity, in this snappy beat of a style, but R.W.Perkins did it first.

The original sketch of the dog, from life, and she wouldn't sit still, even with many treats placed on the windowsill, was in Private Reserve fountain pen ink that is not permanent. The image lost its delicacy with a matte fixative, which blended the lines. Then I created a loose background by looking at the bare trees outside my living room window. I quite like the effects in the background, but they do not work with the drawing of my dog stylistically. I was in a funk before I began - it's not surprising that I ended up with a funk. My morning Moleskine page from today.

I could turn my poor baby into some fetal thing hanging from the tree. Two Geists were working in me today (metaphorically speaking, no, no, I don't 'channel'!), and they weren't into each other's vision.

Springer Spaniel, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, Moleskine folio Sketchbook, multi-media.

'House Plant, 3', 4 drafts, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, Moleskine folio Sketchbook, oils.

Not to be undone by black, I begin again. A lighter black wash, and quickly brushing the main forms out of it.

The House Plant, 2, 4th draft, 21cm x 29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, Moleskine folio Sketchbook, oils.

Where it ended up. Dark, gloomy. It's the black. Most artists don't use it at all. It's very hard to work with. Oh, ok as an outline or as some clothing or a hair colour or to efface a section... but if I start with a black background rather than white I always run into problems. Even though coming from nothing, arising out of the blackness, works for me metaphorically, in paint... it's been most challenging. I had hoped my relation to black had changed and so I began optimistically with a black background (brushed, not fully opague), but it hasn't changed.

The black beneath the colour sucks all the brightness in, leaving a dark, greyish, gloomy surface. I admit I did not use another underlayer of a lighter colour but painted sap green right on the black, which was absorbed immediately. You could only see it in good light.

Last night, in very dim light, I dry brushed some magenta and white onto the painting. I also drew the outlines of the leaves in a permanent acrylic ink, bringing the plant back to recognizable. Not sure why I do that either, but it is part of my process, negotiating with the patterns of the concrete, actual world of recognizable forms.

Magically, and there was a lot of oil paint on it, it is dry enough to turn the page of my Moleskine sketchbook and continue on. I may again start with a black background, because I am challenged.

From my Moleskine project: the house plant on my dining room table, yesterday's painting, and today's. Two very different renditions.

Yesterday's painting of the house plant on my dining room table. Colour is still not quite right.

Today's painting of the house plant on my dining room table. Acrylic bone black base.

2nd Draft. Oil paints, then scratched over. I wiped it off.

3rd Draft today. Where I left it. I took the photo in daylight shade; it's darker than this in the Moleskine.

The first and last are in my Moleskine sketchbook - the three middle ones were on the way to the last one, to the left, which is likely finished.

The painting is dark and depressing, it disappears in the shadows, but in the light isn't too bad. A matte fixative will decrease the shine in it, too.

The House Plant, 21cm x  29cm, 8" x 11.5", 2012, Moleskine folio Sketchbook, oils, India and watercolour inks.

A meditation in ink on the plant, which withdraws its essence into its own mystery even as it offers its vibrancy. The brush wet with ink, you only have one chance. Lift the brush, glide it on the paper.

This plant is on my dining room table. I painted it in my Moleskine this morning. Yes, maybe I am trying to speed up.

I'm thinking to leave this, and go on trying to fill up my Moleskine... I started it last February! And only a dozen paintings so far out of a hundred pages? Later I can come back to finish pieces. Like leaving a rough draft of a poem for awhile before polishing it, it is often better to give some time to the process of creating a painting.

I used a little Sony Cybershot bought in 2007 to take this photo, and I think I need to figure out the white balance since the paper is a whitish cream colour, not the tone here.

Okay, why am I painting pretty little pictures like this anyhow? I'm trying to go backwards to go forwards. To re-find something in my art that was lost a long time ago. This painting tells me I've found it. Because of that, I may leave it essentially alone when I finish it. Tighten it up, rather than cover it with a scrawl of lines. I'm not attempting realism in any way. It's another quest altogether. Working on the drawings and paintings in this sketchbook is taking me to deep, interior places, and already as I turn the pages, looking at them, they describe my journey there.

A thought on why art is so difficult to define:

If art-making is essentially 'right brain,' 'intuitive,' meaning not of the discursive, logical sides of our minds, then it can never be explained in the language of scientific verification, can it. I think the best art criticism attempts to bridge the chasm. But nothing in the 'discursive' world can explain art, let alone art-making, or predict its occurrence. You might as well talk about shivers if you want to talk about art, as Emily Dickinson did. If you get goosebumps, or are breathless, or feel threatened, or have a sense of awe, if you melt looking at a painting, then, yes, very likely you are before a work of art that is transforming you.

I have created an album for my Moleskine drawings. They are quite diverse in their styles I think. Some of them I like; others need more work. I put a detail of one of my favourites first, because that's for show, but then they appear in the order in which they were created, which is not always the order of the pages...

If you click on any of the thumbnails, a lightbox will appear, with all the images in a row on the bottom -click on the next one to make it large, and then you don't have to move your mouse from that position, just keep clicking and you'll go through all the images at screen size. I like the lightbox because the background is black. Embedded below the table I created for the thumbnails is a slideshow, with the captions (the little captions icon in the bottom left of the slideshow window is a toggle switch, click on the playbar and then on it to make them disappear).

I'm not very far into the Mole, and it is my project for the year. Expect a video when the sketchbook is finished!

While I never make New Year's resolutions, this little summary appeared under my fingers... do you ever look back to the last new year to see if you accomplished your aims...?

Here goes:

Most of my current, and only, Moleskine folio sketchbook drawings and paintings are collected on my Green Fire webpage. They are all from 2011. At the rate I'm going, it'll be years before I finish the Mole.

During the coming year, I hope to make good headway on filling my Moleskine up with artwork that comes from deep within me.

Before me I have a fairly large canvas, 30" x 40", on which I would like to do a self-portrait. In March I turn 60, and that feels very significant.

I've been working on a 22 minute triptych of poems in a video for 6 months, and sure hope I finish that project to my satisfaction in 2012.

I have five videopoetry projects planned for 2012, and they are important to me, and, hopefully, in 12 months I will be on the other end of their production.

In 2011 I created an on-line journal, VidPoFilm, that focuses on the poetics of a new art form, the video or film poem, and I've written 11 articles for it so far. I hope to begin receiving submissions for articles and see the site start to develop the breadth I wish for it in 2012.

In 2012, I would like to start sending my work out to journals and publishers, something I have not done ever, not seriously (though I have been published here and there, in a few books, some poems and artwork in academic journals, etc.).

In February I hope to start posting my last NaNoWriMo novella in a private blog, which will constitute the first edit. I have a small list of half a dozen people who have asked to read it, so I will let that be my impetus.

I would like to learn how to compose music out of found sound and with the various instruments and loops in Garage Band, but that may not happen.

I hope 2012 finds my plans for a home business coming to fruition in all the ways I hope it will.

There, a quick list of resolutions that I didn't know I had waiting to be outlined.

Wishing you all a great 2012!




The set-up for a self-portrait painting. The still-wrapped canvas, 30" x 40", is on the right; a mirror on the left. I took this photo with Camera+ on an iPhone 4, and used some of the effects the app offers (no, my ceiling is not mouldy grey-it's actually white. Yes it is.). How many months will the painting take? Oy, who knows....

Bountiful Garden

A video New Year's wish for you. That your year is...

... heaped with uncommon blessings, and filled with all life has to offer, and that you achieve what is important to you... a simple video card to honour the bountiful gardens we all are, with many good wishes embedded therein.

Wishing you the very best in 2012!

What began as a test in panning a painting became a New Year's video card! Simple, but sweet. And full of the bounty of the garden of delights. Garden chimes in the background. xoxoxoxo