Duncan's Donuts

natural , 2019 What is 'natural'? It is a vague term that means different things to many people- to some, meat is natural. To some, only eating plants is the only way to qualify as natural. In my short, I endeavor to question this dynamic in attitudes towards farming, food, and sustainability. I want viewers to come away thinking about their deep seated biases towards food and question why exactly they feel the way they do- is it because of a truly deeply held belief, or is it a gut reaction to something that someone else has shown them? The short does not aim to demonize one particular facet of consumption - this film is not anti-vegan, anti-GMO, or pro-factory farming. Rather, I want things like conspicuous consumption and branding of food, the dichotomizing of plants as food and meat as food, and even so far as the place of humans in the food chain to become questions in the forefront of the viewer's mind. I will know I have succeeded if even one person

Natural, 2019 We often question (or are led to question) whether our food is 'natural' or 'green' or 'healthy', all words loaded with meaning, yet functionally useless as real qualifiers of our food because of their proliferation by industry. In my short, I humorously try to use surrealism and match cuts to question our relationship with our food and the qualifiers we give it. What makes a pepper more 'natural' than bacon? Is a tomato really more 'healthy' than beef? What is more 'green'- the farm raised pig, or the corporate farmed tomato, or the factory farmed cow, or the locally grown pepper? Many of these questions have no firm answers, yet there are many people who vehemently defend their position or stance. I aim to call attention to these questions through humor and surrealism.

The whole idea behind avant garde is defying expectation to create something bizarre and inscrutable, right? What could be more inscrutable than the mundane? There's a lot of nuance to our everyday actions and the way they are depicted on film, and I think it opens a lot of space for making small changes that can be easily passed off as real, but ultimately convey a sense of the fantastical, or of dread, or of just plain confusion. Perhaps I am cooking something, but the item on the stovetop is very much so not food. I'm not entirely certain of the direction I want to take this yet, but I am trying to hone in on a particular avenue of focus and I think that cooking may well be that avenue.

I enjoyed all the feedback I got! I'm very glad people responded well to my somewhat silly topic choice to propagandize for. Some of the critique I would definitely take action on if I were to go back and work more on the piece (particularly the flowers; a larger size for better readability at a distance is something that I more or less knew but didn't feel like going through the process of doing!), but on some other critiques I'd play the artist card (I was and still am particularly enamoured with the color and layout I went with on the "ROUNDABOUTS" text on the upper portion- I went through a bunch of different layouts for it and ultimately the one I went with was the one that clicked for me once I played with it. And that's the guiding principle on a lot of my choices in my art!). All in all, I'm extra happy with the fact that there was no major substantive criticism of my piece- that makes me feel that I did a good job in conveying my message and that