Rodney’s L and V movies
Posted by dogtrax on May 7, 2007
Our friend, Rodney, has sent forth his two movies — Letter L and Letter V — and both are very powerful in their storytelling and vision. Both have a very personal emotional center that draws the viewer in.
Letter L
Letter V
I continue to be amazed at the work being done with the ABC movies.
– Kevin
May 7th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Rodney,
Both pieces offer so much about you and your life in such a powerful way. Thank you so much for sharing them with us.
Bonnie
May 7th, 2007 at 8:20 am
Rodney,
Thank you so much for sharing these powerful pieces about your life. I hope you have more audiences for them: family, friends, students???
Bonnie
May 7th, 2007 at 8:56 am
I have to say, these both offer some very emotional insights. I thin thy demonstrate clearly how our students could use digital storytelling in an effective and sometimes therapeutic manner when they may have no other way. Thanks for sharing these, Rodney.
May 7th, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Letter L. So many words start with L. Love, Light, Life, words for lifting up our experience. One tarnished term is also tossed around. Lied. “I didn’t Lie with that woman!” Bush Lied. And so did I.
I was lying quietly, just becoming aware.. Listening. He was vomiting the contents of that nights visit to the town tavern into the toilet. I was waking from sleep. I could hear the vomiting. I could hear choking. He must have Mom by the neck. Did he finally loose it in this drunken stupor? More vomiting, choking. My mother must be dying – what should I do? I yelled dad, to get his attention, to stop the event, as I pulled my covers tighter, burrowing deeper into my bed. It came out as a low lament, barely audible in the silence of that late night hour. The choking and Vomiting went on and I cried out again, louder . . . “Dad.” But he did not hear me. I screamed his name, heard a gravely voiced drunken “what” and the sound of bodies tumbling, and a crash. I pictured my mom’s life being snuffed out as he smashed her head into the toilet, the struggle over, her body limp in death.
Lights flashed on, and loud thumping steps met in the hall in front of the bathroom. “He just slipped in his own vomit and passed out!” I froze and feigned sleep as our room lit with a click of the switch. My next older brother sat up in bed, rubbing his eyes and faced a barrage of questions, “What were you calling that Son of a Bitch for! He just came home drunk like always. What’s going on?, and the like, as I lay there, quiet, not moving. He stammered in sleepy bewilderment, not knowing what was happening.
I managed to be a lone walker to school the next day, a little later than my five brothers. I was a lone person throughout the day. It was probably long, filled with lessons and I am sure I focused on learning. I just do not recall how school went that day. And I certainly would not have focused on my lie of omission.
L is for Lie.
The letter V. V is for village. I grew up in a little village with 600 people. It was a quaint place where the neighbors looked out for each-other and after those in need. The Village was important in my life, But Tim was more important. I felt a vague connection to it all. Mom divorced in the early 70’s before it was accepted. Her marrying a protestant and divorcing after six boys made church connections vanish. At one point she worked days as a school bus driver, nights as a fry cook, and on Saturday she delivered mail as a rural letter carrier. Her voluminous hours of work and my being a lower-middle kid who always needed more attention left me with a void. In my vision of life, the way things needed to be, I needed more attention.
A visit from members of a village Church changed my vision. They wanted lots of visitors at church that evening to greet the new Pastor and his family. We had occasionally attended Vacation-Bible-School through the years, hence their visit to our home. That night I met Tim. Tim was special. As a victorious jock, he pitched not just a no-hitter game, but a no-hitter season for his little league team. That was before the Pseudo tumor took Tim’s vision.
I met him in front of the school the next day and took him to homeroom, and when our teacher learned I knew him, I got a pass that let me out of the boring first day classes of high school five minuets prior to the bell ringing that voiced freedom for the rest. My job was to lead Tim to his next class. We became instant friends. Tim’s remaining veracity as a leader pulled me victoriously through the tangled web of High school and college. My eyes provided the needed visual cues along this course. Tim’s middle name is Vaughn. A vision of him was my first thought when seeing the letter V. V is an initial in Tim’s middle name.
As soon as I saw the email with the letters assigned, I knew I would write about Tim. It was such a coincidence that I had the letter “V” His middle initial, and the letter “L” my middle initial. The writing was easy, as it flowed. The hard part was not changing to something less reveling. My ten year old overheard my audio as I was timing photos and wanted to listen and see what I was doing. I shooed him away and wanted to keep this private. Yet it is ok to publish it to you and hopefully get a little positive attention. Go figure.
As with most multimedia, getting the sound right was the biggest pain, and it is still not as clear as I would like. I used my laptop’s internal mic and it kept picking up the hard drive spinning. I worried about what music to mix for the background and was going to ask Kevin to pick something appropriate. I was happy when I finally reviewed the instructions and realized he wanted us to skip music for now so that he could use audio consistency to tie our varied voices together. Next hardest, was pulling photos and images that helped from Google Images when I did not have personal photos that said what I wanted.
Rod