Homework 38 - Art Project Cool

The Cool Fool from Sandy G. on Vimeo.

This project actually turned out differently than from what we planned. In the beginning, we wanted to have a scripted video, showing cool vs. uncool. Andy would play two different versions of Mike. One as the cool kid who everyone wants to be friends with, and one as the uncool kid who tries too hard to fit in. After a bunch of takes, we decided to just scrape that idea and put together a video portraying what we thought was cool, along with some of our old ideas. We put in scenes about people playing basketball in gym, us hanging out and playing cards, and us just having fun in general, because we felt that was our definition of cool. Our definition of cool is just having fun and not caring what people think, and our video portrays that. Of course, we did play the roles of our characters, me being the one obsessed with Mike, Carrie being the one who doesn’t know who he is, Sandy the one who doesn’t think he’s cool but will act like she does, and Kate just thinking he’s a loser. We wanted our video to be funny, and portray coolness in school.

In our art, we just wanted people to understand that there are many definitions of art, not just one universal definition. In our video, we showed people that being cool is just having fun with the people around you. When people watch this video, they won’t see an obvious structure or a scripted story, because to us that is fake. We didn’t want to have to script our something in order to show people what we believed was cool, we wanted to show how cool can be found in our daily lives. By scripting out what each person says, and how they try to act cool, we are not truly representing how cool directly affects us. In my opinion, our video helps people understand that they don’t need to act a certain way to be cool. They don’t need to follow unspoken rules, and act like someone they are not just to fit in. “Just be yourself” is an overstated statement, but I believe that we should instead be who we are, and act the way we are. We shouldn’t have to act like someone we are not in order to be deemed “cool”.

Making art does seem cool to me. To me, art is a portrayal of an individual’s creativity. When someone puts themselves out there, whether it is in the form of art or others, I think it is cool because they are showing the world what they want people to know about them. I also believe that making art is a talent, and talents are cool. Although an individual’s art varies because their taste varies, the essence of making something important to show the world is still there. I believe that being cool means portraying to yourself who you want to be, and art is one form of doing just that.