Close your eyes. And listen to the song I have posted above. Listen closely to the floating city-light string melody in the first 10 seconds. This is an introduction to a film and story I’m passionate about. In the blackness of your mind’s eye (which represents the blackness of the screen), a statistic in white arial font text appears which reads:
“Every year nearly 11 million children living in poverty die before their fifth birthday” [1].
The next string of the text reads:
“Over the course of seven years, this will be more than the number of fatalities over the entire duration of WWII which lasted for seven years.” [2].
The last sentence is the following lamentation:
“This is dedicated to all those lost souls, the downtrodden, and desperate.”
Each of these sentences appear on the screen sequentially in this order.
And right when the bass hits, the blackness abruptly transitions into graphic video footage of police firing on poor farmworkers during the Mendiola Massacre of 1987. Now listen carefully to the lyrics spit in the first bar: “Bridge over troubled water / Ice in my muddy water..” For 30 seconds we are bombarded by the imagery of protesters along the Palestinian-Israeli border, Nigerians in Lagos demonstrating against fuel price inflation, dedicated Muslims in Sadr City gathering en mass to protest US occupation in Iraq, indigenous resistance actions in Oaxaca and Chiapas combating police who are aligned with repressive political institutions, etc. etc. The beats hit us hard, the viewers, as if we are barraged by a slew of stones thrown at us by these desperate citizens of the world with the same force as their frustration on these post-modern battlefields against oppression. The bass you hear is a war cry: the battle drums beaten by the hungry, ignored, voiceless, the kings of the underground. This is the soundtrack of a revolutionary movement.
The music stops, and the narrator of the film checks to see if the viewer is still with us.
“Do I have your attention now? Are you still with me? Good. I’m going to take you on a trip.”
The narrator announces that he will lead us through a journey into the slums and ghettos of the Third World, the shell-shocked ruins of the civilian battlegrounds of today’s war on the poor, the wastelands of developing nations who’ve sold off their sacred lands to foreign corporations who claim to help them…
“Closing the Gap” is meant to be that bridge over the troubled waters we see in this world. My friend and I are working on a project to calm the seas, and bring peace to the lives of those who need it the most. If you read Part I, we’ve already acknowledged that this can’t be done overnight for everyone, but we hope to put all our energy into making baby steps towards progress one person at a time. Our journey across this bridge begins on the banks of the Pasig River, Metro Manila, Philippines.
Alright, I can pull this off. I just need to secure historical footage (hopefully free), and it’s a lot of footage. Are you going to narrate, or do you want me to do it?
Let’s do a mic check in ur studio first, and then we can decide. We can even alternate narration. Let’s start gathering some footage. I already have been saving up money to do this. Let me know if you need any resources homie.
Can’t use the studio anymore, unfortunately. My boss/producer closes the studio down when we leave and I can’t use it during work hours for obvious reasons, one of them being we’re using it for our programs. Buuuut, I have a pretty good film editing program and I can master the sound, isolate voice audio and eliminate background/static noise. Yeah, I’ll go ahead and start finding archives with those footage you want.
Also, you want the actual song on the video? His lyrics in the context of the video wouldn’t fit, don’t you think? Plus the lyrics can be distracting. Just my suggestions. But it’s your vision, so whatever you want.
I definitely DON’T want the whole song and lyrics in the intro. Yes, they are very distracting. Like when Drake says, “I’ll I care about is rap and bitches, rap and rap and bitches” it just denigrates our work. I imagine we’d just use the instrumental, and overlay it with the lyrics that we actually want. I personally say fuck the copyrighting issue (either way we’re going to dice up the original song). If we get served a cease and desist order maybe it will add attention to our cause haha.
Oh, I’m not worried about the copyright issues. It’s not like we’re going to use it for commercial/profit purposes. I use songs in my personal videos all the time. I usually just give credit to the artist at the end of the video or as a caption. I guess we can also include “Cash Money/YMCMB/Whatever Their Parent Label Is” as well. It’s the footage that I’m more focused on.
We can just make it an acknowledgment to them to be safe. Ok, yeah. Be as creative as you want with the video footage edits.
I’m just going to contact Al Jazeera English for the footage materials. They’ve covered many conflicts around the world and they seem to be more friendly about sharing their archives.