The District Sleeps Alone Tonight

This week's post will be different in three ways from past posts; I made this video over the summer, the video is part of a larger project and the video was created in a less formal process (not really planned out ahead of time).

This video is part of a short movie I am making titled Good for Great (GFG). GFG is about the journey of a man trying to find his place. Good for Great is similar in structure to the book Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. The movie is made up of music videos that could be watched by themselves or could be watched together to create a greater meaning. At this point of the film, about half way through, the main character is wondering if Washington D.C. is the place for him.

My brother, Kyle, lives in Washington D.C. or as he calls it "DC!" Kyle is madly in love with the city. If you were to talk to him, I can guarantee he would bring it up. In mid June, my family headed to the Capital for the U.S. Open golf tournament.

I enjoy making a video for each trip I take. People always ask "what did you do?" I find it more interesting and enjoyable to actually show them than to just use words.

So I knew that I wanted to make a video on the trip but I wasn't sure what it would be about. Almost every movie in theaters today focuses on on a person or animal. I like to focus on other things; in coming videos you will see me focus on forests, lights, water, boats and the process of walking.

In this video I focus on a city, DC. Without even thinking about it, I knew what song would play on this video, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight by the Postal Service. The song is all about DC, Kyle showed it to me, it would fit what I wanted the mood to be at this point in GFG and it's just a good song.

After the eight hour drive, I  knew I was going to make a video about DC set to The District Sleeps Alone Tonight and it was going to be my birthday present to Kyle (his birthday was in a few weeks). What I didn't know was what I was going to put in the video.

I decided that I would just take pictures and video wherever I was and I would piece it together at the end of each day. I like to throw pictures into videos; it gives a nice effect, going from motion and all this information to still pictures.

We went to the Capitol, the Botanical Gardens, the National Cathedral, the National Archives, Arlington Cemetery, Library of Congress, the Museum of the American Indian and many other places. At night we saw the monuments: Lincoln, Washington, Vietnam, Korean, etc. Kyle showed us some of the best food in the city: Crumbs' giant cupcakes, Shake Shack's delicious burgers and fries, Good Stuff Eatery's milkshakes.

 The National Gallery of Art is spilt into two building. To get visitors between the two galleries there is an underground people mover. But its not a normal people mover, this one is a mix between a people mover and trampoline. You can bounce on it, you can jump up and down. Wait there is more, the walls and ceiling are curved, covered in mirrors and have thousand of little light bulbs. This can be seen at 3:11 - 3:33 in the video.

Anyone who has been to Washington D.C. (and they weren't on a school trip) knows that the Metro is how you travel. The Metro is DC's train system  that weaves its way under the Capital. So after taking the Metro  five or six times, I decided that I would have it portrayed in the video similar to how it's used in real life; as the in-between.

When I put the video footage and pictures all together the storyline of the video becomes a person leaving their hotel room at night and going to look at all the monuments. The person stays up all night, goes to museums and tourist attractions and then goes back to their hotel to go to sleep alone.