Artistic Appraisals: A Housing Day Video Critique

The further away the critics and film historians of Arts Blog get from Housing Day, the more significance the videos seem to garner in our eyes. The residents of Lowell, Eliot, and Cabot all receive rave reviews for their evocations of master auteurs in the second installment of this Housing Video retrospective. Look out for Parts 3 and 4 over the weekend.

Lowell- Drunk in Lowell

Director of Inspiration: Akira Kurosawa

It’s a strange thing, the housing video. A medium of expression defined by the clashing motives of creativity and propaganda. The credibility of many a housing video has been lost in the smoke from the clash of these dueling callings. It takes some rare skill and deft camerawork to artfully imbue some 3 minutes of amateur work with both the craft and rhetoric demanded of that elusive good Housing Video. “Drunk in Lowell” most forcefully calls to mind the immortal work of a young Akira Kurosawa in its brazen house-patriotism. The courageous use of an overhead shot of the blue man climbing the winding steps of Lowell’s bell tower can be nothing but a deliberate evocation of Kurosawa’s preference for striking scene geometry over whatever bland spreads are being created in today’s traditional cinema.

This single shot of the intermingling between tree-tops and a singing rickshaw puller from Kurosawa’s obscure 1945 “Zoku Sugata Sanshirō" reflects the stark angles in the bell tower shot of Lowell’s video:

Eliot- House of Eliot

Director of Inspiration: James Foley

The denizens of Eliot have managed the rare feat of creating a student production that is indistinguishable from that of a professional. Through every moment of high-stakes politicking runs an undercurrent of humanity that forces the viewer to question the game that the actors are being forced to play. James Foley, currently best known for directing many episodes of the TV series “House of Cards,” does much the same thing in his hugely popular TV series. When Eliot tutor Michael Hankinson picks up a red phone and demands that House master Doug Melton ad-board a student, whispers of Washington build into shouts. Even beyond the technical flourishes and dramatic flair that could be mistaken for Foley, there is something more, something intangible yet inescapable that makes comparison to “House of Cards” inevitable.

Frank Underwood’s conniving in “House of Cards” inexplicably resonates with the scheming of the Eliot video’s protagonist:

Cabot- Happy

Director of Inspiration: John Woo

Housing Day videos are seldom described as adrenaline-inducing or action-packed, but Housing Day videos are rarely Cabot’s 2014 Housing Day video. In fact, the Crimson Arts Board’s careful research suggests that this overlap has only occurred once. The Cabot residents twirling and flying through the air move with all the same grace and most of the lethality of the bullets in John Woo’s films. The pristine yet organic choreography of Woo’s gunmen sashaying through gunpowder smoke is still alive and well in the high kicks and twirls of these dancing Cabotois. In this video, Cabot has shown that the smooth tracking shots that seem to last for days and sweeping exterior shots are no longer solely the stuff of ambitious VES concentrators.

The deliberate pacing and sudden disarming violence of Woo’s “The Killer” evokes the alternately serene and frenetic pacing of Cabot’s creation: