Hostile Pitiable
Project 2012-05-17 05:44:14 +1200
An animated documentary about the experiences of New Zealand's only Al-Qaeda suspect, Mark Taylor.
Who Am I
I am currently an under graduate student at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. I am in the final semester of my degree and I'm really loving it. Near the end of last year the Prime Minister announced that my friend was a terrorist. When weeks earlier he sat a few feet away from him in the Mosque and did not even know who he was.
We were approached by Patrick Gower a political journalist who works for channel three. He promised Mark that he would get to the bottom of this, instead he produced a rushed 60 minutes article for the September 11th Anniversary. As you could imagine Mark was very disappointed and now had to deal with people confronting him in public and his boss at work blackmailing him as well as internet death threats. Mark still maintains his innocence and his situation has taken a dramatic turn for the better.
The Project
I am currently working on an animated documentary piece on Marks experiences while in Pakistani custody. His experiences are a lesson to us all about the suspicious and unsafe world we live in, where being an adventurer like Sir Edmund Hillary is not so simple.
It was suggested by my lecturers and tutors to take this project a step further, outside the University into the public eye. Mainstream media so far has failed us, it is time for the independent media to show the world that we have the diverse and open views and can reach and understand subjective truths.
This project is already in motion. What began as a concept late last year in my Documentary Screen paper with Doctor Craig Hight now transverses into both my Animation paper with Doctor Lisa Perrott and my Advanced Integrated Screen Media Paper with Doctor Bevin Yeatman.
The current video is my university assignment. It is about five minutes long and only covers some of Mark's experiences in Pakistan. I hope to elaborate further on Mark's experiences with more animation, including his four months in a detention centre in Australia and the New Zealand and Australian government branding him a terrorist for political motivations. I hope to make the entire documentary at least twenty minutes in length.
Why Fund My Project
All my lecturers have provided a great support for me and this project.
My animation is paint on glass, a very fluid and appropriate medium for expressing memories and perception. As you can imagine paint is not cheap and I am currently using the Universities cameras, lighting and software. I can use Media Arena, but during the weekends and nights. I usually have to work from home, using little more than my desk light and the camera on loan from the University. I am determined to present Mark's experiences in a light that is more favourable to him.
The six minute video is one chapter of Mark's experiences, I plan to make three more chapters. However, I just don't have the resources. I plan to make an episode about his four months in an Australian detention centre, and another episode about returning to New Zealand and the Prime Minister labelling him a terrorist and a shorter episode about Yemen and Malaysia. With these episodes I plan to give the full context of the story and give people a chance to finally decide for themselves the case of Mark Taylor.
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