I was visiting my parents one weekend. I woke up crazy early on a Sunday morning. I knew they wouldn't be up for a couple of hours, so to kill time I just drove around my old home town. Back then I always had a video camera with me, so I brought it along on the drive to capture some sights.

It was a dreary, rainy morning, which set a depressing mood. I came up with a concept where I would shoot a starkly depressing portrayal of the town, and come back on a bright sunny day to shoot a hopeful and optimistic counterpart as an exercise to demonstrate how a filmmaker can skew the representation any way he chooses.

I did the voiceovers in real time as I stood in each setting and pontificated spontaneously. The more clips I recorded the darker it got. There was a hint of truth in what I was saying. I'm not overly fond of that old burgh. And I had a lot to work with. The town had fallen on hard times. But it was mostly just me riffing to make it sound as bleak as possible.

I filtered all the footage to black & white and turned the contrast way up. I played around with the audio to make it a little more experimental. If you listen closely, the echo precedes the primary vocal. I thought it would make for an interesting effect, but no one has noticed. I stitched it together and wrapped it up.

I never actually got back to shoot the other half, so I put this out there as a stand-alone piece. It remains a poignant example of how a filmmaker can forward his own agenda if he wants to. And if you know it's intended to be dark humor, it can give a little chuckle.