April 15th Outside Viewing - Craig Baldwin

After viewing the Craig Baldwin film "Mock Up on Mu" I was amazed. The Meticulous nature of using found footage to tell this wonderfully complicated narrative of real people in a fictional context (although during the Q and A Baldwin claimed it was based on a true story). The most remarkable part was the editing of the found footage and having it both further the story and add in depth curiosity to what was being shown and where did he find that certain image. I found myself trying to guess which film Baldwin had taken the certain image from (Most often unsuccessfully). In this very way I believe that Baldwin’s creation relates to being an intervention art. By using pop culture references as well as real people it forces the viewer to analyze where these references are coming from and create a higher awareness in relation to the narrative. Whether the narrative is true or valid or not I found it giving a creative proposition and opinion to a under-heard story of Scientology. People hear about Scientology all the time but don’t know much of what it really stands for or is. Baldwin creatively voices his take on the matter. In this sense Baldwin is intervening and crafting his own “fictional” narrative based on contexts real in nature (to a degree). I also wondered while watching this film about copyright laws and policies versus using copyrighted material for parody and artistic expression. Many of the images shown I guarantee were copyrighted and yet Baldwin used them. How did he get away with that? Either way it was a great artistic achievement especially through searching out these hidden gems of clips and editing them together. I could easily tell that continuity was broken (having different actors play the same role) but because of the way it was edited I went with it and it never bothered me. I think that achievement is a huge audience intervention and in itself is amazing.