[middmedia 56AF75E2EF489366C3340D889BB85E46 mnielsen FoodForThought_BThomasMJoyceMNielsen.mp4 width:400 height:300]

Food For Thought – a montage of the intersection between academia and cupcake dream-world – reveals the colorful, imaginative place that exists within a student’s thoughts.  In playing with the compilation of shots set within a seemingly mundane, austere white room – a markedly concrete physical place – the mise en scene highlights the distinct spontaneity in one’s mind – a more abstract, uninhibited place. In this way, Food for Thought illustrates the wandering thoughts and imagination that overlap with the more structured process of studying economics models.  The cupcake’s characterized performance in the montage, developed through point of view shots that suggest its opposition to the student at the climax of the film, offers a sense of theatricality and whimsicality in the cinematography.
The power of the montage in craft and structure compliments the film’s thematic agenda – to question and stretch the audience’s ideas through disjunctive and cumulative comparison. Temporally, the narrative follows a linear trajectory, in which the story develops collectively from beginning to end.  The music takes the audience on a journey parallel to the student’s metamorphosis, evolving from a meditative classical piece, to a questioning drum beat and finally resolving with a whimsy jazz tune.  The editing, in contrast, is often disjunctive.  The narrow shots of the face-off between mouth and eyes and cupcake appear at odds with the longer takes of the student studying in the book-end shots of the film.  This disjuncture in the montage supports its objective to distinguish distinctly fun playful thought from bland academic study, while uniting them in one place and time within the student’s mind.

made by Brittany Thomas, Maddie Joyce and Miriam Nielsen