I have already completed my script for my part of the movie, which is about Dick Dowling’s life and the Battle of Sabine Pass. Everyone in the group “dropped” their scripts in our Dropbox and we were all able to look at each other’s and edit accordingly. We have been working on compiling the movie script and we have split up our next piece of action into two parts. Stephanie and I are going to meet Friday afternoon and record the narration for our movie at the Digital Media Center. Kat and Gaby are going to go take video of Dowling’s statue this weekend.

After this weekend we will be working on putting a storyboard together and doing all the movie editing. I think we are making good progress on the movie and I am looking forward to the end result!

The title pretty much says it all–we have a writeboard for our script, so this is where we’ll be making updates etc. Feel free to make comments directly on the writeboard, or on our blog.

http://123.writeboard.com/i36slmy1z9xuk20d
password is what it always is for this class

In the first chapter of his book, Nothing But Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy, Eric Foner compares the post-emancipation experiences of several former slave—and more importantly, plantation—societies.  While each society was different, many similarities existed in the experiences that resulted from emancipation.  Tantamount to Foner’s argument was the battle for the control of labor in each of these societies following the break up of previous labor experience.

In each case, plantation society rested on a “compulsive need for a disciplined, dependent labor force,” (Foner, 10).  So with the collapse of slavery, each plantation society began a battle to return the balance and return disciplined, dependent labor to the plantation.  In many of these cases, former plantation owners and their governments did not think these labor requirements could be met outside of slavery without the use of coercive labor.  Employing measures such as Black Codes, vagrancy laws, and contract requirements, the post-emancipation planters sought to control their former slaves.  Even in the more unique case of Haiti, in which the surviving, previous planters had all fled the island, forced labor (not unlike slavery) was imposed by Toussaint L’Ouverture and his successor Jean-Jacques Dessalines to return prosperity to the island.  The American south was not exempt from these measures to return the plantation economy the region, as planters would desperately seek to control labor and force it into a dependent and obedient form throughout Reconstruction and Redemption.

However, the fight for control of labor was not limited to the side of those wishing to return the plantation economy in each region.  Emancipated slaves also played a major part in the debate over labor.  These slaves in every region sought control of their own labor and control of the labor of their families.  Emancipation did not mean simply freedom from human servitude, but also the ability to control one’s labor and own land as access to some land, “gave event the poorest blacks some measure of choice as to whether, when and under what circumstances to present themselves in the labor market,” (Foner, 26).  While the ability to own land was considerably limited in many cases, the ability to control one’s labor remained a goal and possibility in the post-emancipation period even in those places where former slaves were not granted political enfranchisement.  As Foner states, “Lacking political power, freedmen employed the labor shortage as their principle weapon,” (Foner, 38).  Through gaining control of their labor, freedmen sought to control their own conditions, rhythms, and compensation.

Many commonalities existed in the post-emancipation experiences of former slave-holding regions, however, amongst these similarities, the most telling was the struggle for control of labor.  Following emancipation, each society studied by Foner, engaged in a struggle for control with former owners and planters seeking control of former slaves to provide a dependable labor force for economic recovery and freedmen sought to control their own condition through their rights to labor.  While each society grappled with this debate in its own way, the issue remained the same: who should control the rights to the labor of the freedmen?

Nothing but Freedom by Eric Foner discusses the aftermath of emancipation and the lives of the newly freed people in the American South, in Haiti, and the British West Indies. In his book, Foner addressed the issue of sharecropping and the response the newly freed men had to this form of labor. While the former slaves sought freedom and the ability to work for themselves, it is evident that they were willing to compromise. In class we discussed the importance the black population placed on having their own land and on being able to control their own labor and their own time. The planter class on the other class was primarily interested in maintaining the labor force and maintaining the production of their crops. In this situation the former slaves have the disadvantage and it was harder for them to obtain what they wanted. In order to survive as free people, the former slaves who could not obtain land had the option of working for wages or engaging in sharecropping. While sharecropping is not the ideal form of labor and sustenance, the newly freed people are not completely opposed to engage in this from of labor and they did not view it as opposed to their interests.

If the former slaves accepted to work for wages under a former master or any other planter they would be subject to their conditions and the low pay that the planters would provide. A sharecropping agreement “afforded agricultural laborers more control over their own time, labor, and family arrangements, and more hope of economic advancement, than many other modes of labor organization” (45). When working under the sharecropping system, those working the land did not directly depend on their former masters when performing the labor needed. In addition, since they were the ones in the partnership that actually knew how to grow the crop they were trying to sell; they had an advantage over the plantation owner. The freed people also had something they had never had before, the control and of their families. In such an arrangement, the plantation owners did not have the right to sell parts of families like they often did under the institution of slavery.

While the freed people did not have full control over the land they worked, their new status was different enough from slavery that it bothered the planters. Under this arrangement, the black population was considered a partner, even if not an equal one. According to the planters, sharecropping made the “laborers too independent” and provided them the “right to be consulted” in matters of the crops (45). While this might not seem that significant because they still depended on the land of others to survive, these new rights were in accordance with their desire to leave the system of slavery behind ad begin to work for themselves.

The newfound degree of control that the former slaves had on the planter class is evinced in the rice plantations from North Carolina to upper Florida. Here, the workers refused to work for wages and were so confident in the need the land owners had for them that they “’laughed at threats if dismissal’” since there were “’any other number of places where they [could] go’” (90). In additions the former slaves expected to have land where they could grow their own food. They also refused to be overseen directly by another man in charge and wanted full control of the crops. The planter was only expected to receive a portion of the earnings but he was not allowed to meddle with the plantation process (87). The planters had to acquiesce to the demands in order to keep the production going. Even if sharecropping did not turn out to be the best system for the former slaves, the fact is that they had some of the rights they were seeking after emancipation. At least in the beginning, this system of labor met some of their interests and the former slaves were on track to obtain the ultimate goasl of land and complete disentanglement from the planter class.

In Nothing but Freedom: Emancipation and Its Legacy, historian Eric Foner works to show the complex social, political and economic relationships that developed between former slaves and their former masters during Reconstruction in the United States. It is no surprise that Foner dedicates a fair amount of his book to the discussion of sharecropping, the social and economic institution that developed after the Civil War. Under sharecropping, freed African-Americans continued to work on plantations, but they were renting the land where they worked, growing both cash and sustenance crops and giving a certain percentage of their cash crops to the owners of their plantations, as a way of paying “rent.” Sharecropping eventually developed into a system in which African-Americans were forced to take credit from plantation owners and shop at plantation “stores” where planters charged exorbitant fees for supplies that African-Americans had no choice but to buy (45). Alex notes in his blog post that as Radical Reconstruction gave way to Redemption governments in the South, most benefits of sharecropping for African-Americans were removed and the institution became largely exploitative. However, Foner notes that

“this later development should not obscure the fact that, in a comparative perspective, sharecropping afforded agricultural laborers more control over their own time, labor, and family arrangements, and more hope of economic advancement, than many other modes of labor organization” (45).

It is true then, that sharecropping seemed a better alternative to other systems of labor, particularly because it afforded former slaves a fair amount of freedom from the rules and regulations of white plantation owners, but I would argue that from its inception sharecropping only minimally met the desires of former slaves.

In our past few classes, we have discussed that former slaves’ main goals post-emancipation were to live alone—away from whites and to be allowed to own their own land where they could subsistence farm. Indeed “The negro here [in America] seems like his brother in Jamaica, to object labor for hire, and to desire to become proprietor of his own patch of land.” (44). Former slaves wanted complete independence from their former slave owners, and they saw economic systems where they were laboring for their former masters as oppressive. They wanted to break away from the plantation system and its dependence on cash crops and they additionally believed that they had “a certain right to the property of their former masters,” since “the property which they hold was nearly all earned by the sweat of our brows,” (56). Yet sharecropping only partially met those goals.

First and foremost, former slaves wanted to own, or at the very least rent, their own land (44). Although sharecropping provided a mechanism for “renting” land, that land was not available for a freed slave to do as they pleased—that land was being rented out so that former slaves would continue to grow cash crops on it. Subsistence farming was not the goal of the land—cash crops were. To make that abundantly clear and “to ensure that no economic opportunities apart from plantation labor remained for the freedmen, they were forbidden to rent land in rural areas,” (49).  This meant that former slaves were forced to “rent” the very land they actually believed they had a right to own (since their labor had lead to white Southern landownership), and on that land, they had to devote a fair amount of their farming efforts to raising cash crops to pay their “rent” and help maintain the Southern plantation economy.

With all of that being said, sharecropping did provide slaves with some degree of autonomy, and it was in fact developed “to oppose efforts to put them [freed slaves] back to work in conditions, especially gang labor, reminiscent of slaver,” (45).  However, it was never the ideal system for former slaves, as even from its beginnings, it continued to keep them bound to plantations and working for former slave-owners.

I’ve posted the contract we drafted this morning on a Writeboard. The password is the same one we’ve been using for other Writeboards in class. Please edit it and finalize it by the deadline we set.

Glad to see that you four have already done so much on the technical and research side of things to get started with your project! I think your focus in the film on the memory of Dowling will really contribute something to the project–and the Internet as a whole–that hasn’t been out there before. As you proceed, however, I do have two important suggestions:

1. Have you decided, as a group, about the primary point or points you want to make in your movie? I see you have divided the topic of the film according to theme, but what’s less clear is what you hope to communicate to the viewer through these themes. Unless you talk with each other about this big question, I can foresee each section being somewhat disconnected from the others. Also keep in mind that if you don’t set out to make a clear point with your film, then you leave the viewer a lot more room to “read into” the film what they choose, or just to come away from it with their preexisting ideas or presumptions intact. If you want the viewer to learn something new from you, you need to do some tough talking with each other about what that something is.

2. Given the timeframe, I think it makes sense for you to focus your film on stills and audio, but one of the real virtues of your medium (as opposed to those of the other groups) is the ability to have video or moving images. Are there potential ways you could use shots taken by a video camera to take advantage of this strength of the medium? For example, if it was useful to you to walk down to the statue at the beginning of the semester and get a sense of the surroundings, would a video of what that area looks like also give a viewer of your film a sense of context and space? You’ve also talked about doing some interviews; that would also give you some moving images along with the stills.

If you want some ideas about other possible ways of incorporating a statue into film, check out the clip from Looking for Lincoln that I have posted on OWL-Space–especially with the section of the OWL-Space clip beginning around 5:55 minutes.

What you do, of course, is up to you, and you’ve got great ideas floating around already. Before everything gets finalized, though, I do want to push you a little bit to (a) think about the mission of your group and the purpose of your film and (b) think about ways you can fully utilize the advantages of your medium in order to fulfill that mission.

As already mentioned, yesterday the whole Movie Group met with Jane at the Digital Media Center to discuss and plan out our movie/documentary project.  We decided on the themes we wanted covered in the documentary: Dowling and the Battle, The Commissioning and Dedication of the Statue, The Movements of the Statue, and The Rededication.  I chose to work on the Commissioning and Dedication of the Statue. This will entail writing my “2 minute” segment for the video, which will then be reviewed and cut down by my group mates.  As I am writing, I will collect the stills and video I want to use in the video and deposit them in a dropbox folder that will be shared with the group so that we do not collect redundant material. After my piece is edited and possibly while I am writing, I will begin deciding where in my segment I want the stills/video to fit so that we can create a storyboard to aid in the movie creation process. Finally, we also agreed to share/get gmail accounts so that we can use google docs for the editing process when needed.

So far, I have done a bit of research on the commissioning and dedication of the statue, but I am still in the early stages.  My completed script is due April 8^th, and I do not foresee this deadline becoming a problem.  I have also created a dropbox account and installed dropbox on my computer.  With dropbox, I have created a “Movie Group” folder which I have begun sharing with my group mates as they install and send me their dropbox accounts.  In this folder I have placed a few “tester” items related to Dowling just to see how everything works and check to make sure everyone can access/edit.  I already had a gmail account and look forward to moving Gaby into the 21^st century.

I had the opportunity to chat with some of my music major friends yesterday about the possibility of them preparing some music for the background of our movie and they were very receptive to the idea.  To work with the two of them (both violinists) they have told us to get moving on our work and sort of get an idea of where the rising and falling actions will be, then they will consult with us on how many and which pieces they would be willing to perform (one of them has Irish heritage and had a good time imagining the possible jigs she might put together…).  Obviously, it might take them a while so the sooner we can consult with them the better, however, they will not be heartbroken if it does not work out this semester.

I am looking forward to a productive weekend/next week on this project and think we are in a great place right now!

The movie group met yesterday with Jane at the Digital Media Center and she was very helpful.  Her main point was that we should get all of our pictures, music, video, etc. together, and make a storyboard.  Along with that we should write a script and then combine the two with their help.  She said it takes a long time to edit and so we are doing our best to get ahead of the game.

We split up the work between the four of us and I will focus on Dick Dowling’s life and the Battle of Sabine Pass which should comprise a minute and a half of the video, roughly.  We want the main focus of our video to be on the memory of Dick Dowling, so a majority of our video will be dedicated to that.  We set a deadline to have our scripts done by April 8th, exchange them over the weekend for editing, and meet again on Monday to discuss and start working on the movie.  We are going to use the recorder that is available for checkout at the DMC for the music and voice over, Jane showed us how to use the recorder.

As for the immediate “next step” Kat decided that we set up a Dropbox account so we can share any research we find with our group. Drobox account done. My plan is to start researching Dowling and the Battle of Sabine Pass in the library and the resources we have already acquired from our class. Kat recommended that I use Edward Cotham’s book, “Sabine Pass: The Confederacy’s Thermopylae.  The clock is ticking!

All in all, we had a very productive meeting and we are all excited about the final product of our movie!

As Gabby wrote in her post, yesterday, we met with Jane at the Digital Media Center and she was incredibly helpful. She explained to us that the best way to tackle this project is to first gather all of the materials that we want to include in our movie (she described them as ingredients which was a good way to think of it). Once we have all of the materials we want to use–pictures, documents that our class has put online, music and video, we need to write a script and put together a basic storyboard. Then we can check out a recording device or use the recording studio at the DMC to record our script, then one of the women at the DMC will help us put all of this into movie form. She affirmed that no more than 5 minutes was a good length for our movie, and made sure that we understood how long it can take to edit a movie–this means that it is going to be really important for us to get moving on getting all of the “ingredients” for our movie.

With time being a big concern, we split up the work for the movie by themes. We decided this was an equitable way of dividing the work. We are going to focus more on the memory of Dick Dowling in Houston than on the battle of Sabien Pass and Dowling’s life, so Adam is the only member of our group who will be focusing on those topics. I am responsible for gathering all of the materials necessary for our discussion of the rededication of the statue in the 1990s. Fortunately, a lot of those materials are already online thanks to the library assignments, but I also will have to do more independent research, in particular, I am going to try to get in touch with the Dick Dowling Irish Heritage group in Houston. That being said, we all want our scripts drafted and materials gathered by April 8–we then are going to exchange drafts and edit each others’ drafts and meet on April 11 to get working on the movie.

Right now, the major thing that I have done to get moving on my project is to create a dropbox account and to make sure that the group has all of my contact information. This weekend my goal is to go through the Dowling archives that we have put online thanks to the Library Assignments and to go through the Dowling archives that the Houston Public Library has, so that I can get a good idea of what materials I already have access to and what materials I will need to find myself.

Overall, I think that our group is in a really good place, and I’m really excited to be getting to work on this project!