Word: buckinghams
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Most people might not consider hours spent in a dark basement a whole lot of fun. Megan L. Buckingham '03, originally a child of sunny Laguna Beach, Calif., now spends a significant portion of her time in the basement-the one under Sever, to be more precise, the home of Harvard's video and film labs. But for Buckingham, who describes her video sub-concentration in Visual and Environmental Studies as "fun" and "something I just love to do," the subterranean hours are worth...
...Buckingham found her way to video after more traditional sculpture and drawing classes at Harvard. She says, "I knew when I came to Harvard that I wanted to do art, [but]...sculpture and drawing just didn't lend themselves to the stories I wanted my work to tell." Video, then, was a natural choice for Buckingham, whose self-professed inability to "think linearly" swayed her away from film, a medium that requires a much more carefully structured approach to creating a cohesive set of images...
Video, on the other hand, lets Buckingham craft disparate footage and sounds, the laughs of her roommates, shots of her grandmother smoking cigarettes and even pieces of home videos shot by her father of Buckingham and her sister when they were much younger. If Buckingham thought linearly, she would lose what makes her a tremendously talented student of video. Somehow, playing with digital video tools, Buckingham cuts and pastes, extends and distorts time. She retells stories the way she understands them, with images of the past and present rendered with equal importance...
...Buckingham's footage is shot live, as in a documentary. Her current projects mostly deal with "childhood, growth and family." She says, "I focus on my grandmother a lot, who molested me, and alcoholism, as well as female identity and the ties a family...
...videos are beautiful, from a purely aesthetic sense and from the distinct realism woven into the stories she tells. A video from class last year chronicles a trip Buckingham took with her younger sister to visit their grandmother. Buckingham's talented camera work is evident; she uses images shot of passing land along the highway while her car is moving, as well as images of her sister driving. She chronicles the miniscule, from a stop for a cigarette and coffee to her grandmother's demonstration of a vegetable grinder. A shot of a computer screen with a drawing...