DESCRIPTION

Gee, whiz, America was once a really swell country, respected around the world for good things. We the people used to be very well off, with all sorts of freedoms, and jobs, and good things to eat and junk. Gosh I miss the good old days in the good ol' U.S.A.

This is an entry for the Stockstock5 2007 film festival (stockstock.org).

America's pet bird, the bald eagle... which may look a bit more like Ben Franklin's first choice, the wild turkey was produced in After Effects using a technigue described by Aharon Rabinowitz on the Creative Cow website -- as were the (totally fake) flock of birds in the last seconds of the final scene.

The eagle was built from pieces of the eagle in "America" (a stockstock-provided excerpt from the Vincent Collins animation "200". 200 was produced for the US Information Agency -- the folks who created the euphemism 'public diplomacy' to replace the semantically undesirable word 'propaganda').

The music comes from two sources:
'And the Young People Answer' is recut from portions of the copyrighted song 'And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda', copyright Larrikin publishing, and written in 1972 by Eric Bogle (ericbogle.net).

The song has been covered by numerous bands, and any version you hear will tug at your emotions, but go and listen to the original, as well as Eric's other works.

I'm quite proud to have received the honor of Eric Bogle's kind and generous permission to use his song this way, with the lyrics recut to tell a new tale.

'Colonel Bogey's Nightmare', the background music to which most of this movie is paced, is a frenetic multitrack remix of 'Oy, Colonel Bogey' (http://www.archive.org/details/Colonel_Bogey_March_variations) itself based on the Academy Award winning song Colonel Bogey (aka 'The Colonel Bogey March' aka 'That song they whistled in Bridge on the River Kwai').

The vocals were provided by George W. Bush, once considered the Leader of the Free World, now, sadly, better known through caricature and ridicule. His actual speeches, edited here to more closely resemble the truth, while his 'earnest and honest' tone of voice clash brassily with his apocalyptic intent.

Accused of stealing 2 elections and worse, there is a petulance in his voice as he raves about hearing 'the voices'.

We need a better 'decider'.