Conspiracy
Video
The
Greatest Lie Ever Told
We were set the task off creating a 3-minute
conspiracy video that would convince the viewer into believing that the
conspiracy was real. We brainstormed ideas of multiple conspiracies, crossing
out the theories that weren't appealing.
Our final choice of the idea came from the
conspiracy appealing to both of us. This being in fact the most controversial
theory in the case of religion, of the conspiracy theory of Jesus Christ being
married to the prostitute Mary Magdalene.
The first and foremost important beginning to this
project was to research. Now with this conspiracy there are 3 things to it,
Mary Magdalene being Jesus’s wife, there being a holy bloodline and Mary being
the mythical Holy Grail. Now we only wanted to focus on one of these three, bearing
in mind the 3 minute time we had in which to tell our conspiracy.
The research was split into two parts. Dave went
and researched the Gnostic gospels (Documents that were hidden away during the
creation of the bible, due to Marys content within them, by the bibles
creators) and articles and historical documents relating to Mary. The second part of the research was handled
by myself and this was to collect and collate clips from documentaries and news
reports relating to the subject.
Now the first cut of the video differs in a big way
to its final cut. Searching for news reports on this subject was very difficult
to achieve. So our first cut was mainly put together clips of a Tony Robinson
documentary. Our main goal was to create a story from the clips to make the
theory more easily believable. Now from looking back at this with our first cut
we effectively had a Tony Robinson documentary and a very one-sided argument
that didn’t really convince you into believing the theory.
The solution to this problem was solved by more
research. This time delving deeper into YouTube to find news reports and
anything linking into our subject matter.
What I came out with from this research was another
documentary based on the Gnostic Gospels, which was a very prominent part to
our theory and 8 news reports.
Now before I began editing again, I had a look at a
few conspiracy videos on YouTube to see the type of editing style that went
into them. This helped me to understand how to edit together what I had found
in a way to 1 keep the viewer interested and emotionally engaged and 2 to make
them believe it.
I created a rough edit decision list, jotting down
the order of the clips and which points in the clips I should choose to go into
our video.
From this I created our second cut. Which now
flowed. First putting a statement followed by asking a question in which the
conspiracy is about. “Were Jesus and Mary Magdalene Married?”
This followed with an easily recognizable piece of
imagery to start our story, this being the painting of the Last Supper by
Leonardo Da Vinci.
The first act would build up the claim of whether
or not Mary Magdalene was a prostitute and also revealing to the audience
something hidden behind the iconic painting (this way backing up the belief).
The second act would consist of how the discovery
of the Gnostic Gospels has impacted modern day beliefs on this subject and
showing (via the news reports) the more controversial side to these findings.
This is specifically edited this way to interest the viewer and to draw them
more into the conspiracy by feeding them the historical side to the theory and
then the modern day impact to it.
Now before I made the call for this cut to be final
I still felt like there was something missing from it. Something that would
leave the viewer with the lasting thought of this could and can be true.
To help my way around this I conducted a number of
test viewings to people who had no knowledge of this project to gage a reaction
from them. The initial result was a missing lasting impact.
After consulting with a lecturer, I was given the
advice that I had to have something hard hitting at the start of the video to
first gain the audiences interest and another hard hitter at the end of the
video to make it memorable.
So what I did was I found a voice clip of a
preacher reciting Jesus’s words from the last supper to over lay with the
imagery of the painting, this added a level of drama to the imagery to reflect
the nature of the painting.
For the ending of the video I designed it in a way
so it would end the same way it started. With a statement and a question. This
time the question answered, and for the impact that I felt the video needed a
voice clip from the film “The Da Vinci Code” Stating “Mary Magdalene was
Jesus’s wife”. This way giving the viewer a visual answer to the question first
asked in the video combined with an audible accompaniment to make it a lasting
memory, making it believable and convincing for them.
The Greatest Lie Ever Told from Alex J Gilbert on Vimeo.
