The Original Road Video 

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Based on the classic novel written by Cormac McCarthy, The Road, this video centers around two major themes (one of which was added to the revised version and was not in the original): dreams and nature. To begin with, the two separate clips of the boy and man are representative of the father and son in the novel. Instead of using clips from the actual movie, I thought it would be interesting to use two clips that were very similar in their making to show the connection between the father and son in the actual story. In the revised video, I used more text to emphasize these two themes, and in addition, used different color fonts in the revised version, to show the conversation between the two clips/father and son. The video shows the father's reluctance to let go of the past, specifically his memories with his wife. One memory, specifically, being when he and his wife go to a theater and he notes the "golden curtains" (1:54). He later talks about holding hands with her. Thus, all his senses of his memory are relived often throughout the book, as he and son fight to stay alive in this post-apocolyptic world. The quote, "the right dreams for a man in peril were dreams of peril and all else was the call for langour and of death" was spoken by the father in the novel and I used this quote to carry on my video until the end. Essentially, the father's good memories with his wife, and the memory of him on the lake with his uncle, suggests a foreshadowing of his own death at the end of the novel, which I represent in the video as, the screen turns to black and white (4:02) and the man in the video falls out of the boat and floats in the water lifeless. Meanwhile, the boy must journey on, and at the same time, dreams soon collide with nature. Although it's the "end of the world" and the father dies, towards the end of the novel, there's an implication that whether man be there or not, nature will always persist on. At 4:18, the focus shifts more towards the boy, as the "tower" collapses, serving as a metaphor for the apocalypse, and the boy must "carry on the fire" or find the strength within to persevere through. In a way, this similar to my Inner Strength E-Poem that also discussed the importance of finding one's inner strength.  

THEME ALERT 

"Change": The concept of change in this context is literal when referring to the apocalypse that completely transforms society of the world. The father and his son are forced to learn how to survive and "carry the fire."