Hello world!

This week, we have started a new project called “Storm the Barricades.” In this project we analyzed and learnt about Crane Brinton’s theory of revolution and turned this idea into a metaphorical machine while creating a video about it. We also had to mod the machine after we learnt about the American revolution and submit a second video. Although this project is not actually finished since we are only on milestone 2 out of 6 and still have to learn about the French Revolution, make mods on the machine some more and write an essay (these things will be covered in part 2), I thought I should write a blog post to summarize what we have done so far.

About Crane Brinton’s Theory of Revolution:

Crane Brinton was a man that lived quite a while ago (1898 – 1968) and in his lifetime, he wrote a book called “The Anatomy of Revolution” which included his theory of revolution. He believed that a revolution could be split into four different stages and each stage could be further divided into symptoms. Here are the four stages along with the symptoms:

Phase 1: Incubation – The old order

• Symptoms are present before the outbreak

Symptoms:

1. Economic crisis 

– Massive financial crisis

– Deficits in government

– Increase in taxes

2)  Political Weakness

– Government attempts at reform either fail or are never implemented, further angering   the people.

– Inept ruler/government

3)  Intellectual Opposition

– Intellectuals write and speak out against the government

– Intellectuals become reformers

4)  Class Antagonism

– Conflicts between old regime and new forces 

Phase 2: The first stage – The moderate regime 

– Revolutions tend to be lead by moderate leaders in their early stages.

– Moderates try to enact to enact reforms without resorting to extremism.

Symptoms:

1)  Financial Breakdown

2)  Symbolic Actions / Dramatic Events

3)  Role of Force 

– The old regime still holds military power

4)  Moderates Attain power

Phase 3: Crisis Stage – Radical regime

• The use of violence increases dramatically

Symptoms:

1) Radicals take control

2) War!!!

– There would be civil and national wars

3) Centralization of Power

4) Terror and virtue

– Terror is only justice : prompt severe and inflexible. It is then an emanation virtue.

– Maximilien Robespierre

– The state is so far gone that terror becomes the governing force.

Phase 4: Recovery Stage – Thermidorian Reaction 

• The reign of terror ends, and violence diminishes.
• Radicals are ejected from power and moderates return.
• A government resembling the old regime returns, though altered by the effects of the revolution, and takes power

Symptoms:

1) Return to quieter times

– It will be a bumpy road back and some people will recover faster

2) The moderates return

3) Nationalism Rises

– May lead to war

Our Task:

As mentioned in the intro, we had to make a metaphorical machine that covers Crane Brinton’s theory of Revolution. The type of metaphorical machine we had to create on this task was a Rube Goldberg machine (a machine that completes a simple task in a very complicated manner) and the minimum number of metaphors we had to include for each phase was 2. On this project, I got to work with Julien, Simon and Nate (click on their names to see their blogs) and we decided that we would cover the following symptoms:

Phase 1:

Economic crisis and intellectual opposition

Phase 2:

Financial break down and uprising (a type of symbolic action)

Phase 3:

War and radicals take control

Phase 4:

The moderates return and return to quieter times

We planned and built the metaphor machine. The machine ended up becoming mostly run on marbles so we decided to associate a marbles colour to a certain party involved with the revolution. The red would be the old regime, the yellow would be the moderates and intellectuals and finally, the black would be the radicals. After everything was built, we filmed our machine based on a storyboard Nate and I created, and edited a video about the machine and Crane Brinton’s theory. Here is the video below if you would like to see:

Reflection After the First Building, Filming and Editing Attempt:

If you watched the video, to be honest, you would probably be slightly confused. Here are the reasons why you were probably confused and the problems we had:

1. Our timing of the voice overs and shots did not match very well.
2. The explanation was unclear about what we were doing and about Crane Brinton’s theory of revolution.
3. The video was boring and uncreative.
4. We had to rush the editing process due to the fact that we were submitting past the deadline.

As you can see, we had major problems and even I would rate this as a cloud (the worst possible rating) however because of this, we could plan the next mod and video better and just a hint, it does get way better.

Learning About the American Revolution:

This blog post was meant to be a relatively short reflection but I have realized it is pretty hard to reflect on a task that you are unclear about so here is the next stage of our task (Yay!). The next milestone (milestone 2) was to learn about the American Revolution and make adjustments to our machine that tie in with the new material. We also had to learn about the historical significance of it as we would soon be writing a paragraph about it. 

Building the First Modification and Creating a new video:

Even though our task was to modify our machine, our group decided it would be best if we restarted due to our past machine’s poor creation and unclear metaphors. To save time, we still reused parts machine and mechanism ideas as well. We also decided that it would be best if we remained with the same symptoms to metaphor because they were easier to create and we had a better understanding of them. After finishing the rebuild of the second machine we began the filming of shots, recording of planned audio and helping Julien with the editing. Here is the second, majorly improved video and machine:

Reflection of Second Video and Machine:

As you can clearly see, there has been a major improvement between the first video and this new one. Here are the reasons I believe our video has improved:

1. We had drawings of the planned machine rather than just building everything based on imagination and a description. This allowed all of us to picture the same end goal of our machine.
2. We (Julien) used better editing software giving us better options while editing.
3. Julien took lots of pictures of us while we were building which helped make the video look nicer.
4. We chose more appropriate mechanisms for the metaphors like an elevator and a weighted see saw.
5. We built the ramps against an inclined plane which made it much faster to build.
6. We could work faster and better due to our experience with the first attempt at building the machine. 

Although there have been significant improvements from the last attempt, I still believe we could have made it better. In my opinion, here are the things we could have done:

1. Labelled the video so the viewer knew exactly which part we were talking about in the voice over.
2. We could have better decorated our machine. For example, we did not have any of the actual ramps or board decorated.
3. Although the video was much better, Julien ended up doing most of it. We should find a way to balance out the editing so we can all contribute ideas rather than it being one person’s work.
4. The big marbles were not coloured so the effect of having them associated with a regime did not work.
5. The war scene would consistently be flipped outside down and it was too discreet.

I hope to achieve all these goals by the next mod and improve all the things that are already good.

Thank you for reading all the way to the end and I hope you reading part two.

Jordan