Said Black
An interview with former USMC Sergeant Sais Black, cut-up and animated. A student film produced at the University of California, San Diego.
"Said Black" is a project that set out to do three things: 1. challenge the conventional assertions of what we consider "military veterans" to be, 2. to demonstrate the necessity for recognizing form as content, and 3. to challenge the idea that using animation as an artistic medium is not a choice in genre but rather a choice in form.
The subject of "Said Black" is former USMC Sergeant Sais Black. He is African-American, young, and has plans to open an independent hip-hop record label, a quality one would not generally expect from our culture's typical understanding of a military veteran. At the same time, he has conflicting yet harmoniously co-existing elements in his life: his disdain for what went on during and after the military vs. his respect for the men and women in it, the challenges he faced by being away from his family vs. his love of travel. “Said Black” seeks to show how Sais Black mends these seemingly disharmonious elements of his life together by using a visual fluidity that only animation can properly convey.