WEEK 5 – Media 5 – Reflection
So, this week in Media, we analysed each other’s edits of a short film we shot on Friday. We all had collaborated throughout the making of this film, but now it was time to become independent, and allow for free thinking and individual creativity to make exactly what we wanted. I used Adobe Premiere Pro CS5 for my edit, mainly because FCP7 has extraordinarily painful rendering. I found this edit to be one of the best edits of anything I had done. It featured a whirlwind style which pulled the audience through the whole sequence in a confusing and disorientating way. Doesn’t sound like fun viewing, but it wasn’t meant to be. I was trying to portray the protagonists feeling through the style, rhythm and timing of the film. It worked. We heard feedback in class, and Robin said that it was disorientating and confusing. It wasn’t a compliment, nor a criticism, but I took it as a compliment. It made me feel like I had successfully edited something to the exact way that I wanted it to be. The only thing that got me a little rilled up was the fact that because our crew for the making of this film, all had the same concept as to what the final product would look like, all the edits looked pretty similar, and in some cases, too similar for comfort. It made me feel cheated or that my work wasn’t special. On the other hand, I remembered, I was the one who designed the shots, the order, and the timing of the whole film. I was the DOP, and working VERY closely with the director. All in all, if there is anything I learnt from this experiment, it is that we should not take other’s imitations, or re-do’s of your work as being ‘cheated’ as such, but as a compliment. It is the evolution of the auteur to have taken, stolen, re-done parts from other auteurs films as a tribute or an enhancement. If there is a quote that sums this up, it is “Steal from one person, and you are a thief. Steal from a thousand, and you are a genius.” ~ modified quote of Wilson Mizner