Vid in progress thoughts
Finishing this vid is getting to be like the paradox of the tortoise and Achilles, chasing after the endpoint by way of an infinite number of ever-decreasing increments. Things change when the timeline is full, instead of a series of more and less cool parts hung on to a framework it becomes a whole thing and the parts start to need to talk to one another, change one and the entire meaning shifts. Which reminds me of the thing that the people who make the vids that make you want to make vids always talk about. Intent, every clip needs a reason to be and to be there. So I struggle with the difference between reasons and rationalisations but also come to realise that intent applies not just to individual clips but to the vid as a whole, the gestalt if you like. And that’s more difficult because at least individual clips are discrete things, visual objects, but gestalt is a more abstract quantity and if you can’t see it how are you to judge its intentfulness or otherwise?
Walter Murch, among many other insights, had a way of dealing with the vast amount of footage he needed to edit by selecting a series of stills each of which was supposed to represent a particular section of the film. This was much more than just an aide d’catalogue because the very act of selecting that representative still would force him to identify the heart of the scene in question. So can this be applied to vids or at least to good vids? Not to say that a good vid is like a high concept movie and reducible to a single tag line,
“The Grapes of Wrath in Outer Space!”
but that a good vid has a certain coherence, an identifiable heart.
So thinking about it and because I’m on a BSG roll take Lum’s “More than Human,” I think the central image there could be that drop of Sharon’s blood falling at the end. Violence tangled up with sex and blood is identity, Cylon or human. Or here’s luck’s “New Frontier.” This is more difficult because there are images that I love in that vid like the spinning brain and the clip of Mal contemplating River’s sleeping body after the bar incident but trying to be objective I think the key image has to be the one on Haven, the turning point when Mal makes the decision to fight.
Does my “Babies” vid have a central image yet? Well there’s the rub, I think it does or it did when it started and it was a clip of Kobol hanging whole in the sky all blue and pregnant (pun intended) with possibility. At the moment, however, that actual clip has been taken off the time line, although there are other clips that allude to it. It’s a sort of absent protagonist (I mentioned the rationalisation thing didn’t I)? The other problem is that, in the making, the vid has started to deconstruct itself and acquired a much angrier, more radical feminist ending. If that planet is still the central image, it’s rotten to the core. Hmm.
Walter Murch, among many other insights, had a way of dealing with the vast amount of footage he needed to edit by selecting a series of stills each of which was supposed to represent a particular section of the film. This was much more than just an aide d’catalogue because the very act of selecting that representative still would force him to identify the heart of the scene in question. So can this be applied to vids or at least to good vids? Not to say that a good vid is like a high concept movie and reducible to a single tag line,
“The Grapes of Wrath in Outer Space!”
but that a good vid has a certain coherence, an identifiable heart.
So thinking about it and because I’m on a BSG roll take Lum’s “More than Human,” I think the central image there could be that drop of Sharon’s blood falling at the end. Violence tangled up with sex and blood is identity, Cylon or human. Or here’s luck’s “New Frontier.” This is more difficult because there are images that I love in that vid like the spinning brain and the clip of Mal contemplating River’s sleeping body after the bar incident but trying to be objective I think the key image has to be the one on Haven, the turning point when Mal makes the decision to fight.
Does my “Babies” vid have a central image yet? Well there’s the rub, I think it does or it did when it started and it was a clip of Kobol hanging whole in the sky all blue and pregnant (pun intended) with possibility. At the moment, however, that actual clip has been taken off the time line, although there are other clips that allude to it. It’s a sort of absent protagonist (I mentioned the rationalisation thing didn’t I)? The other problem is that, in the making, the vid has started to deconstruct itself and acquired a much angrier, more radical feminist ending. If that planet is still the central image, it’s rotten to the core. Hmm.