montage

Okay I don't know what the fuck happened to this damned blogger place, but fuck it, I'm going to tell you what I need to tell you here, and then post the videos above. What a waste of e-paper... Some time ago I started hoisting images, for various reasons, off the Internet and inserting them into photo-manipulation software and displaying (or "posting") them in various places for various reasons. I did this alot when Everybody was using MySpace; and that's one of the reasons I hate facebook [still don't know what that word is supposed to mean]: a bunch of people who can't spell anyway being given free rein to say anything about everything. But of late -- especially generated by my so-far year-long infatuation with Orson Welles -- I've been wanting to make movies. Once I read the interviews and saw F for Fake and the documentary Orson Welles: One-Man Band, I saw this as not only a possibility, but infinitely desirable for me personally. I have a long way to go on that score -- like owning a camera, going to need to do that one of these days -- but in the mean time, I've started making these videos with Windows Live Movie Maker. At the very least, I am, in practice, learning the principles of editing; and as Magister Welles saith: Editing is not an aspect of filmmaking -- it is the aspect. Hence I don't consider these "movies," but rather "montages." Consquently, you will find above the three montages I did this past week. With each one I learned something new, and the first two, you'll note, are very experimental. But really, it's all experimental. I don't know that there is a such thing as "non-experimental" art; if there is a formula involved, there is no seminal idea which gives life to the form being made. I have to keep rambling on because, apparently, paragraphs are no longer allowed here [?]. The first introduces a concept I hope to go places with in the future using, very possibly, a dramatic adaptation of T. S. Eliot's "The Waste Land." The second is an obvious attempt at a romp in badassistry; I'm now convinced one would need actual "motion" pictures for this sort of thing to work right. The third is most important to me, I think. Formally I employed some neat tricks, including optimal video/audio timing and some iconographical dissolves; in content, I just love poor old Jack Bauer. Will there be a Part Two? I don't know yet.

--Update, 22 April 2011: As you'll note, I've added several more videos to the "three" I mentioned here. I think the above will be my permanent video posting "thread." Just f.y.i. and all.