I am a tinkerer. I like to revisit my old works and sometimes re-edit. If I see something I suddenly feel needs changed, I change it. I don’t like to do this on some levels because I should focus on new works, not the old ones. Therapeutically, I have ceased doing these types of things for the most part. There are exceptions…
I went back in and re-edited a bit of ACCIDENTAL ART, my latest real piece. I had a legitimate reason (excuse). Since the festival run is starting to slow down on this, as I won’t shell out much more money on festival submissions and the free invites have started to wane, I decided that if I put this movie on the Internet, it needed to be trimmed some. I thought a “web edit” was called for because the attention spans for the WWW, and the experience of watching it on a tiny screen versus in a theater with other people is very different.
So I went ahead and did some trims to the first half. The problem was, now I think it is a vastly better edit and I’m not going to use the original edit anymore. I only got rid of 3-4 lines, but somehow I think the movie moves and feels WAY better. We get out of the first scene quicker and we didn’t REALLY lose anything in terms of performance or story. Looking at the movie now, I let things meander, as in the actors have redundant lines that are unnecessary. I wrote the lines, and then I directed them, so this is all on me. In the end I can’t believe I didn’t see this sooner; as in 7 months ago when we edited it the first time. Sometimes I’m not that bright. Most people I’ve shown the new cut to have no idea I changed anything, so that is actually a good sign.
So probably around July I’ll put this movie on the web.
As I have mentioned recently on this blog, I’m doing three separate TV shows regarding film right now. The “call for entries” for the short film show has been a bit overwhelming. DVD’s and tapes are coming in from all over the country already. I’ve been busy digitizing a bunch of movies and preparing for the show all week.
I made this little promo because I had never made anything with the virtual white cyke and I had this idea I wanted to try in Adobe After Effects. It works for me. It’s a little :08 little ditty with some tricks gleaned from Video Co-Pilot.net and even the music is from the Pro Scores pack from Andrew Kramer. I thought something silly visually and impactful and dramatic audio would make a fun little bit. Take a look:
