lapsedmodernist | Kino-Eye Angst (Reply)

Ok, so I am still super-stressed, but it turns out that I am further along with the film than anyone else in my class. So, with the exception of the closing montage, I have the entire rough cut in the time line, and no one else even has a full assembly. Not that I should be measuring it against other people's, mine is going to be longer and more hyper-edited, but still, they all have to be done by May 4th. Even though I am done with the shooting, it seems like I will never really be done with the shooting. Meaning, if I had to, I could edit from everything I have, and it would be fine, but really I need one more shoot of vendor tables by Ground Zero when it's sunny, which it seemingly will never be again, and I am getting more coverage of the sculptures from the Buildings of Disaster line on the 21st. That's pushing it really close, but I really need a couple more good close-ups to lay over the jumpcuts. And on the 22nd I am going to Atlanta for a conference. Needless to say, I have yet to write the paper I am supposed to give next Saturday. But in the meantime I started laying the music tracks, and it sounds good. I am trying to focus on the positives, because I am so anxious about this film, and growing more insecure by the second, questioning every editing decision, projecting all kinds of reactions and letting it paralyze me. Like, the music is sad. Does it make a montage of WTC souveneirs too sad? Will people think the music is manipulative? But I can't exactly put chirpy music there. And it is sad. That is part of why the hijacking of these signs & symbols for a monadic patriotic discourse is disgusting. But still. Does my segue from one part of the city to the next, done as a rapid montage of pre-stormy city shots, sped up to 300% and solarized, seem self-consciously arty? Will people find it upsetting? But I want to access that without harping on it, that the aura of the city is perturbed, stormy, illuminated by the lightning that accompanies "the moment of danger." In a way, the aesthetics of this film are the reflections of my state of mind, which is comprised in equal parts from juxtapositions and phantasmogoria. Shit, I shouldn't be allowed near the video filters! Must...render...sepia... I actually took a shot of an American flag waving in the wind, razorbladed it down the middle, solarized the first part and crossfaded it with the clean second half. Am I being too linear?

Ugh. Not only does my brain sound like a Nine Inch Nails video, I am forced to earnestly contemplate questions that belong in a "creative journal" of a first-year art school fucktard.

So the working title is September Souveneirs, but I don't like it. Today I had an epiphany that I wanted to call it Signs & Symbols, yes, a conscious nod to Nabokov.

totalvirility argued that the title has to have some explicit reference to 9/11 and suggested September Signs and Symbols. I do like the alliteration, but I just don't know...any ideas? Do any of these sound good?

I have a new motto, too. Tonight at the Hole, (which is, really, like if Disneyland made a ride called Seedy!), something

totalvirility said prompted me to heatedly reply: "The metaphor never ends!" It made sense in context, but I think it has a nice bastardization-of-social-realism ring to it out of context, and makes for an excellent slogan. So, let's raise our glasses to the metaphor. That never ends. Hurrah.