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Montana update: Project approved!
Victory! Yesterday, my committee approved my creative project documentary, "Generation Energy", sealing my fate as a soon-to-be BECA graduate graduate. After over a year of hard slog - late nights, weekends, and a whole lot of despair - this is a great feeling.
I've got many reflections to share with you. You're going to read my thoughts about the creative project structure at BECA and what I intend to do next with Generation Energy, but first I'm going to tell you about the twists and turns of the project in the past month or so. [Note: All images in this post are from the current or previous edits of the documentary.]
Just over a month ago, I submitted my first rough cut to my committee. This edit was 53 minutes long and featured the rough structure and sequence of events that I wanted to develop further. Missing was music, a voiceover, and other sound elements. My committee didn't have many suggestions for me because I think the edit was too rough for them to understand what was going on. The only idea - that the piece took a while to get moving - was useful, however. I cut a lot from the beginning of the documentary, including a boring bicycle tuition scene, and it made a big difference.
So I continued working. I added a slideshow introduction, outlining the basics of how climate change and peak oil are affecting life; me, Kyle Nelson, and Chris Hardy shot an on-camera portion in Golden Gate Park to follow the slideshow, which introduced the Montana adventure, and a similar on-camera portion to end the documentary; and I recorded a voice over with Maddy Bills to tie together the whole piece. Adding these elements created a more understandable and cohesive piece. The result was a lot more content and a total running time of 59 minutes.
Last Wednesday, I showed this piece to Grace Provenzano, my committee chair. It wasn't pretty: I received a torrent of criticism. In fact, Grace didn't even watch the whole piece. Her biggest problems were that the documentary lacked a structure and that it was full of fluff and way too many talking heads - the documentary could easily be 28 minutes, half its current length. Grace also felt that my narration made many sweeping statements without attribution, that there were too many jump cuts, and that some of the bicycling shots were very shaky.
The meeting ended and I left, feeling antagonized by the angry tone of the interaction. But the next day, after contemplation, I realized that Grace was probably annoyed at watching a version as muddy as this one with so little time left. My main priority was to get my committee to let me graduate and so I decided to implement all of Grace's suggestions. With five days left, the pressure was on.
Filled with vigor, I returned to the editing room with a new clarity. Grace's tone had shaken me up and suddenly I could see so much to which I'd previously been blind. She was right about the structure. I'd tried to go for a structure that was two parts intertwined - an exploration of energy in the 21st century and a document of a bicycle road trip. But the two parts were not clearly enough delineated, producing a confusing result and muddying the more important messages concerning energy.
So I greased the delete button and proceeded to cut out almost all of the road trip sections. I now realized that these "aside" sections had probably been included because of my fond memories of being there at the time - but the audience probably didn't care to see 30 minutes of students rabbiting on about junk food or people knocking over cooking pots.
Many other sections were cut too. The introduction featuring archive footage of flying cars and highways of the future was cut. The visit to a poor house in the town of Roundup was cut. The section where teachers and students discussed the academic course was cut. The goodbyes section at the end was also cut.
Within one day alone, I cut over 20 minutes of the documentary. Soon it was within reach of the 28 minute goal I was now aiming for (There's a back story here. At my first committee meeting, I said I wanted to produce an hour-long piece but my committee suggested around 30 minutes, which I accepted with some reluctance. Much later, when my first edit was almost an hour, I changed my mind back and decided to go for an hour. But when Grace tore apart my hour edit, I once more returned to the 30 minute target. Talk about 180's!).
Suddenly the documentary really had focus. It moved on and the energy messages were much stronger. Many weaker scenes, to which I was attached because I was there at the time, were gone. Looking back, it's amazing that the lack of merit of many scenes was not more apparent to me at the time. But I really needed my committee's help to develop the critical eye to see this.
With this final burst of energy, the documentary was now 28 minutes long - down from 59 minutes a week before - and was radically improved. Yesterday, Tuesday May 12th, I delivered the DVDs to Grace and Corless, my other committee member (the third member, Ron Compesi, was out of the country). We met a few hours later and the committee praised my work and made many suggestions for improved before passing me. It was a great feeling.
This whole project has been a colossal cross to bear. It's lasted well over a year and involved an intense build-up before the shoot, an incredibly taxing month-long production, and a post-production process which was often dull and depressing. But I've overcome it all, more or less alone and with considerable hardship, and have emerged victorious. I've made many mistakes but have cherished the lessons and am proud at my success. And I couldn't have done it without the valuable help from my collaborator Margot and my advisors Grace, Ron, Corless, Sami Reist, and others. Their help has made this documentary what it is.
The project for the purposes of my Masters degree is over. But although the battle might be over, the war is not. I intend to implement my committee's suggestions and continue improving the documentary. It's certainly not yet at a satisfying quality and it should be.
There is still much to share with you on several fronts. Look out for more blog posts to that end.
I hope you enjoyed reading my updates about this project. And thank you for all the interest you have showed. This long process was made considerably lighter by your support.
Until soon...
Adam
I've got many reflections to share with you. You're going to read my thoughts about the creative project structure at BECA and what I intend to do next with Generation Energy, but first I'm going to tell you about the twists and turns of the project in the past month or so. [Note: All images in this post are from the current or previous edits of the documentary.]
Just over a month ago, I submitted my first rough cut to my committee. This edit was 53 minutes long and featured the rough structure and sequence of events that I wanted to develop further. Missing was music, a voiceover, and other sound elements. My committee didn't have many suggestions for me because I think the edit was too rough for them to understand what was going on. The only idea - that the piece took a while to get moving - was useful, however. I cut a lot from the beginning of the documentary, including a boring bicycle tuition scene, and it made a big difference.
So I continued working. I added a slideshow introduction, outlining the basics of how climate change and peak oil are affecting life; me, Kyle Nelson, and Chris Hardy shot an on-camera portion in Golden Gate Park to follow the slideshow, which introduced the Montana adventure, and a similar on-camera portion to end the documentary; and I recorded a voice over with Maddy Bills to tie together the whole piece. Adding these elements created a more understandable and cohesive piece. The result was a lot more content and a total running time of 59 minutes.
Last Wednesday, I showed this piece to Grace Provenzano, my committee chair. It wasn't pretty: I received a torrent of criticism. In fact, Grace didn't even watch the whole piece. Her biggest problems were that the documentary lacked a structure and that it was full of fluff and way too many talking heads - the documentary could easily be 28 minutes, half its current length. Grace also felt that my narration made many sweeping statements without attribution, that there were too many jump cuts, and that some of the bicycling shots were very shaky.
The meeting ended and I left, feeling antagonized by the angry tone of the interaction. But the next day, after contemplation, I realized that Grace was probably annoyed at watching a version as muddy as this one with so little time left. My main priority was to get my committee to let me graduate and so I decided to implement all of Grace's suggestions. With five days left, the pressure was on.
Filled with vigor, I returned to the editing room with a new clarity. Grace's tone had shaken me up and suddenly I could see so much to which I'd previously been blind. She was right about the structure. I'd tried to go for a structure that was two parts intertwined - an exploration of energy in the 21st century and a document of a bicycle road trip. But the two parts were not clearly enough delineated, producing a confusing result and muddying the more important messages concerning energy.
So I greased the delete button and proceeded to cut out almost all of the road trip sections. I now realized that these "aside" sections had probably been included because of my fond memories of being there at the time - but the audience probably didn't care to see 30 minutes of students rabbiting on about junk food or people knocking over cooking pots.
Many other sections were cut too. The introduction featuring archive footage of flying cars and highways of the future was cut. The visit to a poor house in the town of Roundup was cut. The section where teachers and students discussed the academic course was cut. The goodbyes section at the end was also cut.
Within one day alone, I cut over 20 minutes of the documentary. Soon it was within reach of the 28 minute goal I was now aiming for (There's a back story here. At my first committee meeting, I said I wanted to produce an hour-long piece but my committee suggested around 30 minutes, which I accepted with some reluctance. Much later, when my first edit was almost an hour, I changed my mind back and decided to go for an hour. But when Grace tore apart my hour edit, I once more returned to the 30 minute target. Talk about 180's!).
Suddenly the documentary really had focus. It moved on and the energy messages were much stronger. Many weaker scenes, to which I was attached because I was there at the time, were gone. Looking back, it's amazing that the lack of merit of many scenes was not more apparent to me at the time. But I really needed my committee's help to develop the critical eye to see this.
With this final burst of energy, the documentary was now 28 minutes long - down from 59 minutes a week before - and was radically improved. Yesterday, Tuesday May 12th, I delivered the DVDs to Grace and Corless, my other committee member (the third member, Ron Compesi, was out of the country). We met a few hours later and the committee praised my work and made many suggestions for improved before passing me. It was a great feeling.
This whole project has been a colossal cross to bear. It's lasted well over a year and involved an intense build-up before the shoot, an incredibly taxing month-long production, and a post-production process which was often dull and depressing. But I've overcome it all, more or less alone and with considerable hardship, and have emerged victorious. I've made many mistakes but have cherished the lessons and am proud at my success. And I couldn't have done it without the valuable help from my collaborator Margot and my advisors Grace, Ron, Corless, Sami Reist, and others. Their help has made this documentary what it is.
The project for the purposes of my Masters degree is over. But although the battle might be over, the war is not. I intend to implement my committee's suggestions and continue improving the documentary. It's certainly not yet at a satisfying quality and it should be.
There is still much to share with you on several fronts. Look out for more blog posts to that end.
I hope you enjoyed reading my updates about this project. And thank you for all the interest you have showed. This long process was made considerably lighter by your support.
Until soon...
Adam
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Comment by Michele Chandler on May 14, 2009 at 1:17pm - Congratulations! hooray for you--job well done!
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