thestoryofjory.com

I wasn’t really able to participate in the planning process for IgniteOKC this Spring due to my teaching schedule.  However, the committee asked me to come back to do the videos again for the night of the event.  I think the videos turned out much better this time because I finally figured out how to compensate for the low light in the theater – we got someone to run a follow-spot and I stopped the aperture down a bit more than normal on the camera.  Thus, color balancing took much less time this go-round and I got all 15 videos turned around in a week! The intro graphic was made using Kathleen Shannon’s design for the IgniteOKC programs. Click here to see the rest of the IgniteOKC 3 videos.

I blogged a few weeks ago about participating in the Living Arts 24-hour Video Race with my friend Michael Champlin.  Bad weather forced the event to be postponed until Feb. 11, so last weekend we finally got to make a film! I had so much fun hanging out with Mikey & his wife, Lisa, and making friends with the rest of the team – Ben Champlin, Connor Wingfield, Matt Beard and Jessica Kouns. Our group got along well, which made the experience really enjoyable. I think Mikey and Matt were happy to be shooting the film on a DSLR; it’s something I know they want to do more of and I look forward to seeing other things they shoot together.

The Video Race competition had several requirements. We had 24 hours to make a film (five minutes or less) that had the following elements:

• Theme – “The World of Tomorrow”
• Line of Dialogue – “Devil May Care”
• Prop – Yo-Yo

We could have no more than 8 people on our team, and we could only use material we’d created in the 24-hour time period.  It was a major challenge to say the least! We didn’t win the competition, but our whole team was really proud of the film and I think we turned in a strong contender.

It was certainly a learning experience. I’d never edited a film before – let alone come up with the idea & execution for one within a day. There are certainly things I would want to fix if we had more time, but that’s part of the experience of being an editor – sometimes, your time runs out. I do hope to get more opportunities to edit short films in the future.  It’s much different than doing documentary-style or non-fiction pieces, and I think it makes me stretch my creativity. I certainly have a deepened respect for aspiring filmmakers now, too.

I recently re-watched this segment of Ira Glass on Storytelling while discussing the series with my class.  Ira’s message about being a ‘ruthless killer’ and cutting anything that doesn’t add to the story is really ringing true for me this week. I’m working on two more videos for Stan Clark Co.’s 20-year service award recipients, which is a huge undertaking.  I had less raw footage to deal with this time, but taking 6+ hours of video down to an end-product that’s 15 minutes long is still a monumental task! Adding to this challenge is the story’s form – I’m letting the interview subjects tell the recipient’s story with no voice-over or scripted narration.

With every cut and cull, I find myself asking if I’m ‘propping-up’ the recipient’s story or confusing the story’s natural flow. Particularly when there’s no script involved, one has to pay careful attention to editing, so that the interviewee’s statements make sense in context with others around it; and also that these statements aren’t edited so as to deceive their true meaning. This leads to situations wherein I have an amazing clip – the person is saying something funny, deep, or genuine and it really sings – but I don’t have any other material to support it and make it the best it can be. If I keep the clip, I’m only doing so because I selfishly love it; not because that’s the best context or helps the story. Thus, even though I’ve fallen in love with the clip, I have to let it go. It hurts for now, but with Ira’s support I’m sure I’ll have a story that’s a lot stronger in the end.