Maya Deren

Maya Deren is such a phenomenal pep-talker. Her soliloquy "Amateur v. Professional" makes me feel like it's all do-able, even when deadlines, procrastination, projects/tests, and research become overwhelming.

It reminds me of what my mom always tells me, "do what you love, and the money will follow." This piece reminds me to get back to my root desire--why did I choose film studies? I love movies. I love seeing them in theaters, I love movie nights, I love discussion about how it affects our culture, I love critiquing and analyzing the sound/camera operations... it all thrills me.

So--imitate the old, with your own personal flair. Initiate new concepts so that others can also build off of you. Eventually someone (maybe just yourself?) will find something creating, innovative, and interesting about what you're attempting, and it's those people who we want in our life.

Which brings me back to another cheeseball saying, "be yourself, because everyone is taken."


I'm looking forward to this.

-lizzie

Fred Camper

Fred Camper's thoughts on experimental genre filmmaking makes me question, yet also re-iterates some of the concepts I've learned thus far in film school:

1) The first point of a small collective group/sole filmmaker with a "minuscule budget" could not be more akin with UNCW. We have worked in groups from the very first 201 Production class! And budget? I believe I had once spent $2.00 on a box of gushers to create another sensory dimension to a film, but otherwise it was whatever my group members and I could find around our homes.

2) This confuses me to some point--how do we decide who does what in each group, if we are supposed to kind of be doing them all? Are we all each other's assistants?

3) This just makes sense, because if it was easy to follow, what would be experimental with it? Unless we're talking about the first ever person to use back/forward flash... that would have been experimental for the time, right? Or do I sound like a young punk?

4) This is the part that gets me the most "amped" for class. In 6x1,  painting/scratching on the celluloid felt like arts and crafts, and seeing the projection of it was really interesting. It was rewarding, but also enlightening to try to figure out areas of improvement. It also gave me hands-on actualization of the time it takes to draw animations.

5) If I'm interpreting this correctly, it makes sense as well. Recycling used scenes? Like crowd sourcing from youtube to create something with a new context?

6) I would like to think that it's simply open to interpretation, like a classic book. This particular point made me think about how I tend to skip over author notes/Q&As. If the author wanted something in specific to be known, they should have put it in the published work. It's not fair to criticize a reader's interpretations on a book (or film) if an opposing concept was NOT included. There are no re-dos! Except sometimes there are (Star Wars? Star Trek? The Great Gatsby? How many times are these movies re-done? Star Wars never seems to end...).

-lizzie