Representing Others Analysis

The video project proved much more challenging than I had anticipated. First of all, it was a group project, and not just because I was working with a partner in the class. Our interviewee, in a sense, became like a third group members whose input we also had to work with. From the get go, the only way in which we could form an idea for the project going in was to think up interview questions - the final product, it seemed, was much reliant on what came out of our interviewee's mouth. We were very aware that we would only be able to work with what we were given, and even ended up debating over the way questions were worded in order to elicit the right sort of answer.
Secondly, due to scheduling conflicts, Nicole took on the filming duties while I became editor. I ended up having to cut down over a half hour's worth of footage into a 6 minutes piece. (Actually, I had to down to about 4.5 minutes before I decided to add in the bit about the Sun Singer to give an example of the art Allerton collected.) In order to do this, I had to mince Linda Bailey's words quite a bit. I felt almost like I was manipulating the narrative she had given us. Revising someone else's words in this medium is not quite the same as in written form; she doesn't get another go at it once I make my 'corrections'. As the articles we read suggested, the editor also becomes a sort of author, albeit with limitations. Even so, it surprised me the extent to which I was able to construct the narrative. For times sake, I condensed much of what she said, which is somewhat noticeable due to the remaining jump cuts I couldn't find appropriate footage to cover, and somewhat in some of the voiceover segments. Even so, it almost scares me to think of what someone with a better program and more technological prowess could do. The ability to manipulate someone else's image and likeness through the media available to us today is quite impressive; it also further complicates the concept of authorship and who can claim to have written what in new media. To what extent did I author this piece? Certainly, I will be receiving a grade for 'my work' - but none of the content was actually produced by me, since I neither provided information nor filmed it. I was solely the manipulator, but someone in this age this affords me some level of authorship over the final product.
In relation to the technology used, well, that was even more of a headache. I have worked with Final Cut Pro before, but ages ago on a half-dead iMac that crashed every four minutes or so. So really this was like starting from scratch. The technology was also much different. It's actually interesting how Apple, in this program, moves away from a more visual interface. Although it's the basic software, I actually found this to be much more complicated. It took me quite a while to figure out how exactly to layer footage and audio to create intra-piece voiceovers. So although it is easier to do fancy things like text overlays, the basics of film editing are somewhat complicated in the digital format.


(I also had no small amount of trouble trying to get the footage off of my computer. I had to import it twice after I realized you apparently can't move raw footage from one computer to the next. Currently I'm working on exporting the footage to YouTube and still getting errors. I'm going to try again in the morning to get the footage up. Maybe with a vaguely more alert mind it will be easier? Otherwise, the laptop is coming to class with me.)