Self-Assessment

Animation Project:

When I first started out with this project, I was a little worried about how I could possibly collect enough material for a 3-minute movie. Fortunately, I overcame this slight fear to end up shooting over 2,800 images my first day, and about 2,000 the next. The sheer volume of shooting was a great exercise, it was the editing and re-shooting that really shaped this project. It's one thing to go out to a site and just collect and collect, not really thinking about any specific direction or narrative. It's a completely different thing to then turn all that raw material into something worth looking at. A single good photograph can stand alone. A good movie still, or even a great movie clip, rarely if ever stands on its own as a work of art. Pop-culture icon, maybe, but not art. Movies are immensely long strings of images, and it's the editing that makes the movie. The editing was tough (especially with iMovie), but it was incredibly satisfying to see the narrative slowly gel over time.

Free Shoot:

I absolutely love these images. I hope I'm not sounding too vain, but I really like the way they look, and I want to make more just like them. It's a great feeling to be able to make something that satisfies you. Obviously it does matter to me what other people think of them, but not as much as it might have a year or two ago. I feel like I'm starting to be able to look past criticism and focus on the kind of themes and aesthetics that fulfill my own desires. I think this is a good sign, but I'm not sure yet. I don't want to end up being ambivalent about criticism. All I know is that I like where I am, and I have a vague direction to head off into. That's all I really need, I feel that whatever I end up being proud of will guide me.