This class was perhaps the breaking (through) point of the documentary editing process for my group.

Having screened our initial found footage documentary in class, we found that our initial approach was, to be blunt, frankly ineffective. In attempting to appropriate and hijack the catharsis of watching iconic movie moment punchlines with intrusive sounds of technology, many ideas were promptly discarded.

Editing mostly at home, one of the most apparent problems with this structure was its lack of momentum. Indeed, having first compiled a range of movie moments and roughly editing them in somewhat of a fluid succession, the viewing made evident quickly an awkward pacing and tediousness. So, having wrestled with this structurally unbalanced approach, I attempted to hone in on one scene, and eventually arrived at the idea of using a dinner table scene from Alan Ball’s American Beauty (1999, USA).

In this, I appropriated the notification sounds prevelant in iPhones, Facebook, and other well known technological hardware/software interfaces, and weaved them into the scene in order the create a Brechtian alienation and emotional aggravation. The idea being that through watching the scene, audiences are positioned to reflect on the frustrating aspects of having their viewership constantly interrupted, and in addition, to bring an awareness to the common cultural motif of sitting down to a family dinner and inevitably having technology choke the flow of conversation- be it argument or pleasantries.

The in class screening yielded some obvious problems with this approach. Firstly, there was the general issue of people having not scene the film and hence not being causally engaged or invested in seeing Kevin Spacey’s character deliver his iconic spiel. Further yet, the scene seemed quite bizarre as a standalone decontextualised documentary. Chiefly, there was the lack of a fluid argument being delivered in which an audience upon immediate and unmitigated viewing, would be able to understand.

This was made apparent when most class members failed in an ability to respond or counter our argument.

As such, taking into considerations this feedback in class, Daniel and I went to the editing suites to brainstorm and deliberate our approach for the found footage documentary.

During this time, we really brought things back to basics and wrestled with our primary problem: what are we trying to say? The process was fairly tedious as we continued to circle around thematic concerns – technology, human connection, alienation, social networking, social media, and so forth – without any concise arguments. Yet, somehow in the paralysis of this brainstorming ambiguity, something clearly bifurcated from the cacophony as we settled upon the central idea: Technology is overrated.

In grounding our structure in a neatly delineated if somewhat ostensibly basic argument, the editing process was made a lot more manageable. Mostly, I spent the rest of the tutorial compiling advertisement imagery from technology (chiefly, phone and skype ads), hijacking the formal structure of a Microsoft Superbowl ad on the benefits of technology. We discussed with Liam some of the reasons behind the continued problems and failure of our original documentary idea, finally arriving at the conclusion that the documentary form / causal structure was trying too much to replicate / indexicalise audience’s experiences of intrusive technology, but in doing so, sort of projected a hollowed re-presentation of the argument rather than actually making a new one through manipulating audience’s aesthetic associations.

The latter is by far a much more pragmatic and wise formal approach as it breeds its tension from the context audiences bring with them, rather than needlessly having to create a context in which to then attempt some narrative or argumentative tension. Specifically as this task is limited to 3 minutes; time is the money, and it’s a more effective use of time to shorthand one’s argument through appropriating audiences’ aesthetic linguistics.

At the end of the editing session, the skeletons of a rough draft emerged. What remains is the fleshing process now. Thankfully however, our idea has reincarnated into a more lucid and achievable form, one that makes clear its perspectives.