An Exercise in Comparison
Coming into the workshop week three, I found myself expectant. Like that feeling you get entering a cinema to see a film you’ve heard mixed reviews about. I was curious as to what others had created and whether mine would match standard. The people setting up their laptops and muttering about issues with Premiere Pro, they were my cohort. In my mind they were less competition than a standard that I had to meet. Their time in this course matched mine, our opportunity in that sense was the same, so I should be falling into step with these people.
After watching the videos of past students within this course we were all pushed to discuss, reflecting on the way our predecessors had taken on the task of weaving themselves into 1 minute of film. This was a point of interest for me because others saw in the films things that I did not. The general consensus seemed to be the same but points of favour and distaste were made that surprised me. I realised that I had developed a tunnel vision with this project, believing that there could be one perfect outcome… but with a project like this especially, that was not the case. Each video was more or less coherent to our class depending on the aspects of their personalities they chose to show. These would dictate who, amongst our class, the images resonated with. At one particular point someone pointed out a reference made in one video that had gone entirely over my head, and that is when the gears clicked into place.
It came as a sharp realisation only then that I could not compare myself. Not to the videos being show, and not to my classmates because our subject matter was different. Our project did not have a set subject we were all trying to depict within a single viewpoint. Each of us were going to take on this task according to our own view, not only of ourselves, but of the medium we were given to display it. Each piece of media we watched was so different in the way it tackled the project that it would be thoroughly unproductive to use it as a point of comparison. I would be only comparing the way I see myself, to the others see themselves.
This reflection made me realise that a discarding of this comparative feature of my outlook would eventually need to happen for all my work. Whilst other projects will likely bring our subject matter closer as a cohort, comparing my work to them will not bring me success. This is no longer High School, and I can no longer build my understanding of a subject through the creations of others. I will need to persevere and find my own understanding of any given task. This is what will define me as a creator, a definition that will be dead-on-arrival if I place my projects up against the work of others. If I try and bring my concepts closer to theirs, rather than going out on my own my work may be good, but it will never reach the status of ‘great’.
Independence is a scary concept. It can mean complete failure, falling with a lack of anything to grasp onto to keep you from plummeting downwards… But this is something I will need to tackle because independence of thought is the only way I will be able to find success. In comparison all I will be able to find is safe mediocrity.
I will need to discard of my fear of falling if I stand any chance of taking flight.
