Marktollefson’s Weblog
doing the documentary thingArchive for random narrative
Butcher’s Post Mortem
After presenting the Butcher’s Penance project I have come to a number of conclusions.
First, the goal of the project was successfully achieved. From the beginning, my intent was to make amends to all the great movies I mercilessly chopped up for mercenary purpose. I feel purged now of the guilt. Many people who were involved in the original ad campaign have experienced Butcher’s Penance and they all agreed it was an appropriate punishment for the crime … and a diverting pastime to watch.
Which leads me to the second conclusion: familiarity with the subject matter will influence the viewers’ response. Most of the people I showed the project to had seen the ad campaigns before. When polled, their opinions were split on whether I should show the audience the ads before or after they had viewed Butcher’s Penance. Up until a few minutes before I presented to the class I had still not decided whether to show the ads before or after, or even whether I should show them at all. Right before the presentation I asked one last person (who had never seen it before) what he thought. This person believed I should show the ads first.
A third conclusion: the project is best viewed as it was originally intended, that is, at a viewing station by a single viewer. When the project was presented to the class, it would have been better to show it to one viewer at a time. Although it would have been possible to put it up on a big projector I chose not to. This was partly because I didn’t want to further burden DM 8106’s overstretched resources but primarily the reasoning was that the relationship between the viewer and the sensor works best when there is only one participant activating the player. When more than one person is present the sense of cause and effect is diluted to the point where it is no longer apparent.
A fourth issue: because of the constraints of time and the large number of people, nobody got a chance to spend much time alone with the viewing station. Heather put it best, I think, when she observed that it takes time to absorb all the media in a random narrative.
I think Steve had a very good suggestion for an alternative method of presentation. If I were to present again I would have two viewing stations in close proximity; one playing the media randomly triggered by a sensor, the other starting and stopping the media linearly with a different sensor.
In the end, I think the most important lesson is that you only have one chance to make a first impression with a public exhibition. As for the underlying purpose of the project I feel I have adequately discharged my contrition to classic cinema … using, ironically, decidedly non-classic new media as my vehicle of apology.
I probably wouldn’t do another project like this in my area of documentary work. Nonetheless, I believe what I have learned in DM8106 will be invaluable, particularly the research and network communication skills I have been exposed to over the past months. I am very grateful to Alex and Steve for their patience, good humour, dedication and passion for teaching.
editing for random narrative
For my “Butcher’s Penance” project I have created over fifty distinct audio/video files from the two television spots I used as source material. The observations made in the random narrative class were important considerations, especially the connectivity issue. For virtually every one of the files I had to fine tune the head and tail of either the picture or the sound so that it would more smoothly link up with other clips. When I present the project we will see if my work was successful.
A Butcher’s Penance
A couple of years ago I worked on an advertising campaign for pay-movie channels. These “image spots” were meant to give a flavour of each channel. I took tiny clips from hundreds of movies and re-arranged them to create new meaning, specifically a pitch to sell the pay-tv service.
The ads were quite successful; they won a number of awards and have been used at editing and marketing workshops as instructional tools.
However, I never quite shook a feeling of guilt at butchering these movies … many of which are personal favorites … for the sake of advertising.
I intend, with this project, to make amends by re-randomizing the deconstruction. I will create a viewing station which can sense the presence of an audience and then play the pieces of the movies in a new and random narrative. This will be the penance of the butcher.
thoughts on random narrative
Our experiment with randomly rearranging pieces of footage using the Max patch was very interesting.
It seems like the most important thing when you’re designing a random narrative is that the elements have to have cohesion and connectivity.
By cohesion I mean some sort of related theme … be it a place, subject matter, visual composition … it can be even be really arcane, such as people wearing hats. The combinations that seemed to work best in the class were the ones with this kind of cohesion.
Connectivity is a more practical issue. It’s how the elements begin and end, what people in television broadcasting refer to as the “top and tail”. A uniform and smooth beginning and end help create the illusion of narrative.
