SHOOTING ON A SHOESTRING BUDGET - PART 3

WARNING: bad language ahead!

I love film making!!!

First, I should point out that I learned my film editing chops with film. It was one of my favorite parts of the process being tactile and real and non-linear. Then, along came video with its original linear or it's the highway attitude. And then, digital, sorta like film, sorta like video. And it is non-linear. However, digital comes with a large caveat: the computer. It's not like film, which you can actually hang your "clips" on the wall.


So, working on the editing for "Our Neighbors", which was shot in digital video, made me a bit nostalgic as I thought about the old film days. That is, until the future shocked me, once again!

I was nearing the end of a rough cut (like a first draft), 23 minutes of wonderful footage, when I received an application quit notice. Not a big deal, it has happened before. One reboots the dang program and the last saved version is ready to rock and roll. So, imagine my surprise when the last saved version was NOT ready to rock and roll. Oh, the rough cut was there all right. It had merely been taken apart and was now a couple hundred separate clips. If it was film, it would be like someone coming in and literally tearing apart your rough cut reel. What the fuck?

I fucking hate computers. I really do. They are nothing more than glorified typewriters which break down more often. Like a lap dance they promise a lot more than they deliver. Like a drug pusher they give you that high pleasant nothing could go possibly wrong here feeling and then BAM! fuck you asshole, where's my motherfucking money??? And as a society we've bought into this computer bullshit. We've embraced what is essentially an amalgamation of 19th and 20th century technology. I mean, the keyboard, for crying out fucking loud, is old! The monitor? It's a fucking TV for chrissakes, invented in the 1920s! Well, you can see where I'm going with that.

Someday I'll have enough money again to do an actual film. Something I can actually touch and hang on the wall.