The Process of Art Is A Process

I would like to say that my art speaks for itself but since I am still an artist that is growing and learning everyday, I think I should explain myself a little bit.

The video project below was my final project for my dance and visual media class. It had to be based off a poem and had to be less than 3 minutes (I went over by 18 seconds).

My original idea while I was shooting was completely different than the outcome.

Original Idea:

A boy finds a red piece of paper on the floor and looks up. In the distance is a dancer and she drops another piece of red paper. He walks over and in the distance another dancer and she drops... so on and so forth. My friends and I have 3 different styles of dancing. Sarah is the smooth, graceful, flowy one. Gusta is the queen of hips. And I... I just do what I feel like in the moment. In this video i'm kind of a mix of spazzy and smooth. I thought our way of dancing can express 3 different types of relationships this "guy" had been through. Basically it was like "i'm trying to find my one true love" type of thing...

Well, as you can tell, we never got a boy.

So all I had was nice scenery, 4 pieces of a broken heart while there were only 3 dancers, and about 5 minutes of dancing footage for each dancer.

When I sat down to edit, I couldn't. So I took a week and just pondered. I wish you could see my brain when it thinks about ways to polish poop. And that's what I felt like I did. I polished crap and made it into something bittesweet almost.

I wanted a folky acoustic song so I automatically thought ELIZABETHTOWN! and took nancy wilson's music and placed it right onto the screen and it just started to flow. Music is so important for my editing process. People don't edit with it but I NEED MY MUSIC. Music makes my videos what they are.

Editing is like choreography. I have to ask myself, "What do you want to see first?" or "What do you want to see next?" My mood at the time effects the editing too. I think I was pretty calm when I sat down to edit. It all happened so fast. 2 hours.

I thought of it as a puzzle. I scattered all the pieces and then by the end, you kind of get the big picture.

Some people think it's about friendship, some people think we're fighting over the same guy, some people thought we were all seperate stories until the end. It was nice to get people's ideas. Some people loved it. Some people didn't. But I'm glad people related to it.

I just like to think it's about love. Love and hope. Love is lost, love is regained. Love is broken but your heart can be put back together.

So there's that... my process.

With that being said, take a new perspective and watch my video. If you have already, watch it again.