In The Blink of An Eye, Part 1
I found that this reading was actually very easy to understand. Much does an excellent job of explaining exactly what he is talking about, rather than using industry jargon that would fly over the head of a layperson. That being said, I was intrigued to hear his thoughts on the subjects that he was touching on, and to hear some of the motivations behind how most of the media that we see is edited. Before reading the beginning of this book, I was unaware of how much actually goes into the process of editing a film—how much of the editing is completely up to the editor himself, and how his/her own view of the film ultimately shapes how a film becomes the film itself. It’s amazing how many of the edits, cuts, sounds, etc. in traditional film and media that we take for granted. Had there not been film editors to make those decisions, what would anything that we watch be like today? Perhaps, this is why experimental films are so jarring sometimes. Because these types of films are known to break the conventional rules of editing, they break our expectations of what a film should be. We are so accustomed and overexposed to perfectly edited and sequenced video, that experimental films catch us off guard, and truly make us think about what we are seeing. Experimental films force us to look more deeply into the images that we see and into every aspect of the film. Experimental films present themselves to us differently, so we perceive them differently.