As a film-maker I use words spoken by non actors and moving pictures of their bodies. Of course the world is the source since life elsewhere is not known and heaven and hells existence are unproven metaphors (so far only one person has made the round trip and even then for only a few days). In the shooting of a film often described as a documentary, though this is a word I dislike since it suggests in its blandness something dull and politically correct), I accumulate from 90 to 250 hours of film (I still prefer the word ‘film’ even though, alas ,I am, for money reasons, forced to shoot and edit in a digital format... These moving pictures, these sights and sounds from the lives of others have collectively no form except insofar as I am able to impose a form on them as a result of editing. The essence of editing is making choices about what material to use and how to order it. I have to select, reduce and summarize sequences I choose to use and then find a way of relating them to each other in a form that tells a story, creates a metaphor and works as a film. The editing of the material is similar in some ways to writing except the relation of fact to imagination is different. The writer of a novel, a poem or a play is only limited by the scope of his imagination in relation to his experience. I am limited by the way my imagination can play with the 90 to 250 hours of rushes I have accumulated. While the possible combinations are not infinite the field of choice against which my imagination can play is large even though the length of the rushes is nothing compared to years of living in the world. - Frederick Wiseman
Posted on: Sun, 30 Mar 2014 20:15:44 +0000
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