While showing the film to some friends a few days ago, I realized that the most compelling content in the film — and my primary motivation for the film in the first place — is the interviews with the people on the street during the protest.
Furthermore, it’s perhaps jaunting to cut between the protests and the “expert interviews”. It really detracts from the Cinéma vérité tempo and ambiance of the material from the street.
So I’ve put together a new cut of the film. I kept the first scene, with the bike riders getting arrested, and simply removed all of the non-street interviews and left the rest of the film as it is. So this is very rough around the edges, jumps around a bit topically, and has some awkward cuts.
However, this cut serves its purpose — to illuminate how the film changes when we stay on the street the entire time. I like it a lot. Of course, I miss the expert interviews, but I don’t yet know how much of that is because I think they were saying things relevant to the topic, and how much is because I’ve seen the film 500 times and got used to them being there.
Moving forward, there is a some more street interview footage that I can dig up that I was previously wishing I could include in the film, so I’m looking forward to including that. I think the film will then end up being about 30 minutes.
I would love to hear anyone’s thoughts on how the two cuts compare. What do you like and dislike about version 2, compared to version 1?
Dissent, version 1
Dissent, version 2
I’ve posted two new videos. First, I’ve posted a bigger version of Dissent in “native” 16:9 resolution (640×360), with tweaked compression settings. Quality should be significantly improved.
More importantly, I’ve posted the piece on media. Originally, Dissent was a 90 minute affair, putting even my closest, most politically-concerned friends to sleep. I gradually brought it down to 60 minutes, where most people who saw it appreciated it but said it needed a lot of work. Then I decided to give up on making a feature length film out of 9 hours of interviews and no B-Roll, and I split the project into several sub projects, primarily a piece about dissenters, and a piece about problems with the media.
As I’ve been editing down each part, now I’m starting to think that they might actually go well together. Not only that, but it looks like with a bit more tweaking, together they will come in under 40 minutes, putting them in the short-film category that many film festivals have.
Of course, this leaves me in a no-man’s land between the flat 30 and 60 minutes that indy / nonprofit television wants, although pretty close to the 47 minutes that tv-with-commercials wants (does PBS sometimes want this format? I forget).
At any rate, the two pieces are still separate for now. Let me know what you think.
In August, 2004, I went to New York with two amazing people, some AV gear, and lots of ideas. The Republican National Convention was coming to town, and there were going to be massive protests in the streets of New York. We wanted to talk to the dissenters who were going to be there on the street, and ask them why they were dissenting. After 10 days, I had more and better footage than I knew what to do with.
In the months after returning from New York, I began putting together a film. Progress was steady for quite some time, but eventually I hit “editor’s block”, didn’t have any B-Roll, and my day job(s) and numerous other side projects forced me to put the project on the backburner.
Years later, I’m finally able to get back to this project. I’m still as excited about it as I ever was. In fact, I love what has happened to online / distributed / do-it-yourself media since 2004, and the film is more relevant than ever to the political conversation in this country.
I’ll be writing a lot more about where I want this project to go and what other media I’ll be releasing here. For now, take a look at version one of the film, and let me know what you think.
