Thursday, June 24th

Today is the last full day of editing, the deadline for the films is tomorrow morning, and the screening is Saturday at 4pm. The students made a lot of progress yesterday while I was enjoying my day off.

The instructors are spending most their time focused on the two short narrative films, so I spent the day helping out the two documentary films. I watched their rough cuts and made suggestions, but tried not to loom over their shoulder too much while they were editing. I know that is really annoying for me when I'm editing and ends up slowing my work flow.

The editor of the "Making of" was very reluctant to take any of my advice. She was defending every one of her decisions to the end. This is a bit frustrating. It's good to have conviction, and believe in your work, but these students are so inexperienced they don't realize if they would just TRY and make the corrections I'm suggesting, they would really like it. I know this happened a lot in the narrative groups editing process, where the editor said "No, no, no," and the instructor made them make the change just to see how it would look, then the student editor loved the change. But I was a bit more reluctant to make the students try it my way. There is something to be said for making mistakes, so you can actually learn from them. In years past, the students have not had a very active role in the editing of the films, they hand them over to the instructor. The films come out looking great, but is that really the point? I'd say in this circumstance it's more valuable to have a flawed film, that a student edited and used as a learning tool, rather than a perfect product. That being said, I think I erred on the side of being too removed while this years instructors were involved just enough, but not too much. Like I said, you live and learn.

The evening performance was fiddle player, Kyle Dillingham, and his band Horseshoe Road. Kyle is a former OSAI student who now plays music all over the world. The performance was lively, entertaining, and hopefully inspiring to students who are looking to continue their artistic pursuits professionally.

(8:30am - 10:30pm = 14 hrs) (TW = 57.5) (GT= 216)