Freewrite - Day 1216
The two most talented artists in the Digital Filmmaking class had teamed up for the final project. Max wrote the script -- a bizarre experimental piece that would be hard to describe. He was going to direct it too. The title for the 15-min short film was Black Widow. At the end of the film, the female "black widow" character would castrate her boyfriend while he tried to sleep.
As I've said, Max wrote it, was going to direct it. B. was going to edit it.
The university professor who taught the class had said about editors: "They're a different breed. They don't think like the rest of us."
After the montage project that was supposed to exercise the students' editing muscles, the prof. had made it abundantly clear that B. was on a different level than the rest of his class..when it came to the editing dimension of film-work. He had screened everyone's project before the class, but B.'s montage they all had to watch three times that day.
This must have been what had drawn Max to him. Max was overall the most talented artist in the class, and of a much more gregarious nature than B.
The thing that B. understood, or thought he understood, about editing was this: at any point in the experience of watching a film, the audience's attention is directed toward one place within the screen, within the cinematic image. The center of attention -- you know, usually where the main action/movement is taking place. The key is to make the transitions smooth across cuts, so that the viewer's gaze doesn't have to bounce around the screen. Unless you're a Jean-Luc Goddard type and you go opposite the rules for the sake of it.
Edits. Edits. And what compels other people to choose as they choose never made much sense to a guy like B. He never understood how a person could eat donuts every day for breakfast then go on over lunch about how he wants to live a long life. It wasn't a sense of any hypocrisy that gnawed at B. It was just the unreasonable nature of it all. These people could sure think wishfully, but their wishes had no potency.
Edits. B. approached the editing process for his montage the way someone might go about putting together a puzzle. It seemed to him like everyone else had fallen short becuz they didn't want their artistic expression to be impinged upon by a sense of right and wrong. Their loss.
No, what compels others didn't make a lot of sense to B. And that included how, when he had brought his wife with him to the set, Max had immediately looked at Clara and said, "You're it."
"What do you mean?" B. asked. Or maybe it was Clara who asked.
"The black widow. You're my black widow."
B. also never understood how Clara had just jumped right into the role as if that were why she had showed up in the first place. He was also mildly chapped by the whole idea of it -- his wife made the perfect Black Widow. Was he supposed to find that offensive, or no? Maybe it was a compliment?
He didn't know, but he edited the movie anyway. Both he and Max recieved As for the project. Everyone in attendance clapped hands together, and before that a lot of them laughed.
No -- no one was actually castrated in the making of Max's movie. But a year later -- at ages 22 and 26 respectively -- B. and Clara got divorced.
B. never watched that 15-min film again. It would've really eaten him.
#freedom #writing #editing #storytelling #word #art #artifice #edifice #termites
Thanks for taking the time.
Great story! Probably my favorite of the week.
Thank you for the kind words, sir.
Brilliant! Love how you tell us she's a cuckold (I think that is the case) by the way she jumps at the black widow role, the way Max says 'you're it' when he first sees her, and the parallel between playing a character who castrates a man and then, irl, divorcing B. You set it up to imply she cheated on him (I think), without telling us. A great flash fiction.
I cannot confirm or deny, but I really appreciate the comment. Thank you. It's cool how you really think about and engage with the writing. I like to think I read in a similar manner. But who knows?
LOL, 'cannot confirm or deny'. I've been using freewrites lately to practice reading in a more focused way, to notice what other writers are up to in the hopes of learning from them and using that practiced focused on my own fiction. From your work, I would assume that you are thinking about, or have studied, fiction as a craft, that you're consciously aware of the technical aspects of storytelling. What's your background? Have you spent a lot of time in creative writing classes?
No, but I went to a four-day seminar once in my early twenties. I took a lot of university classes without ever getting a degree, about 50% of that being musical studies with a focus on composition-..and another 40% was in the humanities, yes, a handful of philosophy, but when it came to creative writing I never wanted anyone to correct my spelling.
What about you-..do have experience in universities or other formal or otherwise education?
Interesting. I have a similar experience, in that I took many classes without graduating. I've also studied fiction with Gotham Writers Workshop and through my own reading. I think I've learned more about fiction outside of traditional universities than inside.