I’m not going to lie. I’m not the biggest fan of film or videos. I’m not a movie person. Sure, I watch films on occasion but I strongly prefer live theatre over filmed media and television programs over movies. That being said, I knew that this week may be a bit of a struggle, and it was.

I have done some film editing before, I took a digital arts class my senior year of high school but honestly can not remember much of anything from it. That being said, I have at my disposal, access to iMovie on my Macbook, which I have used a few times for basic video editing but not much else. I also have access to WeVideo on my Chromebook, which I have not yet used but plan on trying out.

I chose to focus on The Social Network, one of my least favorite films of all time, for some of the assignments this week. I hoped that seeing parts of it again would make me understand why so many people love it, but that failed to happen.

I looked at the movie for the 3 Time Review of the film, and just did not get what was happening in the scene. I saw some things mentioned by Rodger Ebert in our reading, like light vs dark and left vs right but the clip was such a confusing mess that I did not get much out of it.

I read more into The Social Network for the Looking In-depth assignment, which lead to me getting my first ever Copyright Violation from YouTube due to the site automatically detecting that I was using copyrighted material in my montage. I ended up uploading it to Vimeo and proceeded to fight the copyright take down by arguing for Fair Use, which I won.

While as an artist, I appreciate copyright to an extent, I do not like it when fair use is questioned and class assignments are made into more work due to issues with copyright.

My favorite part of this week was getting to look at YouTube generas. I chose to add a Life Hacks genera to the repertoire, consisting of videos that one could use to help make their life easier or save them time. The genera goes beyond YouTube itself, with sites like LifeHacker and the /r/lifeprotips subreddit being entirely devoted to Life Hacks, making YouTube seem like only part of the network of resources for life improvements on the internet.

Next week, in terms of video assignments, I plan to work on the One Archetype, 5 Movies, 5 Seconds assignment, focusing on “Badass Females” from both TV and film. I also plan on doing the Return To The Silent Era assignment, using a scene from Torchwood as well as creating my own assignment involving a montage of a specific trope.

While my Daily Creates this week did not focus specifically on movies, I enjoyed doing them, as they gave me a break from working with film.