Mid-Term Evaluation

Note: This is by no means an end all be all, but it’s what I could pull off the top of my head. Otherwise, I could think and respond to this for quite a while. I also noticed that what seemed like a strength also seemed to lead into weaknesses and vice versa.

Strengths

First I’ll start by saying that I probably have no shortage of ideas. Since most of my work deals with social/political issues, content is everywhere. Some projects are more thought out, whereas others simply pop into my head. On the flipside, I wonder what other kinds of things I would be exploring if I weren’t so fanatical about the whole social/political commentary. Hmmmm………all of a sudden it seems possible to stick with my preferred content as a vehicle to exploring other area’s of expression, regardless if it’s relevant to my content of choice.

Second, I think I may be a bit of a masochist when it comes to creating projects. For some reason I always find it necessary to make the entire project rigorous and enduring. Something about my unconscious need to always go over the top, which seems to be motivated by two places; As a student I’m definitely overly ambitious to explore and accomplish as much as possible (whether I carry through on this statement is another story), also, I seem to have this underlying desire to make chaos beautiful. What this all adds up to is me putting myself into situations that often seem ridiculous and completely unnecessary at this stage of my development. At the same time I’m not afraid to experiment, to try new things, and to put myself into both revealing and often compromising positions.

Thirdly, I’m finding that I am indeed my own worst critic. It always seems that I manage to know exactly what’s wrong with a piece before I even show it. When I do share the work, the common problems people have are usually the same things I noticed. Again, this works against me, because I to often begin to create a premature negative response to my own work before I even show it to others. In the end though, I’m getting better at seeing the problems and working them out before I waste the time of others.

Lastly, I noticed that due to my rigid thinking, I’ve developed this intuitive ability to work out the ruts as I progress through a project. It’s kind of like a personal editing device that works in real time. Though I think I need to learn how to listen to this ability more often, I might save myself some reshoots.

The Weakness

Theory and the professional art word still intimidate me. Although, I’ve committed to seeing more art lately, I find that I have problems comprehending anything deeply theoretical. In terms of my own process, I have problems figuring out where my own work stands in relation to others, if it even relates at all. Most of the time I feel as though I’m missing the true message, and in exchange I selfishly take and interpret what I want. This probably relates to the fact that I need to read more.

It’s been said before that I can be a little over-ambitious. I try to take on the world through art, and I always end up totally overwhelming myself. Though, I admit, I love it when I do manage to pull out of such situations. The problem is that often my work tends to get compromised in order to make the deadline. Another problem here is that I tend to over think projects way too much. Sure I’m good at planning it all out, but going back to taking on the world, I’ll try thinking about something until it’s perfect, which often takes a while. Knowing that nothing is ever perfect, my ideas can end up disastrous because the results are always different from anything I could possibly imagine, and then it’s like, “shit, I totally thought that out, now what am I going to do”.

I do feel like I should be utilizing the faculty more, but with a full life, those kinds of decisions also get compromised.

Bitching aside, I do feel as though I’m making progress, but since I can be overly self critical at times, there are moments when I feel as though I’m going nowhere. I need to work on self-editing, as well as making sure that I start working on something the moment it manifest, rather than just sitting on it until it feels perfect enough to act upon.

The Process

For this particular project, I started with an idea for one video, and then thought of a series to accompany the starting point, which would also expand upon the original idea. Then I kind of sat on the idea for a week or two thinking of various ways to execute the project. This process could’ve been sped up a bit, but I need time to cultivate an idea, rather than just shoot aimlessly. Once I figure out a method of execution, it’s a pretty straightforward process at that point. I change things as needed, and in the process, I occasionally come with additional ways to enhance the final image, an example is in the case of the power-cord that I used in the Pollock video. I hate to reshoot as well so I really try and do my best to get exactly what I want. The problem is that, if the final image fails to capture what sought out to achieve, I can get stuck trying to figure out a solution. I get so invested in a particular idea, that’s its difficult to think of another solution. Luckily, that hasn’t been an issue with this project, yet. For the most part everything is coming out pretty close to what I was aiming for, and I like that through editing there is still room to push my videos further, which will be an additional goal for the final videos. One thing that does keep coming, however, is that I lack some knowledge in the technical aspects of the digital realm. It kind of freaks me out a little bit, it seems like learning photography all over again, so I’ve decided that I’ll just tackle those issues when they arise, otherwise I’ll get overwhelmed trying to figure it all out.