Since my dreams are usually as boring as…something really boring, when one comes along that makes me take notice, I…take…notice.
In the dream, I was preparing a piece for an art exhibition. You want to know what is was?? A fly glued to a bee!!! Actually, I think that there was another bug involved be he got away. I was, in fact, having trouble with my art because it kept flying off! Whahhh?? An the weird thing was, well no, the bee was the weird thing, but the secondary weird thing was that I had an overwhelming feeling of being a hack and a complete fraud as an artist.
So this has been my subject for pondering for most of the day. Am I a poser? I look around at the people around me in the film deptarment and why my technical knowledge is fair, I find that they have a much more artistic eye. Granted my shots are interesting (for the most part) and stuff, but…. I guess I remember a couple of projects that were meant to be experimental and not really tell a story, but I really couldn’t do it very well. In spite of my best efforts, my films were still very linear.
I’ve also heard a quote attributed to John Sayles where he said something to the effect of “I tell stories about people. I’m not interested in making art for art’s sake.” I’ve always been of the same opinion. The movies I make and the screenplays I write tend to tell stories about individuals. While there’s nothing wrong with that, I’m sure, I would also like to be able to be a well rounded artist. I was talking to another student and he mentioned that he sometimes puts some stuff in his films just for the sake of putting it in there, as kind of a stream of consiousness and that he himself doesn’t know what it means. I…just…can’t…do that. Everything needs to have a reason; everything needs to have a motivation. I wonder if that is part of my personality, that I need to be able to explain the existence for everything. I’ve also discovered that deep, down my characters are almost always good people-even the bad guys. Do I believe that deep down everyone has some good in them? The true villans in my stories tend to be circumstance more than individuals. Do I overanalyze my stuff?