Second year at the film school in Warsaw, editing track, which I chose because I am bad at talking to actors. I watch too much and sleep too little. My notes are mostly arrows. I am here to find out what everyone else is watching.
Nineteen minutes in a housing block in the last week of school and it refuses to be miserable about it. The kids have a good summer. That is the radical part. There is a long take on the balcony walkway, maybe ninety seconds, where the camera just follows a kid running the whole length of the building, and I keep going back for those ninety seconds alone.
I do not know how to talk about animation and I am going to try anyway. The backgrounds are still and the plant is the only thing moving for the first two minutes, and then at some point the room starts moving too and I could not tell you when that started. I went back to find the frame. There is no frame. It is gradual.
This is the film that made me want to cut crime instead of writing it. Sixteen minutes, four locations, and the geography is perfect. I drew the map. The map is correct. Also the shot through the car wash, which I have now tried to copy twice and failed twice, both times for different reasons.
My editing tutor showed us this and then would not let us talk about it for a week. I did not understand at first. Now I think it is about the two shots of the empty stairwell, one at the start and one at the end, and how the second one is unbearable and nothing in it has changed. I have watched it six times. Still nothing has changed.
