A VIDEO ABOUT NOT MAKING A VIDEO

 

So, I ran out of time, I didn’t ration my time have time to make anything very interesting and was feeling bad about it. So I decided to make my video about doing anything other than making a video. I know, not exactly groundbreaking material, but it’s what I had. So I set up the camera to film me over  the next four hours and just decided to act naturally, then I stuck it together in IMovie. In a weird way I guess it does sort of fit into McCluhan’s ideas.

“We have had to shift our stress of attention from action to reaction. We must now know in advance the consequences of any policy or action, since the results are experienced without delay. Because of electric speed, we can no longer wait and see.”

Here he talks about how the digital age has made time move faster in a way, the consequences of everything are known beforehand (in my case if I don’t make this video I’ll be in trouble), here the digital age not only makes it go faster in a literal sense by having production happen entirely on my phone, but also the ever presence of consequences a reactive stress that makes me move faster, constantly working to react to things before they happen, rather than taking my time. In the video time itself jumps moving between one mundane moment to the next, where an audience is hardly given time to breath, I start coming in ready to work , before eventually being crushed under my own weight and procrastinate, before trying to work again, before my attempts to makeup my work are ruined by sloppiness resulting in frustration, in my attempts to react, I make mistakes that result in a lesser product.