Impulse

I’m still crank­ing through the footage I shot of RAAM, review­ing and cat­e­go­riz­ing it. It’s much more intense work than it sounds as I’m watch­ing and lis­ten­ing very closely while mak­ing notes, tag­ging footage, think­ing of all the pos­si­ble story lines and where each clip fits, all while try­ing to tune in to the sub­text of the scene — what behav­iors are they demon­strat­ing, what’s going unsaid, how do they feel, etc. And there’s no fast for­ward­ing. I have to watch all 20 min­utes of a biker’s butt rid­ing ahead of us because some­thing might be said or some­one might do some­thing inter­est­ing. Even the bor­ing bits demand my full atten­tion — even more because they’re dull. I’ve been aver­ag­ing about 1 – 1.5 hours a ses­sion before my brain turns to jello, and only about 3 of these per day. It’s eas­ily one of the most focused things I’ve done in a while.
The inter­est­ing thing is that as we’re near­ing the end of the race, and as the rac­ers are real­iz­ing they’re closer to the end than the begin­ning, I too am get­ting psy­ched. I find myself push­ing to do just one more tape because it gets me that much closer to the fin­ish line. I’m more focused, able to push each ses­sion towards 2 hours or more. Today, I real­ized that I’m going to fin­ish this stage of edit­ing this week­end — just as I watched the rac­ers get ready for their last 24 hours of the race. Synchronicity or uncon­scious design?

Related posts:

1. RAAM: over the first hill
2. RAAM: asleep at the wheel
3. RAAM: a lit­tle dis­tance is good
4. RAAM doc­u­men­tary nearly finished