I have experienced this to a lesser extent even at grad school, and from talking to the filmmakers it's usually one of two things:
1. I'm a cinematographer, and I really wanted to get this one cool shot. The rest is padding. I'd rather leave the writing and directing to other people. But nobody else wanted to prioritize my cool shot, so I had to do it like this.
2. There was a technical problem and we lost a ton of the footage (or didn't have the budget to shoot a pivotal section), so I'm cutting around it and salvaging what I can. But I also left in a lot of stuff that doesn't connect to the new narrative because we worked hard on that stuff and you should see it.
I suspect these are the origin of the "kill your darlings" advice, which I generally don't think is good advice. I'm fairly sympathetic to student films from the standpoint that what's fun for an audience isn't necessarily what you think you need for your portfolio, or what you need to practice. I wouldn't put the non-working films in a festival, but I appreciate them. Unless they're films where an anonymous man walks into a motel room or warehouse with a bag of money, and then there's an anonymous shootout, and then a woman who is a whore and possibly also a maid walks off with the money (she is the only female character). I have seen that enough times and it has no value.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
(no subject)
Date: 2019-01-08 03:15 pm (UTC)1. I'm a cinematographer, and I really wanted to get this one cool shot. The rest is padding. I'd rather leave the writing and directing to other people. But nobody else wanted to prioritize my cool shot, so I had to do it like this.
2. There was a technical problem and we lost a ton of the footage (or didn't have the budget to shoot a pivotal section), so I'm cutting around it and salvaging what I can. But I also left in a lot of stuff that doesn't connect to the new narrative because we worked hard on that stuff and you should see it.
I suspect these are the origin of the "kill your darlings" advice, which I generally don't think is good advice. I'm fairly sympathetic to student films from the standpoint that what's fun for an audience isn't necessarily what you think you need for your portfolio, or what you need to practice. I wouldn't put the non-working films in a festival, but I appreciate them. Unless they're films where an anonymous man walks into a motel room or warehouse with a bag of money, and then there's an anonymous shootout, and then a woman who is a whore and possibly also a maid walks off with the money (she is the only female character). I have seen that enough times and it has no value.