Bruce Conner

Bruce Connor used a unique style of taking footage that had been previously shot by someone else, and painstakingly editing it together with unrelated footage in order to create a comparison or even story between the two. This is a technique that probably takes hours and hours of hard work and concentration, and that I would never be able to do ever! The first of these films we watched was titled A Movie. Now between the title, and the opening of this film, it wasn't hard to figure out that Conner was playing with and altering what you expected to happen. For example, it started off with a countdown that went down from ten. When it got to three or so, it cut to a shot of a shirtless woman taking off her stockings. After a couple seconds of that, it finished the countdown, only to show the words, "The End". The film itself had many different images with a few common factors, but that were unrelated for the most part. I noticed a theme of crashing or destruction in many of the clips, and the small similarities like that helped connect the clips to give a meaning.

The second film we watched was rightfully titled Cosmic Ray. It used a Ray Charles song as the background music, and went very well with the stylistically edited footage. The film was a great example of what Conner was trying to accomplish with his filmmaking style, and also another great example of how important music can be to a film. The last film we watched was called Report, and used clips from newsreel that was shot around the JFK assassination. Reporters voices over the radio were heard in the background of this footage, and the footage was often repeated for effect. For example, the shot where JFK was driving by in his car was played several times over to emphasize what was going on. There were also many ironic plays on the audio/video combination. For example, there is a part where an announcer is talking about how beautiful the weather is, and suddenly it cuts to an atom bomb exploding. This proved to be a very interesting commentary on the JFK assassination as well as an impressively put together film.