Errata is a web journal written by Robert Davis who has neither spent a night in a ghost town nor pulled a turnip from the earth. He doesn't even know if turnips grow in the ground. Perhaps on trees, like candy corn. Therefore, Errata is a non-commercial project.

Observation #1: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious."

Observation #2: It may be appropriate, when leaving a movie theater, to say "mysterious" at the top of your lungs. Bring your eyebrows together before you say it. Effective!

Observation #3: Same for books. Even at libraries.

There is a prize for people who correctly guess the thing about Metropolis, Nevada.

Except where the text specifically states otherwise, Errata's vagaries are indicated vaguely and its authors are indistinct in the traditional way of the Internet, except where the authors lay claim to their work. In some cases Robert Davis lays claim to work that is not his own but has been abandoned like so many ghost towns. Except where held presently, fistfuls of dirt are suspended via dispersal, or dispersed via suspension (in the air), and thus their dissolution is their transcendence, or their transcendence is their dissolution. And yet our eyes tear, and our vision is impaired, demonstrating for the umpteenth time that one entity's gain is another's fit of sneezes. Except where indicated, storms shall outlive the clay upon which they rain, unless storms are improperly delimited by their clouds, which dissolve, rather than by their inevitable return. Thus the clay loses, unless the clay is said to own the storm, to use it to make itself heavy, to make itself cling to white garments, refuse dispersal, cake upon the facades of abandoned buildings, and sit like Man [sic] upon the earth where it is pelted by a storm that it owns. In which case the clay still loses, if you ask us.

Some of the above is legally binding and should be considered a mental contract between Errata and those upon whom it acts. The bit about the prize should be considered an overstatement insofar as prizes differ from dirt and prize dispersal differs from dirt dispersal. Please recall that ownership is a weight and, therefore, hope that you do not win the prize.

One day Errata or its representatives will call upon you for a favor. It is expected that you will hop-to without delay.

You may contact Robert Davis by email unless it's about the rock that was thrown in anger. The rock is more properly called a clod. Why do you continue to raise the topic?

24 March 2004

Festival panelists confuse audience while explaining montage

Other Corrections

clarification

Despite our careful attempts to prevent this from happening, a number of people who attended a seminar at the Errata film festival on "making your own independent films" left the panel discussion thinking that "montage" is all about magazines. It is not. That would be collage (pronounced CO-lodge), not montage (pronounced mon-TAY-juh). They are similar but distinct concepts. To make a collage, someone, often a child or a night artist, will use blunt scissors to cut pictures out of magazines and affix them to heavy-stock paper. To make a montage, a film editor will do the same thing except with a strip of film and another strip of film. Many young filmmakers are confused about montage because it has been made obsolete by digital tools, but even if you don't use it yourself, it's still very important to understand the technical underpinnings of the dead medium so that you can appreciate old movies. Modern wavy-handled scissors that were developed in France in the late 1950s and imported by the U.S. in the mid 1960s defined a generation of filmmakers. You should know this. It explains Resnais and Point Blank and such. We apologize for the confusion and promise that next year we will try to give our panelists an environment where they will not misspeak so much.

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