Dream Logic

I love editing montages, especially if they’re dreamlike, intimations of memories drifting through a character’s mind. Crossfades that suggest the slippage of time, opacity dipping in and out as moments blend into each other. There is a sequence at the end of MirroLantern where the main character stares into a fire and recalls a significant event that occurred in her past. The event changes everything and nothing at the same time, causing her to reexamine her life, turning over memories like rocks to see what creatures live beneath. But under those memories are more memories, their significance eternally in question.

Cinema can speak the language of dreams and memory better than most art forms. This can be done simply, by putting two shots together and cross-dissolving them, almost instantly conveying the passage of time. Like a dream, a film flows from one shot to the next, one location to another, drifting across time. This is one of the many reasons why I love film so much, nothing else can so closely approximate the feeling of dredging up the past and examining whatever floats to the surface. As someone who obsessively thinks of past moments, I love being able to create a character’s memories. What do they choose to remember? How do they remember it? Are the memories real or imagined? Does it matter?

Forgive me for the pretentious, overly indulgent past paragraphs. I find myself in a verbose and poetic frame of mind because I am enjoying editing this sequence so much. I get the overwhelming feeling that the film is working, it’s various parts coming together like gears in a clock, tick tick ticking time away. A few weeks ago I was concerned about coherence; would the film speak clearly, if at all? But now I’m certain I am on the right track. I can feel MirroLantern becoming something, taking shape. And I find that very, very exciting.

xoxo