Nearing the end

When do you know when you've looked a project too much? I think I'm getting there, the point of exhaustion that marks the end. The other day when I was editing, I stared at a shot for what must have been a 30-40 minutes, tweaking length, speed, fades... Then I realized that the footage was no good, didn't fit at all, perfectly obvious. I obliterated the shot, left the opening black, and that might be where it stays. I did replace the light fixture and the Christmas tree in the beginning with something that feels more appropriate, and I changed the speed of a different shot, played with darkening up the swimming sequence, that's about where I am. I have very little that I really want to change about the project, and pretty soon the video will be locked and this film will have to pass into Michelle's hands because my hearing is terrible and I cannot mix the sound. At that point, I will have completed my work for the semester, save tweaking our indie gogo wording and getting the final binder put together. It feels strange because I've lived with the project for so long now, I've taken a religions course to hone my ideas, I've created other projects in a similar vein in order to better express my thoughts with the film, it's been an absorbing, roughly two year effort and now that it's almost done all I feel is a vague sense that I've made something good and then the sensation of exhaustion. As it happens, that perfectly describes my entire senior year.

I look forward to what The Holistic's festival life will entail. I think it could do very well. I'm thankful for the opportunity I've had in this class and all the thoughtful critiques. Hopefully, everyone will forgive me for ignoring so much of it. I'm stubborn, but I swear I've learned from it all, even the ideas I did not incorporate in the actual  project.