Tearing Up the Dance Floor – Ex Machina Film Analysis Notes

This week I made a video essay about Ex Machina. In it, I compare different technical aspects of Ava and Caleb’s sessions throughout the movie. You can read the transcript of my video and find the link here.

This was a very challenging assignment. I have done some editing and voice recording for school projects, but never something this complex. I was working with a lot more content and trying to bring it all together into a single, understandable idea.

Here was my process:

• I watched the movie, taking notes the entire time. After, I looked over my notes and found common themes. I then rewatched some scenes and started formulating my general idea.
• Next, I wrote a script. I wrote it in sections – the introduction and synopsis, a breakdown of the specific things I look at in each scene, the analysis of each scene, and the conclusion.
• After this I got all my clips. Some of them were not available online, so I had to find things substitutions.
• Then I recorded my script. I put the audio into iMovie, then the first video.
• Finally, editing! Since I went scene by scene, I imported each scene and started cutting it together. I know that real editors do a rough cut and do several rounds of editing with increasing detail. I did not do this. Instead, I did one very slow edit that became the final version. My method was not efficient and made it very difficult to fix mistakes. In the future, I will do more research into better techniques and try to implement them.

One issue I made off the bat was with my techniques for collecting videos. I usually operate under the idea that I will do more work if it means I don’t have to figure out something new. This idea was the downfall of this project. Instead of figuring out how to download videos, I screen-recorded YouTube videos on my phone. Besides this possibly being illegal, it means that the video quality is not good. If I make another video like this in the future, I will bite the bullet and figure out how to download videos. It’s long overdue.

Despite all the corners I arguably cut, this was a very difficult project and I am proud of the results. I spent a lot of time analyzing the movie, writing my script, collecting all the pieces, and assembling it. I like the video I created and I am interested to know what other people think about my analysis.