SXSW 2012: Letting Audiences Drive the Editing Process

in

SXSW Film 2012 logoBy Reid Connell

They told me, "Be prepared, you won't even recognize the city." Who knew they were talking about the weather? I'm a SXSW virgin. I've been eagerly awaiting my first time since I moved to Austin. And after two days I'm only getting more and more embarrassed to say, "No, I didn't see that movie last year, it's my first SXSW." However, I picked up my badge on Thursday morning and set out for my first event on Friday afternoon. A panel.

They also told me, "Try things you don't know anything about, be surprised." So I noticed a panel called "Speed Tweaks: How Fast can Audiences Drive Edits?" I was interested and eager to attend my first official SXSW event. The panel was dedicated to answering the question in the title by putting it into practice.

The panel started, and we all watched a short three-minute video the panelists had filmed just hours beforehand. The moderator then explained they had an in-house editor who'd be working on the video we had just watched while the rest of the panelists talked and answered questions. He advised us to tweet our critiques and comments about the video to #shitpanelistssay (which is still an operating hash tag on Twitter). Now unfortunately, I didn't get to take part in this portion of the panel because regrettably I didn't have my computer or a smartphone. But nonetheless it was a great idea.

Being only a week or two removed from the trend, I thought one of the most interesting topics brought up in the panel was the KONY 2012 video produced by Invisible Children, the Internet's newest sweeping fad. This is a perfect video designed to gauge an audience's reaction. The video has over 75 million views on YouTube and has garnered both a great deal of criticism and support. Almost instantly, the producers of the video knew many things about their video because of the Internet and the ease of connecting with an audience. They knew how many people were watching the video, they knew who was being inspired enough to help by buying the available merchandise and they knew what they did wrong in the campaign.

This is exactly what the panel was bringing to light: how instantly audiences can give feedback to media and how quickly that feedback can be addressed. In this case the editor was quickly plugging away in the corner while reading tweets, and in the case of Invisible Children they were reading the blogs, articles and comments about their video and making changes. Both were listening and trying their best to address both the good and bad parts.

At the end of the panel, we watched a re-edit of the video. It was a minute shorter and honestly a much easier watch. Props to the editor and everyone involved. I walked up with my brain thinking, my gears turning and my eyes on the next movie: The Cabin In The Woods.

Reid Connell is the Programming Apprentice at the Austin Film Society.