Adobe Make the Cut Contest with Imagine Dragons

Last year, I entered an Adobe contest, Make the Cut with Imagine Dragons. I didn't win, but I'm proud enough of my edit to share it here with all of you.

THE CHALLENGE:

Take the previously shot footage, provided by Imagine Dragons and Adobe, and cut together my own version of the music video. The winner would claim a $25,000 prize.

The best part is that the footage had quite a bit of production value and Dolph "I Must Break You" Lundgren was the co-star of the scene! I had always loved watching Rocky 4 as a kid and this pumped me up about as much as the chance to win a bag full of money!

What a badass.

Now I only had two weeks to cut together the video because I heard about the contest late, but I went full steem ahead on the piece because I thought I had a good shot. I'm no slouch in the editing department. I pushed as fast and as hard as I could condiering I was working full time and was able to submit the cut with only seven seconds to spare at the cut off point.

MY CUT

MY GOAL

I wanted to tell a story with whatever footage I had while adhering to the rules of the contest. I HAD to use some of Adobe's stock footage, and it wasn't related visually or thematically to the rest of the material. It took me a while conceive of a structure that would work until I listened more closely to the lyrics:

First things first
I'ma say all the words inside my head
I'm fired up and tired of the way that things have been, oh ooh
The way that things have been, oh ooh
Second thing second
Don't you tell me what you think that I can be
I'm the one at the sail, I'm the master of my sea, oh ooh
The master of my sea, oh ooh
was broken from a young age
Taking my sulking to the masses
Write down my poems for the few
That looked at me, took to me, shook to me, feeling me
Singing from heartache from the pain
Taking my message from the veins
Speaking my lesson from the brain
Seeing the beauty through the
You made me a, you made me a believer, believer (Pain, pain)
You break me down, you build me up, believer, believer (Pain)
Oh let the bullets fly, oh let them rain
My life,…

Clearly, pain and determination were the fulcrums to the song message. LIke any person setting out to accomplish a major goal, there are gonig to be roadblocks and setbacks and PAIN that will get in your way. So you have to learn how to push through them, get up and do it all over again if you have any chance at being the master of your own life.

So I settled on a simple idea of a guy - our lead singer in this case - has to overcome a boxing opponent by being able to make himself immune to pain. Thankfully, the footage consisted of Dolph Lundgren beathing the hell out of our lead singer!

Also, like boxers, the only way we can overcome pain and setbacks is by reptition. Not only is that where our skills come from, but also our grit. Grit is something most people have to devlop. Some people call it a thick skin, but I like grit better.

FROM WIKIPEDIA:

Grit in psychology is a positive, non-cognitive trait based on an individual's perseverance of effort combined with the passion for a particular long-term goal or end state (a powerful motivation to achieve an objective). This perseverance of effort promotes the overcoming of obstacles or challenges that lie on the path to accomplishment and serves as a driving force in achievement realization.

To reflect this idea of repetition and perserverance, the structure I conceived of was a loop of ever shrinking series of circles where our hero is floored by his opponent only to be sent back to try again.

---

WHO DIS IS

If you want to know who I am and what Distant Signal is, check this out. It's sort of a manifesto. The TL;DR is that I've won an award for producing, make a lot of reality TV, live in LA and think that artist and media incentives are misaligned and serve large corporations and not independent artists.

I’M PART OF STEEMFILM COMMUNITY

CHANGELINGS

The fist horror / thriller film made on and with the Steem blockchain. Use this hashtag to find out all about it!

MORE DISTANT SIGNAL

YOUTUBE
WEBSITE
PATREON
STEEMIT

I TAKE CRYPTO

Monero - 48NMrZPCKUm4J66b1vcZ2q9izF4yoSFJ6KvfFtBC3ZjMMv4FCky9LRm445TKvts5pw9Lo2rVx85KRXH9Nc2JKpkH14EXP5U
Litecoin -LR7WauUkXse8fdNwaYhdaua3ziXseFmUPo
Ethereum - 0xD167b23385B3fFca651ACC2948BCC14e554d22B3
Dogecoin - DGqwbUQvm273E9pTxgKhyb7PjJQEPW5F51

MISSION

To create narratives, comedies and documentaries that are short, fun, interesting and cinematic.