Over the past few weeks I have experimented with a number of edits of zero and have had some really thought provoking feedback. It has reminded me that film-making is a privilege and that the same film can have an infinite plurality on meanings and uses for its audiences no mater the intentions of the film-maker. 

The common thread that I have picked up between all of the conversations around the film has been how abstract should it be, specifically with regard to the amount of out of focus footage that is included in the piece, and how much clearly the intentionality of this is signposted.

The fish washing cut was something of a personal experiment that I had not initially intended to screen. At the time of that cut I was moving back towards a more conventional cut that attempted more explicitly show the relationships. Based on a screening of the the long cut I was also trying to explain the inclusion of the out of focus footage.

After a few days away from the edit I was interested to see and see responses to fish washing. It clearly had the most polarising response but even those viewers who disliked it (intensely in one case) they had things to say about it and were articulating some of the themes that I wanted to explore, even whilst saying they didn’t understand it. Comments such as “I had to listen harder because I couldn’t see” and “I liked the sound of the water running” made me think of films using sensory film-making techniques.

This response is encouraging me to use this edit as my final submission, I am going to revisit the audio as I have yet to pay this much attention. I think that in the context of a screening in a gallery amongst other Zero Films this version of the film feels honest to the approach that I wanted to take in making this project.