Thinking out loud: We need some new tricks

So here's a thought. When we were just starting out in multimedia a short 2 (3?) years ago, we were all giddy and excited and couldn't wait to play with our new toys. And very quickly we started experimenting and trying new things and after a short gestation period with the basics many of us started thinking about how we edit in four dimensions rather than just two, or three when it came to layout. All of a sudden we had Time to deal with, and that made everything a lot more interesting.

So we started doing fancy stuff like tiles, fades, cross-fades, pans, and then we got even fancier with split screens and flipbooks (or if you prefer a more avant guard, montages), but what since then?

It's like we're running out of tricks. Maybe it's just me, but I haven't seen anything new. When I started playing around I used all the basic film editing tricks I had picked up, and by the time everyone else was doing the basics I moved on to experiment with flipbooks, and when others started doing that, I had already started experimenting with split screens and selective crop-ins and other goodies.

I felt that each time I had managed to stay ahead of the curve and was trying something new, but now I'm just not seeing it. I'm still doing flipbooks and split screens and pans and whatnot, but now so is everyone else. It's like we've all run out of new tricks.

We're all doing the same thing, I mean EVERYONE is flipbooking today! And it's starting to get stale and homogenized.

I think that may be because we're still looking to film for our guide map. Perhaps it's time we stop looking to mimic everything that's come before and start creating.

We need some new tricks.

*Thinking out loud is where Shaminder just blabs about whatever pressing thought is on his mind.... so in other words it's just like Twitter, but he refuses to remember another pair of passwords and log into another program everyday. He also refuses to say 10-4 on the Nextel, but that's another story.