Photoshop and me, BONUS BLOG (OUAN402)

I wonder how easy it would have been to have studied animation in 1935 or something. "Snow White" hadn't come out yet and I'm sure that the very notion of moving pictures was enough to put an auditorium full of people into cardiac arrest from the stimulation, and whoever could master it would shoot right to the top of the IMDb parchment.

Émile Cohl's "Fantasmagorie", the first animation ever made.

Now, audiences are far more fickle, expecting ever greater technological feats from filmmakers to draw their attention away from a constant stream of immersive media. I'm guilty of this too. As I write this, I'm listening to three podcasts at once from different phones and also I've duct taped my iPad to my head so I can catch up with series two of "Narcos" at any time. My attention span has gone to hell.

Speaking of technological advancements in film-making, learning to use the Adobe suite is the hardest thing I've had to work on in college, so I wanted to blog about it very briefly to evaluate how my personal and professional practice can evolve. Up until now I've been pen and paper by default and I had never even OPENED an Adobe program until four weeks ago.

What I find hardest about using Photoshop is, firstly, learning what every single command and button does. Of course it's complicated. What else can be expected from a program that allows you to do LITERALLY ANYTHING? There's no way to design it to be user friendly to everyone. Secondly, I'm still trying to wrap my head around where everything is when I make digital work. I tend to get so lost in a bunch of various layers and open tabs that I can't keep track of it and I freak out. With paper, I can thumb through it and I like the way that the work is tangible. Having said that, I am slowly, SLOWLY getting to grips with it and I look forward to being more well versed.

This post isn't about me making excuses, nor am I bashing technology like some neo-luddite who wants to take us back to the dark ages. I'm very progressive (I voted remain) and I vow to dig in my heels and learn Photoshop for no other reason than because I refuse to see myself grow old as my grandmother did, having to get my brother and I to fix her DVD player every time we visit because she put sliced ham in the disc drive, mistaking it for a sandwich toaster or something.

What a grim future.