Goth Dreams and Continuity Editing

I had this dream the oth­er night, where I was in this goth club just mind­ing my own busi­ness lis­ten­ing to some kick­ass dark­wave, when some dude start­ed some­thing.

Appar­ent­ly I was not suf­fi­cient­ly ‘goth’ to be present in the club [i.e. I was­n’t dressed very gothy.] He said some­thing along the lines of ‘You don’t look goth, you’re not wel­come here.’

To which I replied with my char­ac­ter­is­tic razor dream-wit ‘You aren’t very goth your­self if you think it’s some­thing only deter­mined by style.’

Before he had a chance to reply, his goth girl­friend, all fired up with her black make­up, red fish­nets and flut­ter­by wings decid­ed to defend her mate. I con­tin­ued to sit placid­ly lis­ten­ing to some Dorset­shire. She approached and told me to [I’ll para­phrase] ‘Fuck off.’

I polite­ly declined.

To which, enraged, she then told me to fol­low her out­side where she osten­si­bly was pre­pared to kick my ass. I said: ‘Fie! I am allowed to choose the weapons.’

Briefly puz­zled, she con­ced­ed this point. I chose swords, and since she was goth and swords are suf­fi­cient­ly gothy she accept­ed. So she took down two rapiers from the wall and pro­ced­ed out. On my way out, I grabbed a cou­ple of full ash­trays. Stop­ping by the door, I removed the butts and com­bined all the ash­es into one tray. Then I spit a big gob into the ash­es, mixed it togeth­er and smeared it all over my face. Out I went.

Need­less to say, I looked a bit goth­ier, and goth girl was a bit tak­en aback. She hand­ed me my sword with a flab­ber­gast­ed look that was quick­ly replaced by the old anger. Most of the club was out­side now, ready to watch her kick my ass. I assume they assumed that since she was goth she had an innate knowl­edge of sword­play, where­as t‑shirt and jeans guy [me] would­n’t know jack.

‘I’m ready,’ said I. She lift­ed her blade high, yaw­ped, and fol­lowed this up by rush­ing me. Her flut­ter­by wings flapped behind her. She was some sort of dement­ed fairy.

When she got close enough, I cut the blade out of her hand.

‘I used to fence in col­lege.’

In my dreams I switch back and forth from POV shots to high-angle medi­um shots [includ­ing medi­um-close, and medi­um-long]. Thus my dreams are quite like movies. I won­der if oth­ers’ dreams func­tion in this way. If this is so, I see two pos­si­bil­i­ties for appli­ca­tion with­in film the­o­ry.

  1. That the devel­op­ment of con­ti­nu­ity edit­ing styles is direct­ly relat­ed to a sub­con­scious under­stand­ing of dream-func­tions. The impli­ca­tions that this would have upon ideas of psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic film the­o­ry and suture bog­gle my mind. And:
  2. That immer­sion in tele­vi­sion and film expe­ri­ences has changed the way peo­ple dream. I don’t even want to try to get my head around that.

5 thoughts on “Goth Dreams and Continuity Editing”

  1. well, yeah on the POV dreams, but what i am won­der­ing about is the out-of-body parts. have peo­ple always watched them­selves doing things in dreams?

  2. The fact that you can tell me what sort of shots were involved tell me that your FTT back­ground is at least part of the cul­prit for this.…I rarely have any non-1st per­son POV dreams.

  3. I have first-per­son dreams, but out-of-body mul­ti­ple angle day­dreams. My brain must be more adven­tur­ous at such times, I sup­pose.

  4. some­times I’m w/in myself, oth­er times I’m watch­ing myself. I also switch POV and become sev­er­al dif­fer­ent peo­ple. Some­times all at once, but usu­al­ly at dif­fer­ent times. I’m not espe­cial­ly aware of these changes though, that could have to do your film back­ground. I cer­tian­ly could­n’t describe what angle shots they are. Usu­al­ly I’m just try­ing to remem­ber a dream and think, “hang on… I was­n’t ME any­more.”

  5. I would say that edit­ing def­i­nite­ly ties into the way our thought pat­terns work — both con­scious­ly and sub­con­scious­ly. For exam­ple, I was always taught that a nat­ur­al tran­si­tion point in a piece is when you blink. Blink­ing is the nat­ur­al ori­gin of the cut.

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