Found Footage Editing Exercise

For the Found Footage Editing Exercise, Morgan and I decided to use a film from the Prelinger Archives called Body Care and Grooming. The purpose of this film is to educate university students about proper grooming and hygiene. In my opinion, the suggestions made by this film are over-the-top and outdated. Rather than encouraging individuality and self-expression, the film encourages young adults to conform to a specific style of dress and grooming. I found the film’s declaration that “natural hair beauty is possible” especially comical, since the film encourages young women to spend endless amounts of time washing and brushing their hair. For our edited film, Morgan and I decided to focus on the segments of the film dealing with hair care. Our goal was to make the film seem like it promoted vanity and self-indulgence, rather than health and hygiene.

The original film makes use of many of the editing techniques discussed in the Goss/Ward reading to get its point across. In most scenes, close-up shots of the actors are used to show the simple beauty and clean skin and hair of the young actors. Live action shots of the actors completing daily grooming activities are interspersed with animations that illustrate the scientific aspects of hygiene. This educational component enhances the meaning of the live action sequences. Fades are used to transition between scenes. This is less distracting that a sharp cut and gives the film a more professional feel.

For our edited film, we selected four different scenes to manipulate: a girl shampooing her hair, a girl brushing her hair, a girl fluffing her hair, and a girl getting out of the shower with a smile on her face. We chose these scenes to emphasize the lengthy processes that a girl must go to in order for her hair to appear “naturally beautiful.” The scene where the girl is brushing her hair was repeated four times to emphasize the excessiveness of this action. We separated the original audio and video, and decided to play the phrase “natural hair beauty is possible” repeatedly while the images ran. Taken together, the chosen clips, repetitions, and audio are intended to convey a different meaning than the original film. Instead of being an educational film that teaches students how to properly care for their bodies, our film exaggerates aspects of self-care in order to make the girls in this film seem silly and vain.