The thesis essay has arrived in six parts. It opens with a discussion of my method, and closes with a detailed look at Buffalo Death Mask, the short digital movie I made in 2013 about AIDS. In between are a pair of what moviemakers like to call establishing shots. There are a couple of chapters on emotional establishing shots narrating fear and death. And there is a chapter that tries to approach the simple and complicated question of what artists might be doing when making experimentalist movies. Why all this need to trouble the form?