Chapter Eleven: Chickening Out
I nearly named this chapter "That's a Wrap!". I'm serious. I immediately stopped myself and banged my forehead on my desk in shame. Eck. I hope you didn't lose respect for me during that confession. As much as I like puns, even that's a little too far for me.
I was finally a senior in college. It was surreal. It felt like mere months from when I had entered this place, hopeful and excited. I had worked on many movies, doing everything from script supervising to directing, and then finally finding my place in post-production. I had gained a great reputation in editing, and made wonderful friends on my journey. Superficially, all was well in my world. I was expected to graduate and get a wonderful editing job somewhere. People told me I was "so talented" and that they expected "great things from me". I remember telling one of my friends that it was hard to stay humble when you hear stuff like that so much. You actually start to believe it. I remember telling him that I had gotten so used to the positive attention for my editing that I was scared to graduate because I knew I would be a big fish no longer.
But below the surface, I was scared. The negative effects of "Hell" still lingered; the seed had been planted for career insecurity. I worried I would never again get that positive attention that drove me. And more than anything, I was scared to let everyone down. What if I didn't do "great things"? What if I never lived up to anyone's expectations of me?
My senior movie went well. It was called
Sprinkler. It was chosen to go to LA for our annual screening at the end of the year. Five movies are chosen each year and there is a screening in which graduates and contacts working in LA come to. It felt like a big deal, but also was rumored to rarely help anyone find a job. Nonetheless, it was a great accomplishment, and I was proud of it.
The year flew by. Before I knew it, it was graduation. Our class had grown very close over the years. While we were waiting to go on stage, we stood in a circle, different people entering the middle and making great speeches of how lucky we were to of found each other. Looking around the group, there wasn't a single person I disliked. In four years, we had become a family. It was no surprise when one person started to sing the "Fresh Prince of Bel Air" theme, and everyone joined in. I almost cried because as odd as it may seem to you, it was one of the greatest moments of my life. We were standing as a class for the last time, and we were singing the theme song to a television show. "Now this is the story all about how, my life got flipped, turned upside down, and I'd like to take a minute , just sit right there, I'll tell you how I became the prince of a town called Bel Air."
At the end of the year, after graduation, the graduates get their last "hurrah" on the LA trip. Other than the screening mentioned above, it is a school organized field trip that includes visiting different companies and museums, and is really just an opportunity for everyone to see LA and spend one last week together as a class. There were a few people who didn't come, and saying goodbye to them was so very sad, and only was the beginning of a long series of "bad"byes.
As far as where everyone was going, many were going to LA, some other various places, but most, surprisingly were going to NY. NYC was where I was also headed. While most of my good friends were going there, it also appealed to me because it was still relatively close to home. I also liked the city better than LA. From afar, NYC looked like the perfect place for me. It offered some comforts of home, in the form of people I knew going there, still had industry opportunities, but would also give me an opportunity to explore other paths, should I chose to do so.
After graduation, I didn't even want to watch any movies. I didn't really want to make anymore movies. I was burnt out. I needed a break. I couldn't reconcile these feelings with knowing that I had a BFA in Film. I couldn't say the words that I had dreaded since I entered the school. "I don't think I want to do this." Keep in mind, this is a week after graduation!
It wasn't until a very unexpected moment did I acknowledge these words. In our LA hotel room, me and some friends were joined by a relative stranger. He had gone to our school for music composition, and was invited to come to LA with us, but we didn't really know him. My friend Tom, a guy who is always one to make people feel welcome, took him under his wing, and he started to hang out with us. After a series of events, I found myself alone with the shy newcomer in my hotel room. I was on my bed, desperate for a nap, and he was sitting in a chair watching tv. As friendly and welcoming as I am, I wanted him to leave. I wanted to sleep! I told him I was going to nap, and he said "Okay", and then proceeded to continue watching tv at a somewhat loud level.
Sleep didn't come. I finally gave up and decided to engage in a conversation with this guy. All hints I was dropping for him to leave were going by unnoticed. We started talking and I asked him what he was doing now that he was a graduate. He told me how even though his degree was in music composition for films, he was pretty good at computer programming and enjoyed it. He had recently gotten a job working with video games. It was that moment that I realized that I didnt have to work in film if I didn't want to. My degree wasn't binding to a career. And at that moment I decided that I would go a different way. I needed a break, and maybe, just maybe, this wasn't for me afterall.
I ultimately decided that I had gotten a degree in my hobby. I would edit in my spare time, but didn't want to make a career of it. Instead, ideas of working in news, being a banker, or maybe even a single, white, female rap star entered my head. (Some leaving just as quickly as they came.) When I told my friends of my plans, they were all pretty shocked. "But you're sooo good!!!" Looking back, I'm scared to admit that I think a lot of this decision had to do with the fear of failing or proving them wrong. I think while I was exhausted and glad to be rid of film work, I was scared to enter the real world. It would be a lot less surprising to fail at something I wasn't trained in, or had a degree for. Basically, when the time came to pull the trigger, I chickened out. I told my friends that if it was meant to be, it would happen. For now, I was going to persue a job in a news station. My new ambition to be a live television director. I said goodbye to college, goodbye to movies, and goodbye to editing. NYC, here I come.
Next chapter: Entering the real world and how I ended up going full circle...kinda.
Labels: fear of failure, graduation
Chapter Ten: Really Close To Hell
It was my junior year. I was in the editing discipline, had a great movie to edit, was still riding high on my "Tell Everyone" accomplishment. One day I get approached by one of the Directing discipline faculty members. He asks me if I'd be interested in editing a horror movie that he was doing this upcoming summer. A creature, feature length. He comes from the cult, straight-to-dvd classics that are still talked about in hushed, reverent tones, fame. "Umm, hell yeah!?" is what I really wanted to scream, but trying to remain calm and poised I declared I was, "very interested but would have to think about it and read the script". Ahh, what a mature and professional decision. Well, in actuality, there wasn't much to think about. I'd be editing my second feature the second summer in a row. And this one had the possibility of going to DVD! This was no time to be picky about projects. I would take whatever I could get. Unfortunately, what I didn't know, this movie would break my spirit more than I was willing to admit.
Eventually, (like a week), later, I told him I'd do it. For getting into the editing discipline, I got a generous gift from my parents to jump start my career. A G5 Mac complete with Final Cut Pro. Top of the line at the time. Still, a damn good computer. We would start shooting in July, and the editing would start immediately there after. I would cut scenes as they came in. I got to hire an assistant to log and capture all the footage, this was almost like a real movie. We were all hired on something called a back-end deal. There's many a reasons why this could be called what it is. In actuality, it means once the movie is done, you get a percentage of its
profits. These days, I feel like this deal is appropriately named because once you sign that deal, you might as well bend over and insert obscenity here. Lesson of the day: Don't sign a back-end deal if you want to ever see a cent.
But admittedly, I wasn't doing the movie for the money. For me, it was all about experience and resume/reel opportunities. The money was only a very wonderful perk. If things went as planned, the movie would be done around November, sold by January, checks by May...just in time for graduation. Going into the real world with a nice little chunk of change didn't hurt.
The movie I did junior year was great. It was a black and white, grainy, touching drama. Lots of room for creative play, like jump cuts, tons of parallel action that I adore. A quick note about parallel action: I love it because you are following two stories and, creatively, there's always a way to make the actions connect to each other, even if only for the purpose of subconsious flow for the audience. If there's two men walking, I always match their footsteps from cut to cut. If guy A is walking left, right, left, right, left, then I cut to guy B walking continuing where he left off, right, left, right. Little touches like that seem to make the flow and rhythm of the action so much smoother. You can also purposefully have the two working against each other to create an unsteady, or subtle conflict of action to represent the larger conflict in the movie. In editing, my theory is, it's the little motions and touches that really make the movie
flow.
Well, at the end of the year, I went to Cannes Film Festival. It was a student filmmaker program in which you payed a lot of money to go to the festival and work at the American Pavilion. Just the chance to hang out in the South of France was a great opportunity, not to mention the networking possibilities. So me and one of my close friends went. We actually went a week early and spent our time in Nice. It was amazing. The plan was we'd go to Nice, and then Cannes for the duration of the festival, and then go backpacking to such places as Switzerland, Germany, Ireland, England, and Scotland. Ending up in Paris and flying out. The whole trip would be two months, and I'd be back right in time to start the horror movie. Nice was amazing, Cannes was great. I was basically a waitress. I met lots of people. but no one really able to help me out much. We got to go to posh parties and saw many celebrities. This was the Cannes of Jen and Brad. I was actually catering a party that was being held on a balcony above the red carpet as they arrived. I could have spit on their heads. Of course I didn't. I was too busy pouring red wine into people's white, setting trashcans on fire by empting ashtrays too early, or opening the fridge not very carefully and ruining a tray of cream puffs when they fell to the floor. Eck. I wasn't cut out for this. They all ended up being laughable offenses and actually was a conversation starter with the editor of "Hearts of Darkness", Jay Miracle. All in all, it was a great trip. As the festival started coming to a close, my friend and I, who at the time both had dogs, were getting word from home that all was not well.
My dog was having severe seperation anxiety and becoming a routine misbehaver. On the other hand, Maggie's dog was on the edge of dying. It was her childhood dog, and she was reaching the end of her life. It was becoming apparent that she would have to be put to sleep. Maggie made the decision that she had to return home. After sincere apologies, she insisted I do the rest of the trip without her. Unable to fathom traveling around Europe alone, and due to my own dog's problems, I decided to return with her. We got refunds on all of our train tickets and rescheduled our flight for three weeks earlier. We were leaving the next week.
I'm really digressing here. I'm finding it so much easier to talk about my accomplishments, that's for sure. Here we go. (Deep breath.)
The movie was starting up before I knew it. I started cutting away as the scenes began rolling in. As a general practice, if time allows, I will try and cut without the script as a first cut. I'm not sure if this is good advice or not, for me it works. It helps me look at the scenes as part of the bigger picture. If something makes sense to me without reading from the script, I know that most likely, it will also make sense to the audience. The problem here was that I was getting scenes that were missing pivotal shots. Basically, I had scenes A and C, and I put them together temporarily while I waited for B to be captured. It was innocent enough. The three scenes were all action and didn't even follow the script very well. With the low-budget hectic schedule, there was no time for dailies/rushes screenings, or watching all of the unedited footage shot that day. Daily screenings are helpful because directors can point out takes that they like, and explain what the unslated shots are. It's a way for everyone to see what was done that day, and great for getting editors up to speed, (especially in the low-budget, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants movie setting).
The director called me and said that they wanted to have a little screening of what I had cut so far. It was very early on, and of what I had so far, it was an assembly edit at best. Well, all of the other positions were filled by other faculty members or other grown and experienced professionals. It was easy to say, I was the only one in the room still, "wet behind the ears". I started to explain that some scenes were still missing and they responded by saying, "No disclaimers needed. We only want to see the cinematography." There are many mistakes I made on this fateful day. One was believing that. It's
never just about the cinematography. Admittedly, the biggest was not putting text or black up between scene A and C. "Missing Scene".
A first cut screening is the most horrifying thing I've ever experienced. It is terrifying. It was always my least favorite part of the process. In this instance especially. I was desperately trying to prove myself as a professional, trying to show that I wasn't a college student, or a female, or a kid, I was an editor. This was where everyone would see what I could do. If I lived up to all the hype. Every sigh, mutter, scribble in the room had my undivided attention. Heart slowly sinking as the sighs increased. When the lights came on, I was already near tears. Pure tears of terror. I sucked them back and focused on my pen and paper waiting for the notes that were sure to come.
"What the hell was that?" or something similarly shattering was the first "note" I received.
I tried to stay cool, "Well, there's still more coming, and it's just a first cut. I know it's rough."
"You cut out the cabin scene!"
"No, well..." I attempted to explain, but the director was hearing none of it.
"And there was no suspense! Where was the fucking suspense? Have you ever seen a scary movie?"
Tears coming up, pushed back, shakey voice, "Well yeah-"
"Why'd you show this to us, I just can't, I just-"
"It's rough, I-"
And wordlessly he left the room and went to his car and drove away. Drove away. Walked out of the fucking room and drove away. I felt hollow, like every good, encouraging thing anyone had ever said about me had been pulled out of my body in one fail swoop, leaving this skeleton of a person sitting in a room of sympathetic eyes, all on me. Waiting to see if I was going to say anything or jump out of the window, if I'd reenact scene 34 where the monster swipes everything off of the table in rage. Enraged.
I cleared my throat and shamefully turned to the other men in the room, humiliated, "There's a scene missing. It will be better."
And I left. I walked on my wooden, fucking legs, out to my fucking car, and drove away, my car creaking "failure" at every turn. The saddest songs playing on the radio. The tears still hadn't come. I just said "Fuck him". A lot. (And now I will continue to say "fuck" a lot. There's a possibility I'm still pretty angry about this event.) And drove, and drove by my house. Stunned and sad and feeling like everything that anyone had ever said about me being, "talented", all the talk about winning an Academy Award, everything was bullshit. My entire life up to this point was a fucking waste. All the hard work, and the nights watching them film Dawson's Creek, the movies, and encouragement, my uncles boasting about how they couldn't wait to see me on the big screen, everything was a waste. I was the biggest fraud of all time. Somehow I had convinced everyone I could do this. But put in a real situation, on a real movie, with real filmmakers, I failed. I was three feet shorter when I realized I had made a mistake. This was not for me. I couldn't take it. I wouldn't make it. Anger, regret, and then, then there were tears.
When I walked into my house I would have usually made a beeline for my bedroom, unable to let anyone see my weakness. See me cry. But I had too many tears. I didn't know what to do with them. They kept coming, and I was hyperventilating, and I was a mess. And this voice in my head kept reminding me, "I was a failure".
My friends and roommates were great that day. They tried desperately to restore my confidence, a fruitless effort I admit. Tom, one of my roommates who had a bad experience himself with this guy, grabbed his phone enraged. I made him put it down.
"How dare he?!"
"Who does this?!? And to a kid!"
There it was. I was a kid. I was out of my league. I wasn't an editor. I could do a decent impression, and I could laugh at the jokes, but I was still a kid.
I cried myself back to the present. I knew I had to finish the movie. If they'd still have me. I couldn't give up on it. Because then he'd know what he did to me. I would not give him that privledge. I could do this movie, and I would do this movie, and when it was done, I would forget about it, and move on. I couldn't, and wouldn't, let this guy stop me from continuing on. I couldn't let him know that I was just a kid. I had to be an editor. But I was scarred. And it was deep. And even now, I haven't forgotten. I don't think I ever will. But I continued the movie. I watched a lot of horror movies, (at his insistence, not a bad idea I admit), and I just worked and cut the movie passionate-lessly. It was cut, cut, cut. Makes sense. Scene done. Suspense, suspense, suspense. Anytime I tried to put any creativity into it, I was shot down. It was one of those instances where I knew that I wasn't being viewed as an editor, I was being viewed as a student. Any ideas that didn't come from the "professionals", wasn't even considered. It was far closer to hell than originally advertised.
It got to a point where I was merely a puppet. I didn't have creative input, and when we finally got to the fine cut, school had started back up, and I had to begin thinking about my senior thesis project. A project directed by the mastermind of "Tell Everyone", someone who I knew valued my opinions and would let me work and play as an editor. Because really, in editing, the work should involve a lot of play. Especially if you like the job. I had to step away from the project. I was tired of two frames left, 5 frames right. I was merely controlling the machine. I had never quit a job. Seeing something through completion and getting that satisfaction is one of the reasons I'm an editor. But I couldn't be there anymore. It was hurting me far more than it was helping me. And I knew, if I wasn't careful, my senior thesis project would suffer. At that point, many people would be effected, not just me. So I quit. We got another student with a compatible computer to finish. I got to approve the final cut, and still got the editing credit, but I wasn't going to finish it. I watched the final cut, and knowing that it was merely a formality, and any objections that I had would be overruled, I gave them the go ahead. They started on sound and I put "Hell" behind me.
For all the bad things I can say about this experience, I should say that I'm still glad that I did it. I learned to have a thicker skin, and I'm now no longer frightened of first cut screenings. I still get nervous, but I know that no screening could go as bad as this infamous one. These gains came at the price of a lot of self-evaluating and second guessing.
I still have yet to see the final cut with music and sound. I still have yet to see a dime. It sits on someone's shelf, maybe one day going to dvd, maybe not. Unfortunately, I can't bring myself to give a damn.
Rereading this entry, I realized that I sound very ungrateful. I was compelled to edit the hell out of it, but I decided to keep it as is. Because it is a lot of raw emotion that I hadn't really ever gotten out of my system. It's also truth. Well, from my perspective, which is all that matters here in TFTI. I am very thankful for this experience, because as bad as it was, it was a great opportunity and also allowed me that first failure that I spoke of in an earlier entry. And come on, it was bound to happen right? No one stays on top forever. Just ask Britany Spears. So I thank the people that gave me the chance on this movie, and do regret the way things turned out. I needed a kick back down to reality, and frankly, I think I needed to fail. It helped me make an important decision. But more on that later. Stay tuned...Labels: back-end deal, fear of failure, Final Cut Pro, independent movie, quitting a job
Chapter Five: Disillusionment
At this point in my life, I was moving away from home for the first time. All of my comfort-zones were four hours away and many of my friends were so busy starting their new lives that sometimes a phone call just had to be enough. None of this is necessarily new to a college freshman, but no matter how common it is, it doesn't retract from what a life-altering year that first year is. For me, for everyone. One of the hardest and scariest moments, is when you realize family and friends are just a support system. Your life, your decisions, your destiny, (for a lack of better word), is all your own. I remember being fascinated at not having to ask permission to go out late at night and fearing not waking up on time, as my mother was always around to wake me for school or whatever other activity I may have had going on. It was scary and new, but I was doing something different. It felt good to know what path I was going down, even if I was a little anxious. In high school, I had always been known as the "film kid". Now I was going to school with a hundred "film kids". It was actually very interesting to hear the same story come from every person. "I did the morning news." "Everyone asked my opinion on movies." "I played with a camera a lot." It was nice to have tons of people around that thought the same way as you. As cliche as it sounds, we were all weird. Art school has that reputation for a reason.
Walking down Main Street, the affectionate nickname for the main strip through the film school, I was excited to learn there was a Krispy Kreme and a Wachovia. ("A bank switch may be in order," was one of my first thoughts. "Danger! Danger! Where's the gym?" was my immediate second.) There were fancy street lights and everything just seemed, surreal. On the opposite side of the street was the backs of the sound stages, and what appeared to be a very shallow, and empty, swimming pool. Surely I was dreaming, but I was starting to feel the tiny surges of excitement in my stomach. It was really happening.
I soon found out that the sterile and plastic looking scenery on main street was an illusion. The Krispy Kreme, the Wachovia, the streetlights, and even the pool, that would later be known as the reflecting pool, was all in place for potential use for a movie. And I realized something that had been floating around my head since the job shadow, that I had signed into one of the most unreal worlds you could imagine. Where nothing is real and everything is just an illusion. The cardboard separating the Wachovia painted window and my professor's office made that painfully clear. And I started to wonder if it was the illusion I was after all along. Through the camera, you see what "they" want you to see. Once the street was stripped bare, would I still feel that excitement? This great package that I was getting, was it just as fake as the plastic street lamps? The excitement that I once felt, started slowly turning into dread, when in the first all-school meeting it was announced, "Many of you will leave before your first year is over. Statistically, your class of 85 will be 50 by the time you enter your third year." My dry mouth and racing mind pondered the water fountain, wondering if water would come out of it at all.
Of course, it was all metaphorical for me. In such an industry that I had always wanted to be accepted into, (always yearning to be on the other side of those barriers), I guess I was just scared that the reality would never live up to the dream. The possibility that my interest was only peaked due to the mysterious nature of the business was what I was most afraid of. It seems silly now, but my self-doubt ran deep. I am the type of person who likes to know what I will be doing tomorrow. I am a notorious "what-if"er. I just couldn't stop thinking that I had made a mistake by trying to enter this business.
I know, I know, "get a little self-confidence woman!" But it's scary. It's scary to "have it all figured out" or at least think you do. Because once you start down on that path, it's hard to turn around. There's no real room for, "Oops" and "Umm, I think I'm switching majors". As a person who loves to have choices, what the hell was I doing at film school?
Labels: disillusionment, fear of failure, film school
Chapter Two: An Opportunity
You get the drive, you acquire the ambition, you devote yourself to figuring out where you belong in the process, and then what? I was sixteen when I seriously started to consider filmmaking as a career. It seemed so glamourous and dignified. It was like this was something I could do and be proud of how I spent my life.
I couldn't imagine a better occupation than filmmaking. And looking back, I knew nothing about it. I mean, I understood the train wasn't going to come off the screen, and I guess that was a start. I needed to know more before I decided to devote myself to it. But where to begin? How could I get from gazing from behind the barrier, (bordering on behavior that could be deemed stalkerish), to being a part of it all? The nature of the business is very private. Security and gates keep the outside world, outside.
I spent the better part of years sixteen and seventeen looking in from the outside on the rare occasion I could catch filming. I also became obsessed with television. I enjoyed movies, but by no means was a 'buff'. And I didn't own a video camera, so I wasn't running around like M. Night Shyamalan making movies with my friends. In fact, I was far from the cookie cutter example of a future 'filmmaker'.
When I was a junior, I heard about a job shadow opportunity in my school. Basically you put in a request to follow someone around for a day in an occupation you wish to work in. I decided to do it. I remember putting in a request to work with the Dawson's Creek Production Company, almost jokingly. I knew the chances were so slim, that I was potentially just throwing this opportunity away. You could only put in one request, and I seriously thought that maybe I should just put in a request to work in a Pediatrician's office. I'm really glad I decided against that. As much as helping children would be possibly one of the most gratifying jobs in the world, I passed out at the sight of blood, and sick children usually made me cry. I just took the chance and requested the production company.
I remember us all being called into the career guidance classroom and being handed an envelope with our job shadow assignments. I watched as everyone else opened theirs, clutching mine nervously. When I finally opened it, I literally screamed in excitement. My friends knew right away. I was going to job shadow "Dawson's Creek". When word spread through the school, most people were very excited for me and wanted to know everything when I returned. Others gave me dirty looks and one person even keyed my car. Keyed my car! I was very well-liked in the school, (even got "Most Friendly" salutation), so this surprised everyone. After that incident, I decided to not be so publicly excited about this opportunity and went the "play it cool" route. Inside, I was a mess of nerves.
The one thing I feared the most was, what if this wasn't for me. What if I hated it, or worse, they hated me and vowed, "You will never work in this industry kid! Give it up!"
Labels: ambitions, Dawson's Creek, fear of failure
