Significant things are happening in my life, beginnings and endings making Mobius twists of my daily routine. And I can only think of insignificant things to write about them — or perhaps they are the only things of significance to me, which makes me a rather shallow, imperceptive poop. Shrug.
I finished my semester of FEA 336, Intermediate Film Production. Although it’s not the highest film production class at Long Beach State, and really, all you have to show at the end of it is a three-minute short, FEA 336 is somewhat legendary around our film department as a six month crash-course in filmmaking that, at its end, leaves you a capable, one-person film production unit. It works great for some, terribly for others, but all in all in all it finally wakes up and make you realize how much (or little) you’re really capable of as a filmmaker.
For me, it was great. But now it’s over. I’m straining to remember all the important little things into coherent anecdotes, so I’ll remember later, and be grateful.
- The late night phone calls between classmates being self-critical about our stupid story ideas
- The numerous showers spent trying to conceive a meaningful three-minute script
- The constant hair-pulling as more and more numbers piled onto the budget
- The intense agony of trying to describe my characters into a little text box on a casting website.
- The headaches involved with trying to find a location that served the story more than my own laziness and visual ineptitude
- Auditioning actors/actresses and trying best not to let slip that I’m terrified that at any given second, my voice is going to crack and any semblance of dignity I had going would be annihilated by an actor’s disappointed look
- Worrying about props, wardrobe, THE WEATHER GOOD LORD THE WEATHER
- And the shit-talking, the never ending shit-talking about other students’ projects that was our only relief the vortex of stress that FEA 336 had sucked us into.
And how on the day of production, all of that fell away and I became something I had never really been before — the guy in the know. I knew what my actors would say and how, I knew exactly where I wanted them in frame, I knew the balance of colors that I wanted, I knew exactly how big I wanted the balloons inflated and how big I wanted the numbers painted on them… at any given point, if anyone had a question regarding my production, my story, my baby… I had the answer. It felt more than good. It was almost… religious.
But now that’s all over, 336 is over and I’m supposed to be a big boy now and organize my own 10, 15 minute short. Really, I know most of all what I need to know in order to organize a medium-to-large scale film production. Just give me a script and some cash and bam, off I go… in theory. I’m supposed to be all grown up now.
All grown up now. I’m finally moving out of the dorms — I’ve spent a full two years in these rat cubicles branded as living spaces, and finally I’ve the balls to stop riding the financial aid train, get out and get a job and get the hell off campus. Anyone close to me in for these past years have noted how miserable I am within these halls, and yet, nothing in recent memory has been as sobering and bittersweet as when I finally picked up that last box off my floor, full of useless loose items and desperately duct-taped together, and shut the door on the last time I would ever stay in a room at Cal State Long Beach. I lingered as I stood in that doorway, wondering if the overwhelming sentiment I felt for this stupid place would well up into tears, but thankfully it never got that far.
I generate these intense emotional attachments to the spaces where I stay, and they tend to be places that don’t deserve any such affection. My room was always cold in the winter and sticky hot in the spring, the carpet looked like someone bulldozed a Muppet carcass, and our bathroom was always littered with beer cans and toilet paper. Why in hell does this place deserve any recognition at all in my timeline?
Ding.
Because it’s where I finally came to grow up. Living in this godforsaken place was the first time I’d ever lived outside of my sunny house in suburban San Diego. It was in this dump that I finally took steps towards becoming greater than a parasitic teen. Really, I should wake up to the fact that the change occurs within me, not within the place — I doubt the butterfly feels much affection for the coccoon. But still I can’t shake the feeling that these ceilings witnessed something vital about me, a crucial detail — and now they’re gone forever.
So I shrug off another deep sigh.
With trepidation, I inspect my new apartment, stopping by the leasing office much more often than necessary and surely giving the leasing agent the impression that I have OCD. Each time, and I think the count is up to eight now, I give the excuse that I need to take measurements for furniture; they probably think I have chalk outlines drawn over my entire room. But really, I just go in and sit in a corner, memorizing the bumps on the ceiling. How will I have changed again, when this room is once again empty as it is now, when I’m moving out of this apartment, lingering in the doorway? Will I still be a filmmaker? In love? Will I have the illusion of financial security that I do now? Will I have decided whether to persue the happiness of family or art, of people or self-satisfaction?
What will these walls see? What loops of my history will they contain?
I hope they’re ready.