The Filmmaker's Intern

Lisa had to go to Washington, D.C. for an interview, so I spent my last day at school.

I know she wants to reschedule another day to meet up and hangout in the city, but.....this time I was just bummed out.

Yeah I spent my day productively, uploading footage for her friend Carmen and helping my English teacher organize the graduation gowns, but...yeah. It was just, disappointing. 

There's one more week until I'm out of high school for good. 

I don't know what I'm going to do with this blog after the school year is over. It was specifically for my internship as a way to practice using social medial in independent film making. 

^By English teacher who has very high standards for ppt presentation (epicwinnnnn)

It's so weird. For the past three years, it was me just watching the seniors present their internship experience. Now I had to do it. 

And as an FYI, graduation is in two weeks.

Going back to the exhibitions, my presentation wasn't as bad as I originally anticipated. I had that "oh-so-screwed" sensation the night before as I was trying to practice for it. Aside from the fact that my English teacher, who has very high standards when it comes to powerpoint presentations, was going to grade my presentation, I just felt the need to make sure that it was orated very well. Almost all the presentations that I've seen these past few years were very well delivered, and...I don't know. I guess I felt like I needed to match up with them.

So my presentation was bumped up to 3rd period. Ms. Eaton wasn't able to schedule it for 7th because a LOT of mentors were expecting to come today. As a result, we couldn't get the skype thing arranged. That kind of ticked me off though. I understand Lisa was halfway around the world and she had to be there, but it really meant a lot that she could at least see my presentation. C'est la vie. I just did what I did. finished with an extremely dry mouth, but with a weight off my shoulders.

It's so funny how much English class really influenced me this year. During other presentations, I kept a mental count of the numbers of "likes," "um," and "you knows," for every person. No, you want to know something? The freshmen in my room were RUDE. So incredibly rude. First, a few other students and I were presenting in the tech room, so there were computers around the perimeter. Half the freshmen were logged on and playing some sort of stupid game. The one freshman PRINTS in the middle of a presentation, goes up to the printer which is enxt to the person doing the presentation, grabs the paper, and leaves the classroom.

Like...seriously? I don't care if you didn't know this was going on. That was just stupid. Really, really stupid. 

The luncheon portion was bittersweet.  It was cool to see the mentors with the other seniors mingling with each other. At the same time, it made me really wish Lisa was there. I would have really liked to show her off to everyone and let everyone know how awesome she was. And it would have been really nice to call her up and have her received the plaque.

Thursday before prom weekend! This is the last time I will be in Brooklyn now that I think about it. Next week I'm taking off for prom weekend, and the following Thursday is Senior Exhibitions. Sadly, Lisa won't be able to come because she will be away in Tanzania filming more material to supplement her USAID documentary on circumcision and HIV prevention. But we might arrange something so that she can skype in and watch my presentation. That would be cool. It would be like last year when my English teacher took a leave of medical absence but skyped in so we can present our projects to her. And then when she does come back, she says she will plan something for us to do (film related) in Manhattan that will be "very fun." I just can't believe that this is really almost over. 

So today we submitted my screenplay to the New York Screenplay Contest! Lisa sponsored my screenplay too, which was really really nice of her. I am so thankful for having someone like her as a mentor, and I'm so glad she sees potential in my work. And I learned about this website which helps filmmakers connect with film festivals and contests around the world. It's called withoutabox.com, and it basically functions like dropbox. When you sign up for it, you can upload films or screenplays to your account, and when you register for a contest or festival, you can jut pick from the content that you had previously uploaded. The thing is that the actual registration process for screenplays, films, and the sorts is very lengthy. But hey, at least now I can get up-to-date with available festivals. 

My mom had to take my sister somewhere for a doctor's appointment, so I wasn't able to go to Brooklyn today. Guess there wasn't much for me to do though. Lisa just told me to continue looking up screenplay contests and make a list of the ones I can submit to. Once that was taken care of, I just helped my English teacher around with some stuff she had to take care of.

Lisa really liked the screenplay for Slur. She wants to submit it to a screenplay contest.

Hey, that's probably (a lot) better than trying to cram it in a month's worth of filming, editing, etc. And it feels good hearing that my mentor really enjoyed it to the point that she would like to see it entered in a competition.

So I spent some time looking up local screenplay contest and checking their legitimacy. Then a friend of Lisa, this really cool grad student named Carmen, came to digitalize some tapes that she's working on for a documentary about human birth. She's going to grad school to get a degree in nursing and become a midwife. We had this awesome conversation about empowerment, race, gender, society, and so forth. She was soooo nice and easy to talk to.

Lisa caught the cold today. Hope she's gets better soon.

Gonna spend my day at school today. Just general catching up on stuff to do, since there's nothing specific on my to-do list.

After our talk last week in regard to the project, I felt like it would be very fitting and important to do a more in depth look into the "proper method" of film production. I asked Lisa if I could take the day to go to a college library and do some research.

I really don't know how I'm going to pull this off within the next 5-7 weeks.

My friend wants to recast the lead, which I'm okay with it

But so far, we only have confirmation from one person to do the film. And I'm not even 100% sure she'll commit now anymore because of work

Working seniors work everyday 

My friend, the girl we tagged, and the other potential actor will be in Virginia for the rest of the week because of a movie trip. And we need actor confirmation by the end of this week.

I realized that maybe getting people from my school to act and do this in a formal fashion wasn't the brightest idea...

To bounce off the other bullet: senioritis is kicking in HARD for my grade(including myself), juniors are already stressing enough, sophomores have their war unit project going on now and that was a time killer, and freshmen are just.....no

When making the schedule, I forgot to include important things such as AP testing, prom, prom weekend, senior experience deadlines, AP gov community service project (oh please cancel that), Rutgers business(fyi as of last week, I am officially a Scarlet Knight), and other miscellaneous work because teachers don't realize that seniors have checked out

Even if this is a venting session, it pains me to write down all these excuses. This project has been a dream of my friend and mine since sophomore year. It's been the one thing I've talked about so much during senior seminar and at school when I had to stay there on Thursdays. But honestly, I don't know if this is going to work out. I don't want to leave this internship without making it. This is the only opportunity I have with all the resources at my hand to make something before college. And all that work over these past months will be in vain. At the same time...where am I going to have the time to get people to do all this?

Take into consideration:

I'm already going to shorten the script....by a lot. I'm predicting from 30 pages down to....5-6 tops

Maybe if I limit the locations and scenes, it would be easier. So if working diligently, we could get shooting down in....three days?

We could arrange skype practices so that way making people meet up wouldn't be a hassle

I've once been challenged to make a 90 sec movie in one day, with nothing more than a point-and-shoot camera. So this should be accomplish-able, I guess?

So there is hope.

After an extremely, extremely long delay, I can finally say that the script for Slur is complete. However, being the stupid person that I am, I did not allot a lot of time for myself so that shooting the whole script will be possible before the end of the school year (let alone diversity day which is on the 15) And when I was talking with Lisa as far as how a real production process goes, I was just....baffled. I think on the subconscious level, I assumed that, or at least in my situation, the production process would be similar to how a video might be edited for a general school project. And boy didn't I feel really stupid when reality slapped my face. Then again, I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing. The script turned out to be a lot longer than expected, so if I want to make the film before senior year is over, I would have to cut a lot of things. But from watching a lot of short films (especially Wesley Chan<3omgoshwillyoupleasemarryme) less is more. So Lisa will go over the script, give me some input, and help me edit it. And to avoid being idle, I'll prepare a shorter, alternate version of the story and put the edits in there.

I've never really gotten into too much detail about the specifics of this film project I'v been working on. And honestly, I've been kind of hesitant to write about it only because I'm afraid the idea will be taken. The story itself is kind of cliche...but it's not. I don't know how to describe it exactly without revealing too much.

But I can at least talk about it's history.

In a nutshell, Slur, the name of my film, is a short film about the stigma that comes with being in an interracial relationship. It was based on an idea my friend and I had back during our sophomore year in high school. She was Korean, and I am Greek, so we both come from cultures where dating someone outside your ethnicity is highly looked down upon. We thought it would be a very cool idea if we made something similar to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, except having a Korean family and a Korean main charactered involved instead of an American one interacting with the Greek family and the other main character. Sadly, our schedules didn't allow us to really focus on doing this. 

So I was planning on entering another scholarship where you had to submit a PSA on bicycle safety.

Had almost everything planned out before I started shooting

Checked the website again to see the rules one more time

For awhile Lisa has been trying to get me to go to Urban Word's poetry slams, but due to certain circumstances (primarily rides and time) I have not been able to go. But I am extremely happy to say that I finally went to one slam.

And it was phenomenal.

Everyone was just...mindblowing. It was one of those things that you either had to be there or you have to watch a video of it to completely understand the depth of talent there. In a way, it was inspiring too. I wanted to learn more. I wanted to participate in some way. I wanted to expand my our writing repertoire so then I could engage in some sort of dialogue, and so forth.

The best part of it was seeing everyone before the show started huddled up and giving each other words of encouragement. You could really tell from that moment that this slam was more than just making it to the New York slam team. it was about the love for writing--for poetry. It was about delivering the message that each poet had. it was about living in the moment with the people who you love and love you back.

I've never seen a bunch of people so...alive. Poetry is really a strong force. 

And the guy that Lisa wanted me to meet was also a finalist there. He was one of my favorites; he made the team and will go to San Francisco to compete in the national slam. 

This was how my day was spent--playing miniDV tape surgeon.

I offered to help Lisa with it since she needed the tape's content ASAP, but we didn't know that it would take more than FOUR HOURS to fix it.  we didn't even actually fix it.

It was not fun. At all. 

I didn't go to internship today.

Sylvia could only be with me for two hours because she had various appointments/calls to make throughout the day. She told me Lisa was out for the next few days.

To be honest, I'm glad I didn't go.The string of college rejections kinda took more of an emotional toll on me than expected. I feel like had I gone I wouldn't be able to put effort in anything, and the depression would have gotten worse.

And the ivys came out today. Rejected from all of them, as predicted. 

___

I got to work with Sylvia de Fanti today, who is a pretty well known actress in the Italian theater scene. She's here in New York so she could get started doing theater here America. Right now she is in this production called "Safari," which is a very unique and interactive play. The thing that makes it really unique is that it involves the actors being filmed backstage and then the audience sees whats being filmed live. 

So there is this part of the show where Sylvia's character wanders through New York. And I got to help her film it. We did a few shots on Myrtle, on the bus to Vanderbilt, and on Vanderbilt. Those are the only places I remember by name, but the entire part of Brooklyn where we went filming was gorgeous. In between shooting we talked about everything--her career in Italy, personal lives, the theater business in general, politics, education, cinema--everything.

I think the big lesson I got here today is that, while you can survive without knowing EVERYTHING about the film industry, it really really really does help. Especially in narrative film production. It was a humbling experience when Sylvia started talking about these famous directors and films that I had no idea about, and it made me realize that I still have a long, long way to go.

I'm really happy she liked the footage we've got. And I'm also excited to be helping her edit it next week. She's so nice :) 

Afterwards, we went back to Lisa's apartment and I waited for my mom to pick me up. So recently, with prom-stress building up (being dateless as a huge problem) on me and some other negative self talk building, I was depressed throughout the bulk of the week. Lisa and I were talking about high school and college, and we got to a point in the conversation where she admitted to me that even in those years she felt like an awkward child. But then she goes on saying that in college and afterwards, there will be a whole bunch of different people that I'll meet and then there will be a time where this awkward layer will be gone. When she went to her high school reunion, all the people whom she thought had it better in terms of relationships and social status turned out to be living....meh lives. Lisa pretty much caught the attention of everyone with her ambitions. So for someone who constantly beat herself up because she wasn't as big as a social butterfly or wasn't pretty enough or was questioning why nobody would ever want to be with me, that made me feel a lot better and hopeful.

Last week MDGFive had over 1,000 people on the website listening to Mama Creator and making their own PSAs. I'm really happy that it turned out so great. The numbers caught me off guard a lot, but I'm so glad it was a success.

Today we went straight to working on the getting footage of the gentrification of Fort Greene. I thought I was just going to be taking B-roll shots like last time, but Lisa decided to increase the difficulty of the assignment.

........Interviews..

I tried not to show it, but I was definitely intimidated when she asked if I felt comfortable talking with strangers. I had done exercises in programs and camps where I did do that. That wasn't the problem. The problem was trying to convince them to let me film them. The funny thing was that, yeah, I was scared, but it was also....I don't know...exhilarating. Guess it was the idea of pushing my limited repertoire past horizons, or something like that 

So for the first hour out I tried getting people to follow through with this. And in my mind, because I was a student, I thought I would at least get a few people to do it. But nope. Either they were busy (I had people who said that if they weren't on their 5 minute break they would do it), did not feel comfortable at all about being filmed, or thought the topic was too touchy for them (I lost a person who was living in Fort Greene for 10 YEARS and she justified herself with that reason. Which yeah, maybe it was, but its frustrating because she could have provided very thoughtful insights. It's like missing a huge catch while fishing). 

After that fail, I went back to Lisa and did a quick catchup before she had to go be at a very important conference call, and then for the next two hours after that, I was just b-rollin in the deep.

I think I got a lot of nice footage this time. And the more I explore Fort Greene and Brooklyn, the more I realize that there is some sort of magic here. Nothing is ever the same. Me gusta mucho.