I Wanted to Blog, but I Didn't Have Much to Say About My Movie, So I Just Started Typing

I lost the list of baby names I had saved on my computer. Every time I'd see a name I liked I'd put it on the list and I cannot find it anymore. Maybe I just saved it with a different name. I always wanted kids, not babies, but little kids. The minds of young children seem like an opportunity for me to teach values and instill ideas that will last throughout that person's life. I always wanted to sit down with my toddler cousins and try and teach them about an alternate way of thinking, my cousins are the type of people that obsess over Jesus. I never wanted to convert them, just give them something else to think about. The issue that I have with Christianity is that they have the Bible. It isn't the Bible that ruins Christianity, it is the fact that people choose to interpret it in the way that benefits them most. A solider can go off to war and kill a bunch of people, but in the eyes of the Church he hasn't sinned even though the Bible says don't kill. People try and pick and choose the parts of the Bible and that isn't fair. I am fine that the Bible says to that being gay is an abomination, what angers me is that the hardcore Christians are trying to stop gay marriage, while there are still a ton of wars going on in the world and a ton of killing. I'm pretty sure murder is worse than sleeping with another guy. I don't know how I even ended up talking about this. I just kind of did. Anyway, the name I was going to add to the list was Ezra. I found a blog where this little kid named Ezra wrote about a TV show I love called Portlandia. The kid is like 7 years old and he is adorable. I want my kids to be like that. I don't have a motherly instinct, I have a fatherly one. I want to have a relationship so that I can teach my children, and see them grow up the life that I would have wanted. Everyone wants that though. My parents wanted that. I am living their dream life, but they had pretty low standards. Not starving was what my father wanted for me, and my mother wanted me to have a good education. It is hard having parents that were like the ones that I had. Most people have that feeling of, "oh yeah, people are dying of starvation while I'm complaining about my stupid problems" but when your parents where starving then you really think about it a lot. Whenever I have an argument or a problem I always am able to take a step back and evaluate the situation, and when I do that then the issue seems unimportant. And then you start to take a look at your life, and start to ask what it is you are doing for the world that is starving and dying. Then you feel guilty, especially because when you hear the stories of people who were able to rise from the poverty and violence, and realize that if you were in the same position you could have never accomplished the same things. I just sent in an application in for an internship in NYC. It is paid, and I hope that I can get an interview. My aunt is an intellectual, she is a college professor, but I wouldn't ever use that to classify her profession. Her job is to learn and be smart. She is nearing in on her doctorate now. She read over my resume and the application questions I handed in. She made her revision and I accepted them and emailed it to the organization. The place is called Transportation Alternatives, and what they do is fight for different kinds of transportation methods, so they would be the guys who got the bike lanes and bus lanes and stuff like that. I don't have any personal connection to that cause, but it is a cause nevertheless. I figure that you have to start somewhere, and even I am not curing cancer, or feeding the hungry, at least I'm not just sitting around waiting for something to happen. I hate being still. Let me rephrase that, I hate doing something stupid. I hate watching TV unless it is smart, so now I only watch a couple of TV shows that I love, and the news. I watch the news now like I used to watch Nickelodeon when I was little. I remember when my family first got cable. I was in the third grade and I had always envied all the other kids because they could watch Spongebob while I was stuck watching Cyberchase on PBS. Now that I think about it, I would have rather not have cable enter my life because it made me stupid. I was a really smart little kid, and I would be the kid who asked all the super advanced questions in class. I remember while in first grade my class was learning how to subtract and my teacher told us that we can't subtract a higher number from a lower number, then I thought she was an idiot for believing that, because a few days ago I saw an episode of Cyberchase where the theme of the episode was negative numbers. I mentioned it to her in front of the class and I still remember the "oh shit" reaction she got. She didn't get that way because I was smarter than her, she got that way because now she had to try and explain to a class of mindless cable-watching kids, the idea of negative numbers, because if she didn't then we'd just tease her about it forever. Now I am old enough to handle cable television, I know what I should and shouldn't watch and I didn't have that control of myself when I was younger. I used to spend hours watching whatever was on TV but now I never watch live TV, I always just watch what I have recorded on my DVR because commercials bother me. And I watch most of my TV shows on the internet because it is easier that way. On the new Macs they have an outlet for the HDMI cables, so I connected my computer to my TV like it was nothing, and I can watch TV on an actual TV.
I edited my movie today and that was interesting. The plot of the movie that a girl finds a magic mirror that can do things to other people, so she starts to mess with her bully, and then at the end she kills her bully. I filmed everything but the parts with the mirror. I don't have any dialog, which is weird. I like talky movies, but whenever I try to make my movies talky the dialog ends up sounding stupid. My scripts for talky movies are driven by what the characters say, and there is very little movement, so I think that when I'm ready to make a movie with dialog, it wouldn't need it for you to understand the story.

Q4 Plans

Recently I’ve been putting most of my effort into film. I want to continue with that for the rest of the year and probably for the following years in STAC. I like finished products, even if they aren’t good. If I can finish something and move on, I’d rather do that then spend a quarter working to make something perfect. I don’t want to waste much time at all writing scripts for movies because so often I feel that I just waste so much time trying to come up with a “good” idea. Right now I want to work on more technical aspects of film because that is where I need the most help. I am obviously working with collaborators, the actors in my films, and my friends that I discuss my film with. I like showing my films to people but I don’t like having to explain myself to them. I feel that if I have to explain myself then I obviously did something wrong. I just finished a previous project, and I’m going to start a new one now, but I am still don’t have any idea what it is going to be about. I want to finish at least two films this quarter but I hope to finish more. My plan is to work on a film, be given a deadline, and then move on. I want to be graded on technical stuff mostly, just because I want to get better at that more than anything else. My idea is that this quarter I can finish a number of films and can be graded on the progression of the quality of them, rather than me spending all my time on a single project and be graded on the quality of that single one.

I am extremely crafty. I’ve always been this way and I never really use this skill I have for anything other than small little side projects I do when I’m bored. I do a lot of hand sewing and I’ve been playing around with the jewelry making equipment my father has. I make alterations to my clothes and make small accessories with my sewing knowledge, and I play around with wire a lot, making cool stuff that would ultimately end up lost. I figured that if Danny has spent the past few weeks making puppets I could do something along those lines. I know that I could make a much better puppet than Danny just because I know more about just hand crafts in general than he does, and I have nimble fingers. I don’t know exactly what it is I would do but I know that I could make something incredible. I you looked, the voodoo doll I made for Grace in December was extremely detailed, and very well made. That doll had individual strands of hair, and I’m not sure that people understand how hard that was. I took yellow tread, and I made hair. I didn’t do the shit way and cut out some felt and glue it on, I figured out how to make what seemed to be extremely realistic hair. And I also sewed together a doll. I don’t think many other people did that. That doll probably took me a collective 20 hours, and a good portion of that was spent on just getting the hair on. I want to work on another project like this because it calms me. I like working with my hands with delicate things, and I am pretty good at it. I had an idea to try and make puppets to show off to Danny that he should have taken some of my advice in making his puppets, and that it would make him angry and messing with Danny is always fun. I know that I shouldn’t make puppets because I’m not going to bother to actually make a scene for the puppets, but I did have the idea to make maybe a more interesting diorama of some scene that I could come up with. I don’t know how this will be useful to me other than that it is something that I like to do, and I’ve been wanting to make a larger project around what I like to do. I think I want to stick with the idea of the diorama, and first I guess I’d need to find a concept to start building around.

            I remember watching a lot of Charlie Chaplin films when I was younger, and I thought that I should read his autobiography. I am learning film and I don’t know much about him, and I figure that it would be good to learn about someone as significant as Charlie Chaplin is in the film industry.

http://www.amazon.com/Charlie-Chaplin-My-Autobiography-Charles/dp/0452270782/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366074592&sr=1-1&keywords=0452270782

I edited today. I started with a rough edit of just getting all of the pieces together and when I got home I continued and started to fix some more fine details. It still isn't done, I wanna re-film the part when I am kicking Emily because that is confusing and some other stuff. But that shouldn't take too long, and I could get it done in less than a period. I picked out a song to use. It was written by Alexandre Desplat. He writes music for a lot of major motion pictures, he recently wrote the soundtrack for Argo and he did the soundtrack for The Tree of Life, and the song I choose of his was from Moonrise Kingdom. On of my favourite things about that movie was the music. It fit the movie so perfectly and I started to listen to that soundtrack without the movie behind it. His stuff kind of fit the movie but at the same time didn't. I have more to fix and that's what I'll be doing tomorrow. Here is what I got so far.

So the new script I wrote is for a silent film. There is no real plot and I wanted to make it more metaphoric. I have issues with finding locations for films, so I decided to write a film that I knew I could film without having to worry about locations because it would be in a secure place, that I could know would be available and that is outside. The story is about a boy who trips and crawls around the parking lot outside and isn't allowed to get back up. Then it ends with him trying to get up, but then being pushed down again and only is able to get up again with the aid of another person. I wrote out a shot list and have a basic story board. I don't want this to take me too long to film or edit and I wanna start film it all Friday because tomorrow I'm helping Anika with her make up thing and Thursday there is STAC art.

So my plan for the next week is to film my movie that I was talking about last week, over spring break, and start another smaller project that I can finish this week. My script for the first film is done and most of what I need to fill is at my house. I'm starting a second film now that is going to be significantly shorter, and I wanna have that filmed by the end of this week.

My Movie and Adventure

This blog post is a combination of two posts that I've been meaning to write.

Part 1- My Movie

I've been trying to work on a movie for the past few weeks. I've spent many hours on my computer watching Wes Anderson films, and basically I'm  just trying to copy everything he does in his films in mine. I love his movies, and I wanna make something that I can love to watch. I have a script but I need to shorten it because there is a lot of useless stuff that doesn't add anything to the movie. I need to figure out where it is I'm going to film this. Whenever I write a script I'm always trying to think about how realistic it could be to make it real. In my mind I'm constantly thinking about where it is I'm going to film, who is going to play the roles and other things like that. I realize that trying to fake a space into becoming something that it's not is hard especially when I have a limited amount of time to arrange the room, like in the case of filming in a classroom. I need to try and rewrite certain parts so that they can be filmed in the locations that actually exist and that I am allowed to film in. I don't want to make a big deal about finding some special place to try when I could just as easily make the sense work in another location. I have a scene where the main character, Mrs. Cathy, goes into the police station to report the missing girl. I realize that I could probably make this whole scene a phone conversation rather than an in person talk because turning an area into a police station would look awful and also I would also have to worry about the camera spilling seeing the other environment I am trying to hide. I came across this issue in my last movie. It was super annoying because I could only film from a few angles, and I had to put up a blanket to try and cover an area that wasn't supposed to be seen. I don't want to have to deal with that issue again, so I'm going to rewrite the scenes for the areas I know I can film in. That way I won't have to be running around trying to make a fake police station inside of a classroom. 

Part 2- Weekend Adventure

So two weeks ago I went into the city with my aunt and I slept over at her apartment. I wanted to write about this when I got back to her place but I feel asleep because it was around one when I got back I was too exhausted to log onto my computer. My parents had wanted to go to Massachusetts to see my dad's best friend's mid life crisis band play at some bar. They invited me to come but I would have rather stayed with my aunt than watch fifty year old men play covers of songs I have never heard of while everyone got so drunk that the dancing consisted of everyone trying to keep their balance by leaning on one another (I received footage, I'm not joking). My parents dropped me off at my aunt's apartment at around ten thirty. My aunt's boyfriend was there, he works for the U.N. and is normally away traveling between New York and Holland, and he made us breakfast. As we ate I started to play my French music I had on my computer, most of it consisted of old Edith Piaf songs. Daniel, my aunt's boyfriend, made some comments about it, he is a cultured European, and we had a mini conversation about my enrollment in French for next year. I then began to discuss how that day I wanted to get a haircut. My aunt and her boyfriend are extremely liberal people. Some might have considered my aunt a communist back in the old days. And Daniel works for the U.N., so he has to be pretty liberal. Because of their openness I decided that if I ever wanted to dye my hair then I would probably have to have to do it that day. I told them my plan to dye my hair and they seemed fine with it. I got my aunt to call the store and make an appointment because I was too nervous to call for myself and I would probably just call the whole thing off I was given in charge of making the appointment.  I go to Chinatown to get my haircut, my hair styler’s name is Jo, she is this sixty-year-old Chinese lady, and she doesn't speak English and I like that about her. I tell her "short" or "red" and she is like "yes yes yes" and I always get out with an awesome haircut, so I don't complain. I arrived at the hair salon and I said hi to Jo. She lead me to this hair where she took out a book and I pointed at the shade of colour I wanted. Then this other person came out with the hair dye. I was a little uncomfortable with the fact that someone other than Jo was touching my hair, but for the first half an hour I though this person was a boy and I could only focus on how adorable I thought she was. Her hair was short and styled all spiky and short, and she was wearing a button up shirt and was extremely flat chested. She was also fairly young, I would she was in her early twenties, and she probably got a job there through some family connection, maybe her aunt was Jo, and she was working there doing basic stuff while she studied at school. I watched as she rubbed her hands into my hair through the mirror for the first half an hour, it was all vaguely sexual to me. Then she yelled something out to someone in Chinese. I realized that she had a very high voice for a boy, and for the rest of the dying process I was trying to figure out the gender of this person. I think I must have been staring at her chest for a good fives minutes looking to see if there where any breasts. I finally came to the conscious that she was in fact a female and not a gay boy, when I saw her shoes. She was wearing a pair of white sketchers sneakers, and I know that any gay boy wearing the same outfit, with the same hair, wouldn't screw up his whole outfit with a pair of crappy shoes. My hair absorbed all the colour and then the boy/girl took me to the sink where she washed my hair. If I still though that she was a boy this process would have been extremely arousing but sadly I could no longer live in the illusion. I was then taken back to Jo who sat me down at her station. She complemented my new red hair, which I still couldn't get a good look at because my glasses had to be removed. She asked me in her broken English what type of hair cut I wanted. To be honest I hadn't planned past the hair dying. I was so preoccupied over my hair-changing colour that I forgot it was getting cut. So I told her to just do whatever. She liked to hear that. I finished at the hair salon and I left with my aunt. She kept complementing me on my hair but I didn't like it because I couldn't get a good picture with it and I was worried that it made me look ugly. I put on my Adventure Time hat that I made recently made on, and I covered my new hair except for a little bit that seeped through the front of hat. The plan from there was to go to Barnes & Nobles and get that David Mamet book on directing. We got to a store and they didn't have it in stock and my aunt and I asked one of the workers if he could check if it was in another store nearby. He did and he was a sweet old guy. He asked if I was making a movie and I said yes. I then started to explain the whole plot of it. This is the same movie that I was talking about in part one. I could tell he really wasn't interested, and I didn't think any less of him for that. He tries to do his job with a smile but I could also tell that he wasn't a people person. I butchered my movie plot in my explanation because I wanted to just stop talking but I had already started. This was before I had made an ending to it, so if the guy was actually listening then he thinks that the little girl who runs away ends up dying. He found another store that had the book and it was only a few blocks away so my aunt and me went and got it. We then meet up Daniel, who had to go to work that day, and we ate dinner. We had Thai food. I love Thai food. Asian food is much more kind towards vegetarians and like having a lot of options to choose from. We ate and then Daniel returned to work and my aunt (I think I'll give her name now because I'm tired of writing "my aunt", Tia Chave) went back to the apartment. Our plan was to take a nap but instead I showed her Fantastic Mr. Fox on movie2k because she hadn't seen it and I thought that she should. We finished the movie and then headed out again. I wanted to see the Neo Futurists again so we went to see Too Much Light. Daniel meets us at the theater, he is Dutch, and the Dutch enjoy bicycles, so he had ridden his bike there. It was a little awkward but that's probably because I'm not used to seeing a man in a shirt and tie, with a briefcase and shoes, riding a bike. We got in and I was a little disappointed when I saw that a certain actor was in the show that night. We saw him on the first STAC trip this year. He was the gay Latino guy who was cross-dressing. He got up on a chair and made the announcement that we could start to roll the dice to get seats, but he managed to add in something about how beautiful and sexy he was and that made me uncomfortable because he was being conceded and he doesn't deserve to be because he isn't that attractive. The other gay boy in the play is beyond hot and he never mentions his beauty and that makes him even more attractive. I will say that the ugly gay boy is a great writer, and he had a lot of cool ideas. There was this play where he was talking through a teddy bear with a microphone about how we don't realize how our we are served by Latinos who are just trying to work and yet we are trying to throw them out and criticize them as bad criminals. I liked the show but this was my third time going and at this point I started to feel that the show was getting cliché. It's always changing but the whole thing feels the same after each you go. I think that it was still a great experience because when you see that many shows you are able to get a ton of new idea to steal for yourself, but I should probably see a different show the next time I'm in the city. I wasn't paying attention to show during the last twenty minutes because I realized there was this adorable gay couple sitting two rows in front of me. They were holding hand and they where having the time of their lives that night. There was a play about how the new pope would be all liberal and then they started throwing condoms into the audience, and jokingly one boy in the couple went out of his way to catch one and the other boy laughed so hard and kissed him when he got back into his chair. At that moment I wanted to cry, and just thinking about it now makes me tear again because it was beautiful to me. The only reason I didn't come out so many years ago was because I was afraid I couldn't have a normal life if I did. And seeing this couple, cuddling and kissing in public, made me so happy. I wanted to hug the two as they left the theater together but I realized that I would look like a freak if I did. That was my adventure. I wasn't as artistic as I would have wanted it to be, and I could have talked more about the show but I got more out of seeing that couple than I did from the show, so I thought it would just be better if I wrote about that. I didn't have to write about my hair dying but that too has a connection to my sexuality issue. I keep asking myself now why it is that I did it. I can't really give a good answer but the real reason is that I want what that couple at Too Much Light had, and I thought that by dying it I would be more noticeable to other gay boys. We don't wear signs around out necks saying, "I'm gay" because it would be so much easier if we did, but we don't. I want a boy to be able to look at me and start flirting with me, and not be afraid I'll yell out faggot and punch him in the face, because I have purposely not flirted with guys because of that fear.