Curiosity Kills the Cat (Me)

February 9th. What a beautiful day to be alive. The birds are singing, the trees swaying, and I don't have a shift at work today. Bless.

What I do have, though, is two months of development, production, and editing ahead of me. 

My reaction to this information

The Nitty-Gritty

I would be lying if I said I was completely unprepared for this. Since the beginning of the year I've had ideas brewing for my film opening, but I never had anything substantial. It was more or less just specific shots I wanted to have or ideas I wanted to explore, but by this point in the year only two have stuck around.

The first is a winding shot, beginning about 40 feet up, twisting and diving into the main character, stopping right before it crashes into an explosion of color.

I think I could learn enough about editing to do the color waves, but I don't feel like blowing my paycheck on a camera crane.

The second is not a shot, but rather a title; my film would be named The Wonderful Life of [INSERT CHARACTER NAME] and it would be edgy and quirky and glorious and then The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar came out and I was just sitting there like-

THANK YOU WES ANDERSON THANK YOU BENEDICT CUMBERBATCH

At any rate, the shot was impractical and the title was unoriginal. But I did like the concepts; I want something that uses color as a focal point of the narrative, and I want a title that is artsy. I sat with those ideas in class, working them out in my head as Ms. Stoklosa said a bunch of words that I was not paying attention to. 

I processed. And I processed. And I processed. And I processed those two puzzle pieces I had, and eventually, they snapped together. But you can't make a puzzle with just two pieces; I have to tell you about the rest.

INSTAGRAM REELS, MY BELOVED

As most teenagers my age do, one day, about a week ago, I was on the toilet handling business, mindlessly scrolling through Instagram reels. Funny cat video. heehee

I kept scrolling, as my business was still finishing its quarterly reports, and promotion for a video from an independent filmmaker popped up. "How To Shoot Like Wong Kar Wai" - Megan Tan

I'd never heard of Wong Kar Wai, but I started looking into some of his films and liked the aesthetic. I also looked into some of the cinematographers he frequently worked with, one being Christopher Doyle.

In the video, Tan also uses a Digicam to give an older, retro feeling to her shots. I also liked the aesthetic and wanted to buy a Digicam of my one; the low price is also a really great selling point. There was a whole debacle with me not understanding eBay and trying to rescind my bid on a camera I didn't actually want and yada yada who cares.

One thing the video reminded me of though was The Bear. The coloring of her video uses a lot of greens, something seen in a lot of The Bear's own coloring. It makes the environment seem very eerie, and since I want to keep colors as an aspect of narrative it seemed like something to mentally take note of.

At any rate, I had inspiration for the cinematography style of my piece, but I didn't have an actual piece. At least, not yet.

I just can't catch a break

A couple of months ago I was outed to my parents. It was a really rough time period, and though my parents were generally supportive, there was a lot to be desired. But that's a story for therapy, not blogging.

A few days ago, I was having a conversation with my dad about the whole experience, how I felt about being queer, how I felt about our family, and just a bunch of stuff like that. It was a very emotional conversation and it's something I'll remember until I die. It made me realize how many unprocessed emotions and memories I have revolving around my queerness, and sitting in class I realized that was something I wanted to represent in my film opening.

Idiot Sandwich

Putting all of those together, I finally had some bones to the project. I wanted to heavily use colors for characterization and themes, try different methods of cinematography, and represent my experiences dealing with my identity. I had everything but a name. Something flashy, that would invoke colorful imagery, work as a symbol of the story I wanted to tell, and most importantly, sound good.