My Deep, Dark Past

I have a confession to make. My short film – the one I’m now editing at the DFA – is not my first film. Don’t panic – there’s no secret ‘adult’ entertainment in my past. But there is something almost as embarrassing: a two-hour attempt at a feature film that I made my senior year of college.

In college, I founded the Independent Theater Club (or IT). The whole purpose of IT was for students to write the scripts that were being performed, so that the issues would be related to our experiences. My first venture, a one-act play called Lovers, Loners, and Those Who Live, was actually a success. It was a simple recipe: one set, in a small theater-style classroom, and 4 actors, 2 of which carried the stage for the majority of the time. (These were the very talented Dara Connelly and Kelly Bolton! Seriously, these girls should both be in Hollywood.) We rehearsed like crazy for two months and, when the big weekend arrived, we were ready. The actors were phenomenal, the story resonated with college students and visiting parents alike, and we felt like the toast of the town.

God knows what made me think I could jump from that to doing a feature film, when I knew virtually nothing about filmmaking. What I did know was a fellow student, the awesome Christina Raggio, who knew about film editing with Bela Viso. I also knew that the school’s film equipment was lying around virtually untouched. I remember clearly thinking that it would be so much easier to do a film than a play: instead of the nerve-wracking experience of hoping everyone remembers their lines and hits their marks in front of the audience, everything would just be captured on film, guaranteed to be the same everytime.

Which would be fine: if ‘the same’ didn’t mean playing the same mess more than once.

In the spring semester of my senior year, I set to work on casting and shooting Beginning-of-Life Crisis (and, I’m sure, of torturing my poor editing expert, Raggio). In a mere two and a half months’ time, the film debuted, back in the same theater-style classroom as the play. Things I remember: Raggio arriving with the final tape just about 10 minutes before we were supposed to show it, having worked on it right up until that moment; the film having to actually be on two tapes, since we’d run out of time to combine them; the sound on the second tape being completely fuzzy; me, hiding out in the hall as the tapes played, too embarrassed to show my face.

We hadn’t used boom mics – or any mics, aside from what was on the camera. I hadn’t dreamed up interesting shots, which I now know to do at least once per scene for the sake of variety; instead, every scene was shot in the same standard way – looking first at one person, then the other. (I don’t even remember doing close ups? Hopefully there were a few.) And, of course, I’d only allowed about 10 weeks for a project that should have taken 10 months, minimum. Remember, this was a full, two-hour movie, and we were full-time students with a lot of other things going on. Even 10-minute student films take a few weeks to polish.

This happened in 2004, and the experience of it was so exhausting and traumatic that I didn’t really touch filmmaking again until November 2011, even though it always interested me. Now, in my DFA course, I see everything that I did wrong back then… but, surprisingly, my course is also showing me just how much was accomplished, with limited resources, and I feel a new pride in that 2004 film.

The fact is, a group of girls who knew basically nothing about filmmaking actually FINISHED a full-length film in just over two months! Rather than be embarrassed that the film wasn’t more polished by the time we showed it, I’m actually amazed at how decent it WAS. Granted, I haven’t watched it in years – it’s in a bag under my old bed at my parents’ house, and I’ve been afraid of seeing it again – but I remember certain scenes clearly, and they were not bad. The audience laughed at some of the jokes and basically liked the story. Technical things like the sound were a mess – but had we known more about sound, this flick would actually have been passable.

What’s more, the spirit and enthusiasm of everyone who participated in the project made the process positive, which is more than can always be said for working with a 100% professional and trained group.

Taking this DFA course has brought up memories of ‘my deep, dark past’ with Beginning-of-Life Crisis. But, more than anything, it’s made me see that it wasn’t so dark after all. Everyone involved should actually feel a genuine pride in what we were able to put together.

(On a final note, I’m happy to report that, almost 8 years after my graduation, IT still exists and is going strong!)