I'm grateful that I am getting an education. I am grateful for all the teachers that try to teach us about how films are made and for the few of my classmates who actually get it. Unfortunately, many of them really don't know much about storytelling. Being fresh out of high school and never having had much real-life experience, their stories or adaptations of them are based upon the following experiences:
1) Movies they have watched.
2) Video games they have played.
3) College life.
4) Weird dreams or fantasies that don't make sense to anyone else.
5) I'm really not sure what it is, but it's not really a story.
I wrote a beautiful script based upon a real-life experience (adapted for convenience of shooting at this school and the limitations we are under). This script won the adoration of teachers and many students. It was chosen out of many that were submitted to be produced by our class, primarily because the teacher liked it but also because my classmates voted on it. Now, it's probably not the best story ever, but it does have substance and meaning and when reading the script you will most likely care for the protagonist.
Now, having begun preproduction, between the key crew members and the teachers, they have completely rewritten the story. I can understand making revisions for the sake of budget constraints or impracticalities for micro-budget filming, but there are revisions to the script that make absolutely no sense. The story isn't even the same and from my perspective I couldn't care less about the protagonist any more than I can the antagonist. All it looks like is a failed attempt at comedy portraying a school fight that nobody really gives a hoot about. There is no real depth to the story and they've inserted gratuitous profanity and obscene gestures into the script that makes me embarrassed to have my name listed as an author. I generally don't write profanity, especially when it is unnecessary. It also has become more of a rip-off of popular films than preserving the charm of authenticity and uniqueness. So, this will become one of the many student films that will go down as being meaningless and lifeless, lacking originality... one that people will laugh at, not because it is supposed to funny, but because it is so lame. It was one that had a lot of potential, but being in a non-key position (as a stills photographer), I get to document the downward spiral of something that had a lot of potential but ended up as an embarrassment - shown to students as an example of how not to make a film. One of the things that probably bothers me the most is that one of the most important storytelling elements (the improvised weapon that the protagonist discovered) has been eliminated from the script and has been replaced by some cheesy VHS training tape - as in a Napoleon Dynamite-esque scene. This improvised weapon links the story together and is even featured on our crew tee-shirts that I personally designed, but now the tee-shirts won't even make any sense. It's pathetic.
See, this is where cast and crew members stop caring about their project. When the story ends up being lame, there is no passion to produce a good film. There's a saying that goes: "You can't polish a turd." This is the way that I feel about the butchered version of the script. I had intentions of writing a script for Final Project, but now I am reluctant to even try. Maybe I will save all my writings for my own projects... keep them to myself. Maybe I will write some lame script that tends to be what make it to the end product at film school... a throwaway script that I really don't care about but appeals to college teenagers with little or no real life experiences. But the dichotomy is that if I stop caring, then it's my own grade that suffers. I must go along with it and pretend to be passionate about the project and put forth my best efforts regardless of the impending train wreck that I predict in the very near future. I must be the best I can, support the film in ways that I can and keep my mouth shut... swallow my pride and not take it personally. I must let go of the creation that I made, because it isn't really mine anymore. I'll accept IMDB credit as the writer, in name only, hoping that nobody important actually ever watches the finished product.
I can take comfort in knowing that as the owner of the original piece and the one with the original idea, I can go forward and make it the way I really wanted to - into a feature length film or a longer short (more than 5-7 minutes, that's for sure), with real characters and locations and to be able to bring back the authenticity that I had intended as its creator - and one who lived through the drama in real life. I may also write this in book form.
The other thing that I need to keep in mind is that I came here to film school to learn the technical parts of filmmaking. Teachers try to instill in us the art and craft of film - in which story is the most important element - but month after month, students fail to grasp the concepts of storytelling and keep putting out lame productions. I will just keep plugging away, doing my best and putting my best effort into my schoolwork and into the projects and getting good grades and eventually I will graduate. I am learning not only the technical details of filmmaking, but I am getting to know which people and which types of people I will want to work with me and which ones I don't ever want to work with again.
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