Wednesday, August 23, 2017

film 6260


as it turns out, a jimmy fallon skit is not appropriate for an assignment about writing short films. my professor politely listened to my argument but in the end i couldn't sway her to see otherwise. so here i am, soliciting the internet for ideas about what to write my screenplay about. 

a few of these look promising but for the most part seem like ripoff's from other ideas (like how the last one is really just a mash up of the movies "Five Year Engagement" and "La La Land," and the election one is probs a VEEP episode). 

so take a look and help your girl out. 


A subway train breaks down in a tunnel. 
A couple takes this opportunity to use the trapped passengers as a sort of jury to hear their cases out (the girl wants to break up, the boy refuses.) Passengers take sides and a verdict is delivered just as the doors open onto the platform.

A magazine office/news crew tries out some crazy ideas in order to remain relevant. 
They rap out a news story “Hamilton” style, treat news stories like “tinder” and give the audience the ability to “swipe right” on stories they want to hear about.  

A pizza delivery guy has some strange encounters during his night on the job. 
He helps deliver a baby, uncovers a plan for a bank robbery, helps a music star finish a hit single.

Behind the scenes of election night (small, local mayor). 
Tensions are high and the drinks are flowing. One staffer admits to voting for the other candidate, etc.

Spring Break 2k17.
A friend is left on the beach after refusing to leave with the rest of his group after a concert, he is now left on his own to make it back to the condo. Scenarios like hopping a van hoping he could blend in with the rest of the passengers, wandering around a local supermarket, falling asleep in a hotel lobby (uses the phone to call his ex girlfriend, the only number he remembers) crashes a house party and grabs some “jungle juice,” and finally makes it back to the condo just as the rest of his friends come home from dinner.

Eclipse 2k17. 
Inspired by the eclipse and worried about the events that could happen after (she is very influenced by facebook news and how this can become the real Y2K), a mother spills the family secrets to her children as they watch the shadow come closer. Stories like how she hid 10,000 dollars in the back yard come to light.

A girl comes back home to attend her younger brother’s wedding.
She spends the whole dinner defending herself and her fiancĂ© about their long term engagement (he proposed five years ago, her brother is getting married after only knowing the bride for three weeks, they met on a cruise). The conflict reaches a boiling point during the toasts. While giving her speech she sees her ex in the crowd, a flash back occurs, a resolution is made. Will the engagement finally end in a breakup or a double wedding? 

also, if i had to write a screenplay based on a song it would be one of these two: hotline bling (let's be real, the girl drake describes sounds cool af) and green light




Monday, August 21, 2017

despacito: the remix

hello faithful follower, i am writing to you live from the kennesaw university library! 
i have just started my second week of school and this semester marks the halfway point of my graduate degree.

i have doubled up on classes this semester and am taking four classes instead of the recommended two. this sounded like a good idea during registration because i wanted to make sure i graduated on time this go around (lol undergrad) but i have forgotten how hard it is to come up with fresh material for every assignment. 

the essay i am sharing with you tonight is from my creative nonfiction class. we were asked to use a memory of ours to defend our opinion on how much liberty can be taken when writing cnf (like you probably don't remember everything your friend said that night seven years ago or what the weather was like at the baseball game or maybe you want to compress a twenty day hike into one morning)

so my memory was from my first night in honduras and everything i wrote was truth. a quick sidebar however: before i shared it with the class i did mention that i tend to believe everything and i don't really spend time questioning how much was fabricated to fit the story. like i still believe that the tv shows "laguna beach" and "the hills" are real (everyone laughed, its fine). 

my class is pretty cool, there is a lawyer who is a jazz trombonist and acts in local plays in his free time, my professor is a daughter of a bank robber, and the classmate who sits next to me is a very sweet blind lady who types her notes on a braille typewriter. 

so here we go: 

My mouth was dry and my heart was racing like that one time I drank a coffee and a Five Hour Energy too close together and just knew that death was imminent. I was trapped in the bench seat of a passenger van bouncing along a dirt road, and if death wasn’t imminent motion sickness sure was. In an effort to keep from vomiting on my new friends I switched seats with a girl shouting “I’m the one” (in her defense it was the song on the radio) to stick my head out the window like a dog or a drunk. It’s about 10 at night and without street or house lights the valley of San Manuel is oppressed by a darkness I have never experienced before. I brushed up on my astronomy and constellations before I came here, expecting a sky full of stars only to find that there is a constant coverage of smog over the country built up over decades of burning the sugar cane fields. 

I have been in Honduras for about 8 hours now and am fully convinced that America is a figment of my imagination and I will never be able to make it back home. I feel like I’m living out that dream where I know I have to be somewhere important but no matter how long I walk the hallway never ends. Sensing my home sickness, my new friends are taking me to a local coffee shop, Toyas, thinking it will help me feel more grounded (it’s very similar to a Panera or Atlanta Bread Company). 

Even on my ride to the village from the airport, I knew that Honduras felt familiar to me, I had seen it before, kind of like how you vaguely remember your waiter as a classmate from high school years before, the one that was always trying to drop their mixtape. I placed the feeling when the van stopped alongside a semi truck and a man riding a donkey “chariot style” at a stoplight. I won’t speak for Honduras as a whole, but the city of San Manuel is the real world version of every apocalyptic movie ever made. The roads are a disaster, there is no power or water, people live in shelters made of cardboard, signs, and old tires. Buildings are run down if not deserted altogether and the air never stops smelling like fire. Cows, pigs, and chickens run free. I am an accidental extra in a Mad Max film. 

It’s at the coffee shop when I finally relax for the first time since unboarding the plane that morning. The well lit dining room and air conditioning slows down my heart rate and I forget all about the hammer kept in the shower for times when a scorpion or tarantula might crawl in. I remember that America is real and this time 19 days from now I will be back home having chicken tenders for dinner and binge watching Bravo TV as if my adventure to Honduras had never occurred. This thought sobers me considering my whole intention of going on this trip was to have a life changing adventure, what was the point of being here if I spend all my time counting down the minutes to my departure flight on my FlyDelta app? 

We’re loading back into the van now and I snag a window seat in the third row. My stomach hurts from eating a nutella and strawberry crepe too fast but for the most part I am at ease. I hold onto the roll bar and brace myself for the uneven road but Tanya and I end up falling on each other anyway. "Despacito" plays over the radio and this time I join in on singing along.


this week i am working on a call back interview for the office of economic development (fingers crossed) and writing an eight minute screenplay for my screenwriting class (it will most likely be for a skit on jimmy fallon). i will also be listening to this song about a hundred more times. 



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