Sharpie Shoes 2 from jeffreezy17 on Vimeo.

Vimeo HD, far superior than YouTube! Try watching it full screen! It’s amazing, no?

Anyway, enjoy it! I think it is better than last year’s trial in several different ways… I actually used the tripod correctly this time, I tried it from a couple different angles, putting a sock in the shoe itself reduces some of the bumpiness of the fabric… yeah!

I should get to bed since it’s past 1 and I have to get up at 8, but why not regale you with tales of the film school application process while it’s still fresh in mind?

Applying to film school was something I thought I would do before coming to UCLA (and ironically, that’s why I took History of Musicals… I thought it would satisfy a theater prerequisite… D’oh). Then I got waylaid and seduced by other majors before ultimately deciding last fall that I would need to apply to at least give myself a shot. I don’t think I’ll mind terribly one way or the other in regards to acceptance, but I know that if friends of mine got accepted and I didn’t even try, I’d beat myself up over it.

I didn’t do much work over Winter Quarter, though maybe I should have, and really started to pick it up the last few weeks and Spring Break. There are three main components to the application that we have control over (hard to tell people what to write in Letters of Recommendation), and they are the Personal Statement, Critical Essay, and Creative Supplement.

As my journal could show you, I’ve had many, many different attempts at each of these. Some are well-conceived, others are pretty bad, and some are just plain illegible…

For the Personal Statement I bounced between quite a few different ideas. Some were very cocky and vindictive, declaring that I didn’t need film school because I had the belief in myself that I’d be successful regardless. I didn’t know how well the jackass technique would play with the elderly film school advisors, so I toned it down and tried to channel a more imaginative, childlike essay.

This consisted of me explaining why I wanted to volunteer and help children instead of take a film prerequisite, and that seemed a little off-base, but I’m sure plenty heartwarming. That led to a massive rhyming manifesto that I thought was really cool and would stand out and they would either love or hate it… and then my brother came in with his cool wisdom. He said that my application should stand out for its quality. Rhyming would just make it stand out pointlessly…

I wrote a normal personal statement (still has some rhymes in it!), one that doesn’t attack the school too much and also states stuff about me, personally. They are really frustrating to right, as I’m sure you remember from applying to college… how do you cut down your whole self to two pages?

The critical essay does not have many cool stories, other than I was going to write about television until I went to the informational meeting and they basically shot down television as an inferior form of media…
As for the creative story, it ranged from a college kid who went home after graduating and is disillusioned about how to attain success to a story about a village that fends off weekly dinosaur attacks and how life is lived in that kind of world to a father competing with his son to sell lemonade.

Yeahhh… If you would like to read any or all of these, let me know. I’d be happy to show them to you.

Thank you to everyone in the past few weeks who has asked how the application is going, made sure I wasn’t going insane, helped me find grammatical errors or alter complete plot points. It all helped, and if anything is to come out of this, it was really a group effort.

The next step, for those wondering, will happen in a few weeks when they send out e-mails to those who get interviews. If I’m fortunate enough to make it to that step, I will interview (supposedly torturous), and then find out in July.

As for my feelings about the whole process, I obviously feel relieved to be done. It did take a lot of time, and kept me from doing more schoolwork/exercise/creative stuff/friendly hang-outs over the past few weeks, but I did it. That may not count for much in the long run, but to have edited three pieces of work to what they finally become is something of which I am proud. They are good pieces of writing, and while I hope the film school recognizes it, I’ve talked to too many people who didn’t go to film school and still entertain people in the medium to get down about not getting in.

As Kurt Vonnegut says, so it goes. I’ve had a pretty good streak of applications and interviews over the past year, but streaks eventually break, and who knows what kind of motivation would come out of this?

It’s now out of my hands, so I’m going to put my hands back to work.

Thank you all again.

Looks like my film continues to make the rounds through UCLA’s many sustainability/bio-friendly circles…

I really like this little graphic they made (especially since two of this blog’s esteemed readers appear in it!)

[I'm trying out this gallery thing because it's really convenient. I guess you can click each individual picture? If you have any feedback, let me know.]

New friend is here! Mr. Canon XH-A1! How do you do! I think you do quite well, considering you are a Canon and you shoot in AITCH DEE. And naturally, AITCH DEE means everything (it’s a joke for people who know things like CCD chip size and lenses!)

Who wants to make some movies?!

So, that film app. I have a poor rough draft done of the critical analysis, some corrections to make. I have the creative short story in my head, and I’ll jot it down maybe on the bus Tuesday on the way to Venice to volunteer. The personal statement is now a little erroneous, so I need to redo it, but whatever. There are still 11 days left until it’s due. I’m pressing my luck once again, but I’m not calling it procrastination. I am fully aware of what I’m doing.

I want out.

I have an interview tomorrow to be Campus Events Films Director. I’ll dress up, I’ll be myself. I’m confident I can do the best job of the people currently on staff. Made the choice to try and step up to the plate on this one, fighting for the job. That means I need to prove myself and not just coast.

I want the pressure.

I haven’t done anything creative, of note, since The Experimental Generation. How sad is that? Einstein sucked up time and resources last quarter, as did general malaise and laziness. I have a project in the wings (preproduction meeting on Thursday to plan) that, if done correctly, could be phenomenal. Do I have inordinate confidence now because I did well in one contest? No, I have confidence in my ideas, and I’m going to direct it well.

I will win an award at a recognized film contest.

As for other things going on? resTV is a joke now. Minimal hours, minimal responsibility.

UniCamp is basically done with… my heart’s not in it because my summer is conflicted. To put it succinctly, I had summer plans lined up, and like an organ transplant, it was going smoothly. But now my body is rejecting it and the symptoms are starting to show. Side effects may include lack of enthusiasm for UniCamp, which is taking up a lot of time this quarter for only week in the summer. Next few days will finalize this decision, one way or the other.

It would mean more than just ‘one week’, but also for how I’ve been feeling I need more than one week to get away from everything, from school and what not. It’s tough to describe.

What’s going on with you?