Murphy's Law: A story of a filmmaking attempt, a flood and my rejection from Emerson College.

When I was a senior in high school I was in the midst of my college application process I realized that for Emerson College I needed to submit some material of a film I'd made. Besides claymation I'd never really made a film save a film I made in 8th grade and one at a Boston University film camp that I couldn't use. My high school didn't have any filmmaking classes so I had very minimal experience in the actual process. The film could be no longer than five minutes, something I thought would be initially easy but turned out to be much harder to tell a story in. In the next week or so I churned out a short script. It was about a group of friends who when on a test drive of a futuristic car, become stranded and have a falling out which leads to secrets about them being revealed. After writing the script I gathered a group of friends and flip camera (the only kind I could get access to) and got ready to film. This of course happened right when my town was hit by the worst flood in its' history. As half my town was underwater, this made shooting a little more difficult.

The lower half of Bloomsburg PA

Eventually the waters lowered and I decided it was time to film. We ended up shooting in an area damaged by the flood as I thought it would give a good look to the film, cracked roads, uprooted trees and more. We ended up shooting on a small road just off a creek that have severely flooded. The cast had vastly different times they were free so this made finding times to shoot very hard along with school. We ended up shooting most days after school at 4. Having no lighting equipment, it was a race against the setting sun. Throughout the film the lighting changes vastly in shot to shot. The weather also disobeyed us so extra lines were added to explain the rain and it's absence in later scenes. In the end the film didn't look fantastic but I was proud of what we did. Looking back now the film is pretty terrible and I squirm at lots of things I could have done better. Needless to say I didn't get into Emerson, but I did end up here, so I'm pretty happy about that. Of course one version of the film is embedded at the top of this post for your viewing pleasure. Please be nice.

FIRE

This happened at our shoot yesterday.

We were in the process of filming a scene in the basement of 505 East Seneca. It's an old basement with archaic fire sensors and cobwebs everywhere. Trying to light the damn room, therefore, proved to be a safety challenge as well as a technical one.

We were in the process of trying to figure out why the damn camera wasn't letting enough light through the lens -- ND filter, of all the things -- when CRACK! Something above a light broke, which set off an alarm throughout the house.

The tenants started panicking. We started panicking. None of the equipment broke. Thank Bajeezus, because if I died $13,000 in debt someone else was coming to Hell with me. Paige -- a friend not working on our shoot -- ran downstairs with the fire department on the phone. That was the last thing we needed. We were losing time and money. Yes, I know that we aren't getting paid for this, but... well... shut up!

Twenty minutes later, three fire trucks -- THREE FIRE TRUCKS -- showed up in front of the house. Firemen and firewomen thundered down the stairs in full uniform looking for something to spray. I should have taken a picture of the disappointment on their faces when they saw the alarm going off. It was priceless.

About half an hour later, they all left. So here we were: An hour behind schedule, shaky from a fire that never happened, ears bleeding from the alarm, afraid that our location hosts were pissed at us, and still needing to shoot an entire scene.

Short version: There was no fire, and I'm tired. Is the coffee done yet?