Tonight answered all those questions and more. Tonight I found what I have been looking for all year.
I can't go into the details of why tonight was so incredible--not all of them, anyway. First of all, because I don't have the time; I want to do this before the internet shuts off at 12:00. Second, some of the reasons why tonight made the whole year perfect are too personal, yes, even for me, Miss Spill-Her-Guts-To-The-Internet-On-A-Weekly-Basis. But I can give the overview--and maybe this will answer some of those whys.
Tonight was the premiere screening for the MPA major. Translation: Tonight was the first time the public got to see our films. I will not sugarcoat it, ladies and gentlemen: I was scared out of my mind. Last year, my premiere was awful; I went back to my room and cried, not only because my film was universally misunderstood and people laughed at all the wrong parts, but because I had literally one other credit in the entire program. I was terrified that this year would be the same, that I would see my film and think of 2,000 things that I should have done differently.
I was wrong.
From the start, the audience was on my side. I had a brilliant cast and it showed. My crew went above and beyond, and that showed too. Everything, from the lighting to the acting to the props, was absolutely amazing. There is a reason that Possession failed--it sucked. It did not deserve to be praised, or, in my opinion, to be screened (at least not until it had been re-cut and the sound was decently mixed). But tonight I put out a film that I could be proud of, and I finally earned the respect from my fellow students that I have been craving all year. (This is where I want to go into more detail but can't. Suffice it to say that I have won over my toughest critic.)
And that was just my personal experience with my own film! But the others--the films made by people I have lived with, studied with, and worked with all year--blew me away. I cannot express how proud I am of the people in my major right now. There are people whom I have fought with on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis--right now, I love them as if they were my siblings. There are films that I thought would make me shoot myself if I had to see them rotate in workshop one more time--right now, I would happily watch them another thousand times.
This is one of the many things that I love about being a filmmaker, in this case a film student. You work at a film for weeks, months, sometimes years (but most of us at Interlochen haven't gotten there yet, thank God), until it makes you cringe, until you doubt every move you make concerning your film, until you honestly can't remember why you made this movie in the first place. You watch others' films in workshop until you're so sick of them that you want to slap whoever was stupid enough to think that was a good idea, or that was a good script, or that was a good cut. You hate your workshop and can't wait for it to be over.
And then on the night of the premier, you see them all over again. You go in there dreading the screening, for whatever reason. Maybe, like me, you're scared that your film won't go over well. Maybe you have something else that you could be doing, some friend that needs a shoulder to cry on, some assignment due the next day. Or maybe you're just plain sick of your classmates' films. Whatever it is, you just want to be anywhere but there...until the lights go down, and the films begin to screen, and the audience cheers, laughs, gasps, or cringes for the first time. And then, it's a whole other ballgame. You laugh with them. You cheer with them. You cry with them, gasp with them, cringe with them. You see the film through their eyes, and suddenly there is no place you'd rather be.
After the screening was over, the love-fest began. Hugging. Crying. Laughing. Proud friends, proud parents. Everyone loves us, everyone wants to tell us how much they love us. I had people I'd never met before coming up to me and telling me how great my film was. I saw people pointing, heard whispering. "Who made the film about the rockstar?" or "Which one is she?" But for most of this, I only had eyes for my friends, my classmates, the people who made my film possible.
There is a wonderful singer-songwriter by the name of Rachel G., who came to me after my film screened and told me that, by putting her song in my film, I made her dream come true. To which I responded that by allowing me to put her song in my film, she made my film a thousand times better than it could have been. She made my dream come true--my dream of making people happy with my art.
But there's more than that. Tonight I realized that I've been trying so hard all year to get respect from the people in my major, when I really had it all along. Maybe I didn't have as much as certain others. Maybe it didn't show the way I wanted it to. Maybe I still didn't get the jobs I wanted. But they did care, and had I been expelled or had I left for other reasons, they would have noticed.
All year I have cried, fought, wished, prayed, begged, demanded, cursed, and complained. All year I have done things that I am not proud of, things I wish I could take back, all because I wanted to be good, I wanted a taste of what some of my fellow MPAs were handed on a silver platter. And tonight I was given that taste, and I realized that I would go through these past nine months a thousand times, if it meant feeling like this, having this success.
Shout-outs--well-earned shout-outs--to everyone who made tonight possible, especially the following:
Mark U.
Mindy M.
Travis C.
Keaton M.
Elizabeth V.
Aaron T.
Miles C.
Jesse E-J
Tyler H.
Nicole A.
Jamie T-R
Theo E.
Kylie C.
Jeff K.
Connor E.
Connor B.
Jay F.
Mida C.
Colin C.
Bonnie B.
Pippa A.
Dani K.
Preston C.
Jarryd E.
Michael M.
Lesley T.
Andy H.
Danny D.
Isaac R.
Mary-Carole H.
Bill C.
Harry H.
Sarah B.
Anne C.
Sheridan S.
Erin J.
Siddhartha R.
Rowen K.
and EVERYONE who worked in the MPA productions tonight, this would never have happened without all of you.
I love you <3
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