On the first day of Inner-City Filmmakers, we were divided into groups. There were six of us in each group. My group consisted of me, Marlon, and Hector, who I went to high school with, Brian, Arnufol, and Gawby. Our team captain was Allen and our team mentor was Jeffrey Berman. Allen was an alumnus, who had returned to help with the Summer program. Actually, a lot of the alumni were once part of the program. The program was eight weeks. Two weeks for writing, two weeks for planning, two weeks for shooting, and two weeks for editing. We were to help each of our group members shoot their films. We switched up the rolls for each shoot, which means we all tried out being the director, the producer, the production assistant, the director of photography, the grip, and the script supervisor. At the time, I was wondering what all of this even meant. We used quality equipment and we were entered into a script writing contest. The winner will be announced during our film screening/ graduation from the program at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater.

The first day at the school was memorable. Karla and I carpooled to Santa Monica where our campus was. It wasn’t really a campus more like an office. It was strange being in a car with a person that I didn’t even know. There was a lot of waiting around. We had pizza for lunch and we were split up into groups. I was nervous and it felt like I made a mistake coming to this school. I missed my job and my family. We watched a video about filmmaking. I will never forget when the tallest person in the class who was sitting front row and center…fell asleep. It was hilarious. Fred And Stephanya, the founders of the program were eccentric folks. At the end of the video, they gave us a camera and told us to go shoot a film. We had one hour to put it together. My group and I walked over to the park nearby. We came up with a ghost story. A girl swinging on a swing and then disappearing. I was the ghost girl. I can’t remember the rest of it but it was fun. It’s crazy how for an assignment, we put our heads together and got it done. There was no editing or special effects. We used a small camcorder and filmed it cleverly to show the ghost girl (me) disappearing.

Cheers,

Frshta