Antoine's Junkpile: Inner-City Filmmakers Day 7, Week Two

Today was a lot better than Monday. Actually, today I discussed how protective I am of some of the stories some of my teammates are doing. In story class we did our second pitch but this time it was to a professor named David Clawson rather than Gina (last name escapes my memory). Clawson had troubles with one of my teammate's ending and was belittling the reason he was doing it. I think what he said was "it was an easy route out" and I wasn't going to sit there. I spoke up and defended him. Another student chimed in with Clawson and said that "instead of winning you make your character lose" as if there is a happy ending to every story. Actually, a little ways back to orientation a lady from Columbia pictures named Rachel came in and said Columbia would not accept a script if it had a sad ending. That really irked me. I had how people try to make things happy-go-lucky. Life is not always happy and jolly and unicorns and angels. Sometimes people tragically die! I think what they were feeling was that the resolution felt too much as though there should have been more, as if the rest of his story had no struggle or conflict, which is does. Throughout his story he explains that his character is plagued by asthma. And during the final scene it gets worse and worse as he parents argue and he tries to drain them out with his music and ... arghflagems ... I'm ranting. Anyway, I pretty much was really disappointed with Clawson's narrow-minded critique. Hmmm, who knows, maybe I'm being narrow-minded myself.

After Lunch, and after our second pitch we all got together with our team and there was a tad bit of drama between me and another girl. One of the girl's in our group is struggling with her story which is about teen pregnancy and during our discussion I told her that if she really felt what her story was doing was right and what she wanted she'd be able to really defend herself by giving reasons why she would do this or that, why she would put this here or there. But I said it a tad harshly because I was giving her tough love because I felt she really did need to stand up for her work. Often, she would try to back up the reason she would choose to do something and end off with a "I don't know ... whatever." When I got back down she was speaking to our mentor and she was saying how she was angry how we (the boys) could tell her to buck up when we never helped her before. I was a tad offended because the previous night I called her to help her out so I spoke up again and was trying to tell her we were only there to help her but she didn't want to hear it and told me off and then I was about to shout back but then I told her I didn't want it to be an argument. So we stopped arguing and it became a tad awkward and for me it got even more awkward because I got a special guest in my day.

Now I hadn't mention but Mae Catt and I are no longer friend. Why, good question. I honestly don't know and she didn't not give me a clear and authentic reason. Long story but the ending is the same, we're not friends (on her terms). She told me she didn't want to talk to me anymore and I, at first, was refusing because it didn't make sense she made such a sudden change of heart. In any case, I saw her today. After my argument with my teammate whom I thought I was pretty close with, guess who comes walking down the stairs the area we were in. Yup, Mae Catt. So when I look up just to see who it was I made complete and utter eye contact with her and right when she felt the eye contact as well she looked away (God, now that I think about it, I wish she tripped, just kidding, but not really, but I really am). She totally blew me off. I wanted so bad to get up and be like "what the hell is your problem." But she told me specifically never to talk her. So how do you convince someone to talk to you again if they told you not to talk to them. I would love to know. Anyway, she was heading the vending machines and came back but I didn't look to her. I ignored her in fact. And almost after that whole thing happen my teammate who I was arguing with grabbed my arm and took me to talk to her alone.

When we got somewhere she thought was nice we looked to each other and she was like "I can't even look at you" so we had this awkward talking thing where we spoke back-to-back, it was rather strange actually. Essentially though, she was apologizing and said she knew I helped her a lot and she was really talking about the other people in the group who weren't helping her and giving her suggestions and that she pretty much took it out on me and I also said I apologized for being so harsh then I tried to shake her hand and she hugged me instead, all good :)! So now our team's assignment, which I'm going to finish right after this post, is to complete our scripts which are due Friday.

After class was over for the day I went back home and drove to a shopping center to get donations from various grocery shops and restaurants. It was quite successful. Some of the places I went to were Trader Joe's, Albertsons and Starbucks.

Also I took some location pictures (see below)