Hell Week

It's pitch day at the CMPA and Why Did I Miss My Alarm!?!? 

My alarm is set for 7:15 AM every morning, since I have to be in lass by 9:00 AM and I want enough time to wake up, shower, have breakfast, and walk to class. I don't remember the last time I full slept through an alarm, and why did it have to be today?? and why did I have to wake up at 8:31 AM??? I put on the first pair of pants and a jacket, grabbed my bag, a granola bar, and began the 20 minute walk. I spot my usual bus approaching, but then the God Damn cross signal wasn't up so I had to fucking stand there across the street watching my bus speed past and solidify my walk to class. Out of sheer will and determination I made it to the film school to which Chris capturing my uneasy appearance. 

I kept having to explain that "I was asleep 30 minutes ago" to all the people who asked if I was okay. Anyways there I am sitting in class physically waking up and mentally preparing. My pitch was admittedly pretty bare bones compared to some others; I didn't have a presentation or a rehearsed script, I'd be going off the dome with some general notes for progression. I wanted to explain my mindset for documentaries, what I was looking to do with this project, my fascinations with tactile living and autonomy, and then getting to the guy I got in contact with. 

I don't think I got the chance to pitch until after lunch which was rough. Trying to stay awake, think about my pitch, and also learning as much as I can about other people's ideas and pitches. I think around now I should explain my documentary faculty, since they couldn't be more different I feel. One is a chiller, like a real go with the flow kind of guy who seems really into the making of a documentary in terms of cinematography and the edit; we'll just call him The Chiller. The other person has an expansive background in thinking, planning, and deciding. She was a former studio executive, is very smart, and unapologetic. She would be the main one teaching us how documentaries are actually being planning and made in studio settings. For simplicity we can call her The Heater.

The Heater was mainly the one taking the lead in post-pitch questioning. Trying her best to narrow down ideas, finding a documentary's hypothesis, figure out a potential structure, some light logistics, and how concrete the story is. She lowkey was tearing apart some of the pitches; "kicking the tire" to see how strong a story could be. It was also about 5 pitches in when I realized that none of us had any idea on how to pitch a documentary, nor what she was looking for from our pitches. I blame the short turn around primarily, but I think expectations for the pitch could have been better communicated. I digress.

By the time I went up, I had lowkey re-worked how I was going to pitch the doc based off of how some of the previous pitches went. I was also growing a little concerned about geography. Many people had expressed interest in staying in Florida, with only a couple so far showing intent to leave the state. I was feeling like the pool of people to crew from was narrowing rapidly, but I still had to pitch. I definitely could have presented myself better, it was very much early on in my understanding in what the documentary would specifically entail, but I felt confident I had an interesting character that could lead the documentary; the class seemed to agree. They either found the Van guy to be an interesting personality or the idea of documenting the life of someone who lives out of their van to be so. My faculty though had other opinions. The Chiller seems worried about what seemed to be a big undertaking logistically while The Heater like with most pitches questioned what the story would be about.

I come transitionally from a background of finding the story primarily while filming or in the edit when it comes to news packages or documentaries. And with my goal of specifically documenting Van guy's life, I was vocal about my hope to learn something from him (about a life, living alone, nature, autonomy, etc...). The Heater was concerned about the hope part of my goal. Especially given the distances this documentary would require of me and my crew going, I'm sure she was further inclined to emphasize that I should know what I want to learn from the documentary; she was very much in support of knowing the answer before you ask the question, and I could not do that in this current state. 

After about 6 hours of pitches, we were released. I was jumbled to say the least. I had a lot of thoughts about my documentary, about fixing the cracks in my pitch, about the current state of crewing, and about the 2nd round of pitches. To my surprise, maybe half of the class pitches both their ideas during the first round, and i suppose because of that The Heater said that for next week we could either pitch another idea or re-pitch our first idea. 

When I got home I journaled out of stress for the first time for the first time ever I think. I didn't know how the think properly. I wrote down all my insecurities, concerns, and doubts about that day. It helped I think. I took a day off from thinking about the 2nd round of pitches (as much as I could, I was really fucking stressed) and eventually I sat down again and I thought about the cracks in my pitch and the cracks of my doc. It was very conflicting since on one side I had basically everyone in my class saying they think there is serious potential with the doc while on the other side I had push back from both faculty members. And I had faith too in the idea, so I messaged Van guy to arrange a Zoom call to both see him face to face and learn more about him as a person, what his story was, and where I can take the documentary. It sucked in the moment, but I knew that this is the process, the cracks needed to be acknowledged and I was ready to fight like hell to strength the floor of what would be my doc.