Fox Movie Channel

I'm Ready to Be a Film Student by Vinnie Pompo

Distinct memory: I am four, maybe five years old. It's past dark, and I sit in front of the TV on the bland gray carpeting of my suburban home as my older brother enters the house. He's old enough to drive, and brought something back with him from the night. It's a rectangular black case with a red insignia in the center. Joe holds it up and tells me that I'm going to watch it. It's Steven Spielberg's Jurassic Park, and from here on I will tell every teacher, family member, friend, and friend's parent that, when I grow up, I will become either an actor or a paleontologist.
                I'm kneeling on linoleum in a brightly lit hallway. Across from me is my roommate, Josh. He looks up at me and asks, "How long have you been here?" After a moment's consideration I reply that it's been exactly twenty years and eleven months. I want to pursue this strand of thought but my attention is intercepted by the director's voice as the crew goes for another take. I am not acting in this film, nor am I excavating dinosaur bones. I am the producer, and the past two weeks have been two of the more stressful of my life. This is the last day of shooting, meaning most (but not all of) the largest opportunities for me to ruin my friend's 3,000 dollar investment have passed. Now I just need to make sure my crew doesn't destroy our location which I acquired permission to film at only a week earlier, and that the film is developed and transferred. I need to make sure the thousands of dollars of equipment which we are renting for a fraction of that cost is all returned to the four or five rental houses we visited in the greater Los Angeles area. It has to be returned before a certain hour on Monday (different for each rental house) after which we will be charged twice as much for our weekend rental. I need to make sure the art team, sound team, wardrobe team, and any other various persons or teams all give me the receipts for various purchases they made for the film so that the director can reimburse them. Of course, I need to make sure the director remembers to reimburse them, and will probably have to sit with him as he writes the checks to make sure they're written to the right people and for the right amounts. I have to give the camera operator his slate back which we borrowed from him for the shoot. I think he lent us ratchet-straps too; I'll have to double-check on that with the director of photography. I have six voice mails waiting; at least one of them will probably inform me that we returned the wrong equipment to the wrong rental house. I also have a presentation on Film Noir due Monday.
                I'm a filmmaker. Half of my friends are filmmakers; all of my roommates are filmmakers. We study our art/craft/future source of income at Chapman University, but most of our time set aside for studying is usurped by time spent making films. Films for Chapman, films for ourselves, films for each other. Last weekend I was supposed to be producing one film, but instead I was setting up lights for another film as a favor to a friend.  Last month I was trying to write my own film while acting as concept artist for my roommate's, and I might be starring in another film next semester. It won't be a glamorous kind of "starring in" - it will be a late-nights-spent-in-dorm-rooms-and-parking-lots-during-mid-terms kind of "starring in." But I'm okay with that, because we're filmmakers, and that's what we do. I say filmmakers, not film students, because the latter is redundant once you've said the former. We will always be film students. There is a life after film school, I'm sure, but I don't think anyone graduates from the study of film. It is a school I forever submit to because it excites me and I don't ever want that excitement to end. I do all the things I do - the missions across campus trying to convince deans and department chairs to let me film in their buildings, the emergency late-night battery runs to CVS - not because I gave up on my 5-year-old dreams of ancient worlds and fantasies I could live in, but because I am a strong believer in the power of those dreams, and because I want to be one of the sleep-deprived, beard-and-baseball-cap-wearing guys who give those dreams to kids on bland gray carpets in tract homes.
                I'm not quite there yet, so in the meantime I produce and I run electricity and I explain to my parents why my bank account is emptier than it was yesterday, because I don't think I'll ever be a director unless I spend as much time being a filmmaker as I can, even if that means running to Quizno's fifteen minutes before lunch is called for a 35 man cast and crew or driving two hours to Burbank three times a week. I auditioned for Life After Film School for exactly the same reason; I saw it as another chance to better myself as a filmmaker, which meant another step closer to my dream of actually getting paid to make dreams for other people. Getting the opportunity to sit with established filmmakers and soak up their knowledge, on a sound stage surrounded by veterans of the business who chat with each other at lunch about the Seinfeld wrap party, and then to have that experience televised for I don't even know how many total strangers who will maybe remember me one day when I'm fetching them coffee - that is the kind of chance that few people ever get, and for me it was a milestone that marked the beginning of the realization of a dream more than fifteen years in the making. Until that dream actually comes true and I get to make the kind of film that inspired me when I was very young, I will continue to work and stress; I will print out business cards at Kinkos and go to industry mixers, and I will write until my fingers bleed. I am ready for life after film school. And until the day I die or stop making movies, I'm ready to be a film student.