Don't Get Married #Bridezilla

Having watched the entirety of the first season of Bridezillas, I feel qualified to say I know what true bat sh*t crazy behavior looks like--excuse my french here, but if you've watched it you know I'm putting it mildly! 

To those underprivileged humans out there who haven't had the pleasure to binge on the undeniably entertaining nonsense this show provides for the world, I will take the next couple lines to quickly summarize what you've been missing.

Essentially, the brides are unbearable and insane, and their husbands-to-be are typically a hybrid between a defenseless baby bird and a neutered cat. You know, real studs. And though you may think I'm being a little too harsh on these men...allow me to get my Lawyer on and present you with some evidence:

I hope to dear God you chose not to watch that whole thing. Really, ten seconds are enough to get the point! Bridezillas are insane and somehow they're still getting married. 

 

  

Why horror movies suck these days

Like everything, horror movies have evolved. Some people might say that they like the newer generation horror movies, and every now and then we do get a really good movie. As a horror maniac...a real big fan of the genre... I can say that there’s just something that the new movies lack. I don’t know if its the campiness or character development or even the crazy stories first told from the 60's to early 90's, it just feels that no one is trying to be creative anymore, no one is trying new ideas...everyone is just playing it safe in either remaking a classic or putting a spin on the torture subgenre. But I think horror movies will soon move out of this slump because fans of the old school horror are finally coming to of age and directing their own stuff...so I think that this will definitely help in the next few years. Another reason that horror movies lack creativity is because studies nowadays are only interested in turning a profit. They can shoot a horror movie for extremely cheap, even if it sucks, and turn a profit if the trailers good.

As People, Are We Good or Bad?

This question has been playing in my mind a lot over the past year.  Everyday, I see bad things on the news, people doing bad things to each other, doing bad things to the earth, the earth doing bad things to people, and overall society as a whole being mean spirited.  It leaves me wondering at times, are there really any "good" people on this earth; and what do we really consider good?  Usually it's our own messed up version of good.  Diluted by our own experiences and angles as well as our upbringings.  And then sometimes, there are people who are genuinely nice spirited, but do something horrible like sell, make, or do drugs, have cheated on there partner, have stolen things, or even hurt other people.  I'm sure at this point your wondering, how does this even remotely relate to filmmaking. 

One of the things that got me thinking about this subject was the show Breaking Bad.  Not a single character on the show is clean.  Walter is (in the beginning) a nice guy, a teacher, but has the unfortunate luck of getting cancer and because of this decides to make meth so he can make money to give to his family.  Then you have Hank who is a police officer and again, a generally nice guy.  Yet Hank makes poor decisions that go against what society and the law deem acceptable even though most people fully back him for what he does.  Then you have Jessie who does drugs, sells drugs, is a womanizer, steals, has killed people, yet has a personality that you can't help but love.  I could go through every single character and do the same thing.  They all share the same bond, the all have good and bad in them.

Being a realist, I find it hard to side with people being good or bad, one or the other.  I hate when you see a T.V. show and you can tell who the "bad guy" is and you can tell who the "good guy" is.  I hate this thinking because it is not real.  Good and bad in my opinion is a sense of perspective.  What I might consider good maybe horribly bad to someone but what I might consider bad, someone might treat that as a normal everyday thing.  While I do say this I do thing that people are good, and are born with the ability to do good, but the problem is society.  Society comes along and tells us what is good and what is bad.  It gives us this rigid framework that were suppose to fit our own beliefs into and deal with what society says is and isn't okay.

I don't bring this up to yell at the world over the internet, or to tell you you're all bad or good people.  I mainly bring this up because we start shooting our projects in the next few weeks and will start developing characters and stories.  I think it is always good to keep in mind this theme for when you shoot.  Shows like Breaking Bad that create characters that are so much more than one dimensional succeed.  They succeed because subconsciously, we all can relate to theses characters and there struggles to be good in a bad world.  To understand that sometimes what the world considers good, is not good, and sometimes what the world considers not good, can be good.  

Hopefully we all can create these types of characters so our stories can be told realistically and with purpose.  So our audiences can truly feel for our characters as if they are real people.  None of us are pure, none of us are wholly good.  We're all trying to grasp that fact and find other people that can prove that point.  We all have good, we all have bad.  Everyone wants to find something that they can relate to and our stories can provide that missing link.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

And so we end up back on campus for another year at Ithaca. I must say, I am very excited for this class. Even the six word exercise got me excited because it was something I never would have thought to try and do in order to accomplish the task of telling a story. I was very interested in this because it was so out of the box. So yes, I am very excited for this class.

Anyway, the title of this blog post is in reference to internships. There are good ones, bad ones, and then just the plain ugly ones. I'm sure you can figure out which ones are good and the others, well, not so much. But I'm going to tell you anyway how my summer went:

I start my summer really excited because I got an internship at the Jeremy Kyle Show in Manhattan. I had to say, I was the most excited I could be because it was my first internship in college as a production intern. I got there super early because I was so excited because I knew that I would be able to take something away from it and have a great experience. Well, let me tell you: I got an experience alright, but not exactly the one you are thinking of. I ended up pretty much becoming a slave. I had to build cabinets, chairs, paint rooms that were rarely used, go on runs, go on extra runs to get a receipt, etc. The list goes on but I'm not going to get too into detail. So like I said before, I ended up a slave. I got nothing out of this internship that I was able to use in the future, except for the fact that I had to make approximately 1000 phone calls over the course of 2 months. So I guess that may have helped with the being on the phone fear that I never had.

It was possibly one of the worst experiences I have ever had. The part that made me the most angry was that I saw posts on Facebook about all of my friends interning elsewhere talking about how great their internships were and how they got to work in the control room and how they got to work on the set and work with someone that actually worked there. Yeah, not me; I had to build cabinets and go all the way to the other side of Manhattan to go buy a lamp.

So I would think that it is obvious that all of my friends got "The Good" internships and I got "The Bad" AND "The Ugly."

Hopefully, if I'm lucky that is, I will be able to intern at a place that will actually let me experience something worth while and help me in the future.

M. Night Shyamalan Returns to Film School???

A new article surficed the other day over M. Night Shyamalan, and the fact that he should go back to film school, the article talks about him attending NYU. I know that there are mixed feelings over M. Night and his movies, some people love them, and others (a majority) don't but do people really have to go this far to get their point/opinion across? The article is actually really well written and explains a lot, so if interested the link to the article is in the title.