Stream of Consciousness

            “They’re going to hate it! They’re going to hate it!” I kept telling myself as my short documentary started to play. As you can see, I’m a pretty confident person. I looked around my 10^th grade English class as they all stared up at the screen. I had worked up until 11 pm making this project (that was pretty late for me). The videos that had gone up before mine weren’t “A” worthy material, so I was somewhat confident. Still, I was shaky nervous hiding in my seat and I hear ”Baba O’Riley” start to play. A montage of news anchormen discusses the topic of the NSA leak. The next five minutes were terrifying. I had to hear my dumb voiceover talk about the issue of government surveillance. Once it had finished, almost everyone had clapped. Apparently it was one of the best videos yet. And at that moment, I knew I had potential. But that’s merely the middle of the story.

Yes, it was a Daniel-Day Lewis film that essentially changed my ever so boring life. It was in the year 2007, my father had rented a movie, as he usually did on the weekends, and started watching it around noon. I was around 11 years old, so I wasn’t paying much attention to the TV. However, my dad called me to watch a scene. I didn’t know who the main actor was; all I knew was that he had mastered his role. As you can guess, it was Mr. Lewis playing one of his best roles in one of the best films of the decade. I was watching Daniel Day Lewis playing oilman Daniel Plainview in a little movie titled “There Will Be Blood.” Mr. Plainview was arguing with his deaf son, whom was about to start his own oil company. I watched the film until the end, and of course it changed the way I saw movies.

            I used to think that films were just to entertain people, and I never thought of them as a form of art. But a few years later, I re-watched that film from start to finish and I loved it. I realize that the film, having an almost boring premise if one was to explain it to another, had mastered the art of filmmaking. The cinematography was fantastic, the acting and soundtrack were perfect, along with the directing. It was at that moment, right when I heard Johannes Brahms’s Violin Concerto in D major that that made me realize: I want to create that. I wanted to make movies like the person who made this one did. So my thirst for critically acclaimed movies began, and I fell into the world of film.

            This brings us to our next topic: Directors. After I had watched marathons of movies after another, I became interested in the people making them. I learned about Steven Spielberg (although I had heard his name before), Christopher Nolan, Paul Thomas Andeson, Spike Jonze, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, the Coen Brothers, and much more. David Fincher had become my favorite. His most notable films would be “Fight Club”, “Seven”, and “The Social Network.” I noticed that all of his films have a dark tint in them and usually consist of plot twists. He had become very influential towards me. The more movies I watched, the more researching I did. And soon enough, another revelation came. After making two documentaries in a single year, I thought I had potential to become a filmmaker, and I hope to follow my dreams in becoming a film director.