It’s our last day of class and I’m feeling sentimental.
We spent this past week finishing up our final presentations, adding the finishing touches to our creative projects, and trying to piece together everything we’ve learned. All the projects were great and had their own unique spin. Ben wrote a script, Corrina storyboarded it, and Elle made a production package for it. Christina did production design for movie adaptation of a children’s book. Caitlin enlightened us with color. Charlie made his own snail sounds. Georgia was a location scout. Kaitlyn and Gennie co-wrote a pilot. And I erased white faces from TV show posters – to illustrate the lack of representation on screen, of course. Throughout these presentations, I was just in awe of all my classmates’ talents and insights, thankful for the time we got to share and learn together on this trip.
In this month, our class laughed together, sometimes cried together, learned together, sang together, danced together, ate together, and grew together. We had lots of epiphanies about life, midlife crises that came and went in seconds, and gut-wrenching feelings of uncertainty. Despite all this, I’m thankful that we got to do it together, with two incredible professors who cared so much about us. Even though we can sulk in the unknowns and the what ifs, or get bogged down by questions that no one has the answers to, it was refreshing to be able to walk into a table read or a set rehearsal and see people living and thriving in this industry. It grounded all my fears and ideals in reality. What made it better was walking in those rooms and meeting those people with my class of film dorks and sweethearts.
Today, to finish up our presentations, we went to a park in Hollywood Hills that has a beautiful view of the Hollywood sign. After we finished class, we posed and flailed for photos under the sign, and that’s when it hit me that class was over. As we drove back down on the curvy road, we blasted “California” by Phantom Planet and sang “California, here we come!” at the top of our lungs. That moment seemed to stand still. I felt thankful for the little community we built in that van, and for the memories we made in Hollywoodland.
We may be leaving Hollywood for now, but give us a couple years and we’ll be running the show. California, here we come.
