In terms of externship, Friday was my last day at InsideOut. UrbanPeak, a homeless shelter for youth in Colorado Springs from ages 15-20, and InsideOut recently collaborated and decided that the UrbanPeak kids would have drop in hours from 12:30-3pm at InsideOut. The most exciting activity of the day was from 5:30-7pm – Glitter Wars. Eric split the youth into two groups and they would compete for each of them to receive a kaleidoscope at the end. We played Charades and Musical Chairs and in order to make Charades more interesting, Eric printed out the list of the “Gayest Cartoons” that people voted on online (see the list here: http://www.newnownext.com/bracket/gayest_cartoon_tournament/). The list was very diverse – from Daria to Elsa from Frozen, it seemed as though anyone could be seen as a “gay” character. I felt quite disappointed with my younger self for not seeing many of the cartoons on the list, such as “The Smurfs” or “Peanuts”. Oh well, at least I have more TV shows I can watch in the future!
After the 10 days working with the organization, I think that I’ve decided on my film being about LGBT homelessness. Eric pulled in some people that he thought would have good stories for the documentary and one of them felt unsure on whether they wanted to participate and mentioned how UrbanPeak was doing a similar project, in which they are also filming homeless youth and making a video out of it. Initially, I thought that my idea would be great since I thought that it would be different, but I guess not now. I decided that I still wanted to go with my original idea, and when I was finishing up my proposal earlier today, I came up with a better idea. I have tentatively called my film Identity, aiming to show how the homeless youth are more than just their sexuality or gender identity and status in life. However, why didn’t I just decide to make a film about identity? Maybe I can play with that idea more as I propose my idea, but I can still show their identities through this film and I don’t need to sacrifice one over the other.
It’s really strange to be at this stage for the documentary. When you have the vision of what your film will look like but you haven’t started filming and you don’t know what exactly to anticipate for the future of the shooting and editing process. Where everything seems like it’ll work out, and you have to trust the process. It’s scary, but exciting. I’m really excited to get the ball rolling and see what happens, but I know I have to let go of the perfection I have expected out of myself.
