Filmmaker’s Eye

By Camila Bonilla

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This is an excerpt from a larger story that illustrates the life of an aspiring filmmaker.

Dear Mom, 

I’m working on it. The script is almost done, I think. I know what I need to do. The thick booklet sitting on my cheap nightstand has been scribbled to ruin with annotations, but I think it’s done. I decided on a happy ending. If you had read it, you wouldn’t have liked it. You would have asked, wouldn’t it make sense for the heroine to end her story with her self-destruction? It’s what she deserves, you would have said. Angela is getting married next week. Dad is the same. Please don’t write back. 

Love, 

Mazzy

I don’t have to worry about her writing back. Because I fold the paper once, and tuck it under my mattress. 

—-

I have a filmmaker’s eye. What does that mean? It means that I see through a rectangle. The aspect ratios are always 9:21, but I know that David Fincher does 2:1. And that’s okay, because we all have different tastes. Who am I to judge? When the light hits the skyscrapers just right as I’m on my way home, my playlist curated to perfection in my earbuds, a story unfolds in my head. Fingers itching to turn on my computer and get to writing, add another stack to the dozens of abused and battered copies of screenplays; I pick up the pace. Then I slow down. I savor the experience of walking, walking between the trees implanted into the ground and people engaged in conversation. How does takeout sound tonight? The professor literally gave me a 60. I don’t want to do this. I love you. Can you walk Coco tonight? My music is low enough to grasp fragments of these other conversations. In my headphones, the song All Flowers Bend in Time Towards the Sun by Jeff Buckley and Elizabeth Fraser plays. I turn it up, and they all disappear around me. The song approaches its climax, and Jeff belts a higher note, almost a cry. And I remember what he said in one of his interviews, before his death: “You’re shaping sound in order to fit a feeling. And to make sure that’s a good vehicle for that feeling. Words are accurately, emotions— emotionally accurate. You know.” I move my lips and sound out lines in my mouth, test out the feeling, to find words that are emotionally accurate. I do it until it sounds right, all the way until I reach my apartment. I think I’ve found them. In my old computer, I open up a fresh document, to a new scene. EXT. A CITY STREET.

Process

I had already written a part of this story before. I just added more to this in order to expand on the narrator’s consciousness.