Filmwurst

It was the culmination of my education in Film and Video Studies: my senior capstone project, a 45 minute featurette written by me, directed by Wes and shot by Dusty about a criminology student who, for his senior capstone project, decides to plan a crime spree.

And it’s gone.

I had decided I might YouTube the film, or at least the portion of the film I wrote, and blog about it. But the thing is, my only copy of the film wasn’t where I had left it. I have moved 12 times since spring ’99, it’s a wonder I didn’t lose it earlier. But I know I had it in OKC while I was living in Lawrence. Who knows where it is now.

The name of this film? Well, for those of you who know me it won’t be a surpise: “Cap a Stone in Yo’ Ass.”

I had already lost all my papers and scripts from my film school days in a computer crash in 2002, as the backup CD, I found out later, didn’t burn properly. But that didn’t bother me that much. But losing the film does. Three years in the Film and Video Studies program, and that was what I had to show for it. (Well, that and my degree, which has been proudly placed in the backseat of my car.)

I didn’t hang on to the film because I thought it was good – there are good things in it, such as some great performances from some of our actors, who we got from the drama school – but I actually consider “Cap a Stone” one of my biggest failures.

I mean, I got an A on it, and I would consider it watchable. But making that film was one of the most painful experiences I ever went through. Wes and Dusty worked hard on the film, but I don’t thing they ever really understood just how much I put into that film. Originally, Wes was to buy the digital camera, which he did, spending about $2,000; I was to buy the editing hardware for my computer, spending about $1,000. But while my computer met the minimum requirement for the editing board, for it to actually perform properly I needed to buy a new video card ($200), more memory ($250) and a high speed SCSI hard drive ($400).

But it wasn’t just the money I poured into it. I was committed to this film. While Wes and Dusty were going to classes during the day, I was skipping classes to scout locations, buy clothes and find props – which included two realistic-looking pistols, a Dieon Sanders T-shirt and a wooden duck, which, given that this is Oklahoma, was much harder to find than you’d think. I spent weeks combing sporting goods stores, but since it wasn’t duck season, I had no luck. It wasn’t until I stopped at an antique store in Moore that I struck gold. Jesus, I just realized that I skipped all those classes just to find a fucking duck for a three-second sight gag.

So for all this work, I got an A in my senior film class. I also got a B in my Lit class, and an F in my other English class, Critical Reading and Writing. (After that semester, I changed my second major from English to Zoology, with the idea that I would make nature documentaries.)

Really, for an undergraduate student film that was 45 minutes long and edited on hardware that even after I spent all that money was woefully inadequate, it wasn’t too bad. My real regret was not telling Wes, after coming to me to tell me that he doubled the size of the script because we needed a scene to “explain” everything they were about to see, that if what I had already written needed explaining, then I should be kicked off the damn project. He even agrees now that the exposition scene in the apartment before the robbery was a bad idea, and he wanted to re-edit the film without it.

But that’s the other thing: Wes had the master copy on digital cassette – and he lost it last year. But he still has his other scripts and film projects. “Cap a Stone in Yo’ Ass” was the last bit of what I had.

There are copies out there; we gave some to the performers, and our capstone instructor was given a copy. But after writing this, that copy of the film isn’t what I miss most. You see, even though it got battered during shooting, I kept the duck when we were done. I had it for a few years, until my mom tossed it – it was broken, she said.

So I have my film degree, but really, I didn’t work all that hard as a film major to get it – I worked a lot harder just to get that stupid duck, and I’d rather have that wooden mallard to show for my troubles.