I met my best friend my freshman year of high school. Her name was Alyse and I despised her. You see, we both had a crush on the same guy, Justin. The next year, he announced that he was gay. Alyse and I have been inseparable ever since.
I remember one evening during sophomore year. I was hanging out at her house and after several hours of mindless television and bad horror movies, we were ready for a change. We ordered pizza and decided we were going to make a movie. By the time we had finalized our plans, the pizza was nearly gone and it was 3 o'clock in the morning. We planned to film a remake of a Degrassi episode, our favorite Canadian teenage soap opera. Once we set up the tripod and pressed "record", there was no stopping us. We changed between costumes with speed and ease. We had to- we were playing all 6 characters. We set up various scenes , found props and developed dialogue on the spot. At 5:30am, we wrapped and uploaded the video clips to Alyse's computer. After a few more hours of editing, we viewed the finished product. The movie was great! Not great in an Oscar-worthy sense, but great in that we actually managed to get it all done. There were iMovie audio clips, awesomely cheesy special effects and some of the greatest improv exchanges I have ever witnessed. Perhaps we were delirious. Afterall, it was 8 o'clock and when you haven't slept, everything is hilarious. Nevertheless, we were hooked on video and convinced we were production geniuses.
All throughout high school, whenever I spent the night at Alyse's house, another masterpiece was birthed. There were music video compilations, ninja movies and remakes of popular musicals. Though we've moved between genres, one thing remains. Every time we start a new project it's in the middle of the night. For some reason, our minds seem to overflow with creative juices when the rest of the neighborhood is fast asleep. Maybe exhaustion pushes your creativity to the surface. The next day may be rough, but the ideas you develop at night are certainly worth a few hours of sleep.
Monday, January 19, 2009
The Night Idea
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2 comments:
you know what is really funny about this... Is that I am the same way!!! When i was really big into song writing, my best lyrics would always come right before I would fall asleep while I was in bed. Usually I'd get up and write them down because if i didn't, they'd be gone from my memory in the morning. But I'm with you on this... maybe we need a late night brainstorming session for ad-team! ha
degrassi is amazing! And I love how you bonded over a crush turning out to be gay. Life can be so random, really enjoyed this post!
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