And nobody said anything
I finished the show at about midnight last night. An hour and a half of raw footage cut down to just a hair under five minutes. I sent my friend a text and said it was done; she wrote back and said she and a couple others were just blocks away, and could they come see? Of course I said yes.
They came in smelling like they’d all showered in bourbon; they’d been at a bar in the Circle. I set up the screening and did what I always do, kinda hovered around the edge of the room for about five minutes, watching the faces of the people rather than the screen. I had every frame memorized anyway, so I didn’t need to see it again. I wanted to see them.
The show’s very quiet, very small. Tight shots, high-contrast light. Slow-motion cutaways that I shot as coverage while we were getting my friend mic’d and make-up’d.
Through the first minute or so, there was a lot of laughter. “Ooooh, so dramatic,” one person said sarcastically. He thought I’d made a parody, and that he was in on the joke.
The wisecracks had stopped by the time the film got to the part about the day my friend’s uncle died. She talks about seeing her cousins at the funeral, and knowing that they didn’t have a father any more, while she was standing there next to hers. I held that shot for a long time. If you look close, you can see my friend’s mouth get tight and one tiny, wet highlight appear in the corner of her left eye. Then it fades to a slow-mo cutaway of an anonymous man — me, as it turns out — moving the hair out of her eyes.
The show wound down, ending with a mood-shattering smash-cut to black after a weightless and ethereal cut cadence based on lots of long dissolves and dips to black. The music faded out, and the end title card came up and then vanished.
And that’s when I knew I’d done something good.