The Scarlet Letter/Juno Creative Project

From the beginning, I had plans to shoot a short movie, which I may or may not still do. I had a concept since day one, and I had ideas shooting through my head like gatling guns. So, I put together a small, little script, got a monologue together, and even had a few shots done right off the bat. It felt like I was on a roll. But then I got lazy. I underestimated the amount of time I had left, and when I did eventually get around to recording the rest, it was all tragically lost due to software issues. 

So, with time already gone, and me being too lazy and frustrated to do it all again, I decided to do the one thing I knew I could do best: I wrote a short story. But again, I ended up botching it all up. Because my priorities were terribly out of line, and because I had a truckload of other work waiting for me, I constantly either put off the story for a later date, or forgot about it entirely. It was not a pretty picture. It was a mess through and through.

But then I did eventually find time to write, and write I did. My theme was focused around loss and inner self-destruction, which I feel I (hopefully) represented well, given the story’s actual length. The tone itself was actually pretty experimental. It was one of the few times I’ve actually written a story in a first-person narrative, and the very first time I wrote it using that sort of time. I feel it gave the story as a whole a sort of darkly humorous tone to it, with the narrator being a wreck of man with little left to lose.

Another thing that I really enjoyed was the initial brainstorming. Whenever I write a story, I always spend what could end up being sixty minutes just rambling to myself about what my characters will be, how the plot will progress, things like that. By the time I even sit at my laptop to write, I’d already have over half the story written out in my head. That definitely made writer this even easier. 

Now for the not so good parts of this project. Where do I even begin with this one? Like I already said, I completely mishandled what time I had and ended up cobbling something together at the last minute. I mishandled my initial idea of shooting a movie by waiting until the last minute to try recording it. Even after I switched over to making a story, I ended up messing up. I rushed through it and ended up making something more along the lines of an excerpt as opposed to an actual story, which is still bugging me. 

Not only that, but I can’t help but feel I lost sight of what I was originally trying to do. What I mean is that I may have lost sight of what I wanted to represent in the story; I was more focused on getting something in rather than focusing on keeping the project relevant to what I was supposed to do. Again, it was just a giant cluster of a mess from beginning to end. 

I really hate myself for not treating this project a bit more responsibly, because I know for a fact that if I did, I would have had way more fun whether of not I decided to write a story or shoot a movie. So, I guess if I learned anything, it’s don’t procrastinate. A good lesson to learn, I suppose.