Makin' a Movie

Making a student film is like...

Baking cupcakes at the last minute for your kid to take to school the next day. Only your high hopes of showing off to all the other parents/teachers/volunteers by making treats from scratch is subject to things like reality and high expectations when you realize you need these cupcakes NOW and it's 10:30 at night but you have no ingredients. So you have to run to the store (Wal-Mart, because what the heck else is open?) and even though you attempted to make this a productive trip and wrote down a list and shit, you definitely forgot that in your car.

So you're cruising down the aisles, trying to remember what you wrote down, avoiding eye contact and worrying the whole time that you are losing SLEEP (you know, that thing you've looked forward to all day?) and spending MONEY despite a budget you've set yourself. But won't it be worth it? Won't your kid love you even more and look back on memories like this thinking, Gee, my mom loved me so much she spent the time to bake me special things. 

So you're all high on visions of grandeur, but really its just the smell of the person in front of you who has dandruff halfway down their back and you realize you completely forgot frosting. While you were willing to bake these mini cakes from scratch, you draw the line at frosting because those 7-year-olds won't even appreciate true buttercream frosting and besides you're already at the store. But then you realize that all the crap in your cart costs more than you expected and all you have is a ten dollar bill.

When you finally get home you're exhausted but you whip up a quick batter, pop those babies in the oven, take one look at the mess you've made in the kitchen and slide it all into the sink. That's clean enough. Who's really going to fault you except yourself? It's the cupcakes that are the priority, not the clean counters. Yeah, that's some first class justification you just dealt yourself, but it's 11:30 at night (much later than you had initially _wanted_ to go to bed) and some things are expendable.

Sadly, you spend another 45 minutes waiting for the cupcakes to cool so you can frost them and dammit if they don't frost properly. So then you have sugar all over your fingers, sprinkles between your toes (because of course you spilled) and your expectations for these glorious cupcakes are quickly dropping. You spend another ten minutes hunting for the tupperware you know will fit all of these damn cakes, only to realize your husband used it to put away leftovers (for once). 

In the morning your kid has those friggin cupcakes, proud as can be, maybe not for the reasons you envisioned, but they're made, they're frosted and they're out of your hands. Now it's up to someone else to enjoy them.

Yeah, making a student film is kind of like that.