An Observation of Light

The sun shines into the room through an arched window. The soft light gently touches the left side of my guitar. The tuning knobs shine brightly, reflecting the light. The lines and dots that run up and down the guitar’s neck almost shimmer the soft morning sun. The strings are almost lost against the bright reflections on the fret board. The body of the guitar is dark with a white outline. It is polished and the varnish shines as it reflects some of the light. The top left side of the guitar looks almost grey. Parts of it reflect parts of the room back to me, but the items are blurry and indistinguishable. The guitar leans against a white wall, heavily contrasted in the natural daylight.

The overcast afternoon creates soft light. There are no shadows in my backyard right now. The snow seems illuminated beneath the faint lighting. It seems even brighter than the sky. All of the trees and foliage seem to blend together without much contrast between them. The sky, however, is significantly brighter and the white, snow covered ground is even more so. When I look closely at the snow, parts of the ice crystals catch the natural light. The snow sparkles as my eyes move across it. It’s dazzling, like glitter. Patches of ice seem dark until I move in the right way so that it catches the sun, reflecting it to me, scorching my retinas as I try to behold its beauty. I move again and the shining light is gone again.

Filmmaker's Satement

Since childhood, I’ve always loved writing and telling stories. While in high school, I started to see movies as another medium to tell stories through. The more movies I watched, the more I loved them. I took my first film class at Wake Technical Community College and my desire to learn grew. Upon moving to Wilmington this past summer I was lucky enough to find a room for rent in a house with a local filmmaker. My roommate shoots commercials and other low budget productions in the area. He has just begun post-production on his first feature film, a low budget and independent film. I was invited to help on set during some of their final shoots. The most exciting moment on set was when I got to help the stunt coordinator prepare an actress for a scene where she would be set on fire. Most of the time, however, my job was just to be an extra set of hands to help move things here or there.

In this class I would like to gain more hands-on experience. I hope to learn the basics of handling and using the camera and to learn more about film techniques. I’d like to walk away from the semester with more confidence in my abilities to create artistic films.

In 10 years I hope to be writing and directing screenplays. I’ll need an agent and I figure that 10 years is plenty of time for me to build a resume or portfolio with some work that I’m proud of.

A little bit of information about myself: I’m a double major in Film Studies and Creative Writing. I recently took some time off from school and spent about three years living in Hawaii on the island of Maui. While there, I worked as a waitress to support myself. In my free time, I loved to hike the island landscape and relax on the beach. I’ve recently become interested in billiards and pool has become a new hobby of mine.

Here’s a couple of pictures from when I lived in Maui: