A Swing And A Miss

After a successful film shoot with “The Complex,” I felt the most invigorating sense of accomplishment, and it inspired me to explore the capabilities of my Lumix G7 further. As my birthday approached, the idea of shooting another music video for “Negative One” took hold of my mind. Late one night, with drinks in my system and impatience gnawing at me, I began to write a treatment. The plan was to blend real-time shots with royalty-free footage that I downloaded from Pexels, making it a much easier film shoot. Confident in my vision, I enlisted Alonzo’s help, who would serve as director once again. The day of the shoot arrived, and Alonzo and I walked towards the park where the scenes would take place. In my excitement, I made a fatal error. I had played with the camera so much at home that I forgot to set the auto-focus back on before handing it over to Alonzo. With the small LCD screen and the sun’s glare making it difficult to see, we both believed that the shots were as focused as they could be. Take after take, Alonzo and I stood in the streets of Brooklyn, filming what was supposed to be my birthday present to myself. Exhausted yet eager, I rushed home to review the footage. As I sat in front of my computer, the room dimly lit by the screen, my heart raced with anticipation. But as the first frames played back, my excitement began to fade. I squinted, hoping that my eyes were deceiving me. But there was no denying it – every single shot was out of focus. The world around me seemed to shatter as the weight of my failure crashed down upon me. A stabbing feeling of despair twisted in my gut, my breathing became shallow, and my heart felt like it was being squeezed in a vice. “I’m never going to be a face on that wall.” The crushing disappointment in myself made it difficult to think, to breathe, or to find any solace. Each blurry frame was a cruel reminder of the colossal mistake I had made. My hands shook as I scrolled through the footage, desperately searching for a single usable shot. But there was none. The tears began to sting my eyes, blurring my vision further. I felt as if I had been knocked down, my dreams and ambitions lying shattered at my feet. It was a suffocating darkness that threatened to swallow me whole. In that moment, all I wanted was to make Bushwick proud. Instead, I was left with a painful reminder of my own inadequacy, a crushing weight that seemed impossible to shake. As the hours slipped away, I sat there, staring at the screen in a haze of disbelief and heartache. The music video I had envisioned as my birthday gift to myself was nothing more than a blurred mess, and I, a failure.