Undergraduate / 'sure-to-be-discovered director' - Person Who Impacted You -- UT Essay A [3]

Since I figure most essays will be about parents and grandparents, I decided to go a bit of a different way. Let me know what you think of my topic and if it's close enough to the prompt. Thanks so much!

Prompt: Write an essay in which you tell us about someone who has made an impact on your life and explain how and why this person is important to you.

The year is 2002: Fellowship of the Ring, the first installment of Peter Jackson's now-classic Lord of the Rings trilogy has just arrived on DVD and here I am, transfixed before its majesty. The credits are rolling and I'm still utterly glued to the screen. It was at this key moment I realized what I wanted to do with my life. I jumped up and declared to the room that I would one day become a filmmaker. Understand that this was no ordinary outburst of boyish enthusiasm. Yes, it's true that I had loved many movies before Fellowship, but it was the singular vision of Jackson that transformed my view of art (and, subsequently, the world) forever.

So what was a new, sure-to-be-discovered director to do? Start watching movies! And that's exactly what I did. I devoured everything from Antonioni to Apatow. I was utterly fascinated with the talents and techniques each director so uniquely (or in the case of the mediocre ones, not so uniquely) employed for the simple goal of telling you a moving story. But no matter how many individual styles I was exposed to, Jackson's was still the one most powerfully branded into my mind.

But seeing films can only take one so far, so I began directing my own work. It wasn't easy, and the results were often laughable. My main problem, I found, was that my vision was just too much for what I was working with. I often sought methods alternative to a crude home camera and dubiously talented family members, my favorite being machnima (the use of a video game's pre-rendered world as your set and cast); I got a grotesque amount of short films out of Halo: Combat Evolved without ever needing actors. I toiled on those 3 minute clips like they were Citizen Kane and, to my 12 year-old self, they most certainly were. It was utterly phenomenal practice.

Jackson and his films were my constant sources of reference.

Soon I found another outlet: screenwriting. Unlike the many challenges that drag a prospective no-budget filmmaker down, screenwriting is nearly issue free. A copy of Final Draft later and I was in business, banging out scripts day and night, wide-eyed and ecstatic. My first effort wasn't really anything in hindsight and, truthfully, is probably beyond saving. However, the experience of learning how to construct a script, which occurred during that first writing session, was 100% invaluable to me; I wouldn't trade it for the world.

Absolutely none of this would have occurred without Peter Jackson.

I've since become quite familiar with both directing and writing thanks to my extra-curricular activities and I believe that understanding of both sides of the coin is supremely important in a filmmaker. I'm always hungry for more. And the fact that I can trace it all back to one magic moment of awe induced by Lord of the Rings and its indelible leader Peter Jackson, blows me away on a regular basis. I will never forget that moment, that film or that man since they all worked together in lighting the kerosene that was my passion for film and literally shaped my life.

Undergraduate / "think of the children." - Issue of Importance to You -- UT Essay B [3]

All right, so I picked a super-hot topic. Let me know what you think, particularly if it's too incendiary for a college application (dear God, I hope not) and if it answers the prompt well enough. Thanks so much!

Prompt: Choose an issue of importance to youïthe issue could be personal, school related, local, political, or international in scopeïand write an essay in which you explain the significance of that issue to yourself, your family, your community, or your generation.

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." A quote there from George Orwell's chilling novel Animal Farm expresses exactly the brand of two-facedness that gay marriage is approached with in this day and age. As most alarmingly shown in the passing of Proposition 8, a Californian state ballot proposition that strips the right to marry from same-sex couples, prejudice against homosexuals gaining legal rights to be married is blooming even in the midst of the "forward step" we have taken as a country in electing President Barack Obama. I find this extraordinarily disquieting.

After all, isn't "all men are created equal" part of our national rulebook? Why is discriminating against someone based on their sexual preference accepted? That above quotation is, to me, the very foundation of America and the epitome of what she represents. The second you begin picking and choosing the people that are deemed "equal", the system breaks down entirely.

I am personally not gay, so why should I care so much? How does this affect my life one bit? Simply put, denying people civil rights is absolutely antithetical to the ideals that make the country I live in so grand and that weighs upon me. Living in a place where civil freedoms are a pick and choose ordeal does not sit well with me at all. Equality for all human beings has been the spoken creed of America ever since the Emancipation Proclamation was enacted, so why is it not being carried out? It troubles me.

And I do not even understand a bit of the other side of this farce of an argument. James Dobson states in his book "Marriage Under Fire" that legalizing same-sex marriage will, and I quote, "destroy the family" by pushing the nation into a slide toward doing away with marriage all together. Not only is the logic in this extraordinarily faulty, but it almost makes no sense whatsoever; how are the two connected in any way?

The church seems bent on being the main obstacle in this feverish debate. Proposition 8 would have likely been beaten down had the Mormon church not donated over ten million dollars to the "Yes on Prop 8" campaign, a decision they will most likely (and rightly) have to battle a lawsuit over. "...possibly the most important reason, the spread of the Gospel of Jesus Christ will be severely curtailed." (Again, quoting Dobson.) Great. That still does not mean you have any recourse in denying real legal rights to anyone who deserves them. And, correct me if I am wrong, but God teaches us to love everyone regardless of the choices they might make, right? The God I serve most certainly does.

Another very common argument is "think of the children." Who says gay people aren't? Why should two qualified, consenting adults be blocked from adopting a child they desperately want simply because of their sexual preference? The refusal of the government to legally recognize same-sex marriage allows adoption agencies to do this. It is outright bigotry.

To deny people basic civil rights such as the right to wed whomever they choose is utterly criminal. The arguments and viewpoints to the contrary do not make any sense at all and, therefore, must be born out of either ignorant fear or hateful bigotry in my mind. Even during a time like this of national hope and change, the quiet, sneaky passing of Proposition 8 can bring the pipe dream of America crashing to a halt, exposing how far we still must go for true freedom.