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.
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.
