Listen, I've got to spill the tea on what ACTUALLY went down behind the scenes of this "serious" masterpiece! You'd think a video about grief would be all somber and dramatic, but NOPE—the more serious the shot needed to be, the more we absolutely LOST IT laughing! February 4th rolls around (because of course I'm working last-minute—is there any other way?!) and I'm fresh off telling my teacher on February 3rd that I'm ditching my group to go solo.
So I'm heading home when BOOM—creative lightning strikes and I know EXACTLY what story I need to tell. It's personal, it's meaningful, it's perfect... now I just need someone to star in it! Enter my cousin—literally my only male best friend with an abundance of free time. Did I have to bribe him? ABSOLUTELY. Food is basically currency in our friendship, and I'm not even sorry about it!
I show up at his place on the 4th, and this boy has the AUDACITY to text me "Do I need to wear something specific?" while I'm LITERALLY walking through his front door (either I was super excited or just wanted to get this thing done—you decide!). He's in this bright green hoodie looking like a walking lime, so obviously I made him change into black because AESTHETICS, people!
Then comes my Oscar-worthy 30-minute director's monologue where I broke down EVERY. SINGLE. DETAIL. That's a whole half-hour of seriousness between us, which has to be some kind of world record! After my epic speech, his first question? "So what are you giving me for doing all this?" FOOD, obviously. And yes, I delivered on that promise because I'm nothing if not reliable when snacks are involved!
For the brownie scene, we realized after I got to his place that we had no brownie! The HORROR! So we literally walked to the store together like we were on some epic brownie quest (such dedication to our craft, I know). After filming the brownie scene—which we DEMOLISHED the second filming was done because priorities—we kept bursting into laughter but somehow getting these amazing shots?
The entrance scene where my cousin walks in with the brownie and lit candle was PEAK comedy. That poor candle blew out TWICE before we got the shot! Picture this: serious entrance, dramatic mood, then POOF—candle goes out mid-scene because we couldn't stop giggling! There we were, trying to be all professional, relighting this candle like our lives depended on it, only to burst into laughter and ruin it all over again! By some miracle, we nailed it after the second candle catastrophe.
Then came the headphone-plugging close-up scene—the STRUGGLE was REAL! The room was basically a cave, so the camera kept losing focus, and my hands were shaking worse than a caffeine addict on their fifth espresso! Every time I thought we had it, the camera would blur at EXACTLY the wrong moment! Who knew filming someone plugging in headphones would be harder than rocket science?!
After nearly THREE HOURS of chaos (including laughing fits, technical disasters, and way too many takes), we finally wrapped everything up! Considering all the madness, that's actually impressive timing! And yes, that brownie we'd been filming all day? Gone in approximately 2.5 seconds once we finished. Because after creating art, you deserve dessert—that's just the rule!
