Complications

It's funny how our limitations change with age. When my friends and I were making videos in middle school, our only two limitations seemed to be our imaginations and our wallets. If we could think up a relatively cheap and funny sketch, we would spend an entire day doing nothing but filming. Since none of us had a job, actor availability was never a problem back then. Not that we considered ourselves actors in any way. In fact, none of us had anything close to an acting talent, but we always managed to find ways to deal with that. We would often rely on editing techniques to make up for our poor acting abilities. Although these techniques allowed us to work around our limitations, it also severely limited the types of sketches we could make.

Nowadays, our limitations are almost completely reversed. Almost every single one of my friends has a job, which has greatly affected the video making process. We now have a larger spending limit for our sketches, but it comes at a price. It has become increasingly difficult to plan a time where everyone is available for filming (not to mention the fact that a majority of these friends go to different colleges than me). 

This past weekend I hurried over to Huntsville when I learned that my friend, Michael, would be coming in to town. He only lives about an hour and a half away from Huntsville, but he rarely gets to visit due to homework and duties with his frat. Michael is one of the two best actors we have at our disposal. So when he told me that he wanted to shoot a sketch over the weekend, I didn't hesitate to return to Huntsville. Unfortunately, multiple complications arose before we could finish a full sketch. Right off the bat, I learned that the sketch I had written for him had been done before. When I was telling my idea to another friend, he informed me that a major part of my sketch was too similar to a scene from a movie that he had seen. Slightly discouraged, I began scrambling to quickly write another sketch. 

By Saturday we had a multitude of ideas, but none were simple enough to be filmed in a day. We either lacked the time or the props necessary to finish an entire sketch (by the way, if anyone knows where to find a realistic looking dove, let me know). Finally, an idea came flying out of nowhere. It was short, simple, and required a bare minimum amount of props and people. Unfortunately, another complication soon cut the reality of that sketch into pieces. Michael's character would be wearing a suit for the sketch. The only problem was his suit was all the way over at his dorm room, one and a half hours away. At this point, I realized that there was just no way we could finish a coherent sketch before the weekend was over.

Defeated at last, we resigned ourselves to practice that weekend. No matter how frantically we tried to stitch a good skit together, it just kept falling apart in our hands. It wasn't all for nothing, though. We got a lot of good practice shots in, which means that when we finally do shoot the final version, we will be much more prepared than just starting from scratch.