U-S-C-ya later

aight. so, last night i hit I-10 after a long day at the studio and made the trek to downtown l-a-zy. i was heading, for my first time ever, to usc's campus...a place that i've envisioned and dreamed about for a long time. ever since i had an inkling that i wanted to make movies i thought for sure that i would go to either usc or nyu. it just made sense to me. well, needless to say, i didn't go to usc...or nyu. i made a nice 4-year-home for myself in fw, texas and actually had an amazing college experience.

ever since i graduated a year ago, i've been wrestling with whether or not i wanted to go back to school - grad school...no, not just grad school: FILM school. i'm a school person. plain and simple. and since moving out here (and away from the collegiate environment) i've felt...well, let's just say DUMB for lack of a more intellectual word (because, see, i'm dumb now so...yeah...you get it...)
anyway, last night as i was driving to usc, i prayed that jesus would give me a clear answer when i got there. if i am supposed to go back to film school, let me know it the moment i get on campus. if i'm not, then i want to know that, too.

well, i'm not going to go into ALL the juicy details except to say that jesus answers prayers. i know that what i was exposed to last night was probably not at all what usc film school is actually like, but it's what jesus wanted to me see to make my decision. and i've concluded i don't want to go. i'm sure if i were meant to see something that were going to compel me to go to grad school, i would have walked into a sound stage where they were shooting on 35mm and lighting with cool rigs. instead, all i was exposed to was a shoot that basically consisted of "ok, go" (meaning the camera was shooting), single takes, no lighting, no boom mic, no real care in the world to make it a legit project. that's what i saw, and that's what i needed to see.

i think that's how jesus works. he knows what we need and gives it to us. if someone wrestling with my very same question last night (whether or not to go to film school) were to have prayed to jesus for an answer and jesus knew that that person DID need to go to film school, that person would have been shown what they needed to see to make that decision. it's so sweet how jesus knows us each so personally that he makes things special...just for us.

u-s-C-YA-LATER

(ps - this post is in no way a reflection of how i feel about usc or film school in general. to be honest, i still want to go. i think jesus knew if he had shown me the big stages, awesome cameras, and creative experimental environment that i probably would have signed up for classes last night.)

i'm excited that a lot of my ole film pals from tcu are coming out to la. i have missed their energy, passion, humor, and company so much. our group really has something special, a little like zoetrope in its early days in san francisco. i know we will do big things. we just love filmmaking that much.