You may have walked in on your own but this is right where I wanted you. That’s good. You must think you’re smart. You may have brought people with you, that’s even better. More victims for me. If you would like to sit down now with your hands full of unhealthy blood-clogging things including that liquid drink you think is better for you because it says “diet” on it.
Now get comfortable, you’ll be here for a while. Anything that can make sounds is turned off. Anything with bright lights, turn it off. You were brought here for one thing and that was to end that world, even if it’s against your own will. Once the lights are out, you’ll be ours.
This is what my kind does. We enjoy it, like a vampire drinking blood for the first time in a long time. I am only a novice. I’ve only done this with small groups. It’s only a matter of time before you, too, will be my victim and it will feel like no other before me. I’m learning the tricks of the trade like everyone else. I learn from my instructors, or I learn from my fellow members how to do it better or how to do it differently than those in the past. I’ve learned how to tell a convincing story to lure you into our home. I’ve been taught how to hold the camera better to get the best reaction out of you. That’s what my kind does, that’s us filmmakers do.
We make you think one way and then like that, we change your perception. You probably started reading this and thought that it was a horror story. There have been films when you think you know the mystery, but then suddenly the storyline adds something or someone to mix it up. Screenwriter Nelson Greaves and director Levan Gabriadze made us think that a bunch of teenage friends were skyping late at night that is until a seeming strange glitch joins there video group chat. It’s soon discovered that the glitch is no one other than a ghost of an old friend who comes to play a deadly game of Five Fingers. The two turned the table even more when they make the friends reveal secrets about one another and just when we think we know the ending, they switch it. That film was called Unfriended. What we don’t realize is that films themselves “kidnaped” us and bring them into their world. Films like Avatar, written and directed by James Cameron brought us to the world of those who inhabit it are tall and blue and live off the land and do not waste it. There are films that take us out of the universe and brings us to different planets. The Martian directed by Ridley Scott and written by Drew Goddard brought the audience to Mars, only to make us stranded there.
Films capture us and will make us feel things that even at first we may not want to feel. It’s fear like Unfriended, wonder like Avatar or loneliness like in The Martian.
Films are the ultimate ‘kidnaper’ even if we haven’t noticed it before, we do it willingly with every film we have ever wanted or not wanted to see. In the end, the filmmakers get what we want. Your best reaction, whether it’s happy or sad, fear or joy, pain or courage.
Now back at the theater you have finished your popcorn and candy.You finished your soda and you have just seen the last scene. Now you get up and leaving the theater, you have a mixture of emotions. Who do you trust? What was real and what was not? Is this the end or will there be more? Those questions you are having in your head, those emotions your feeling right now, that is when a filmmaker knows that we have done our job.
That is why I study film. That is why I am a filmmaker.