Just recently, Ice gave me a video recorder. It is compact, the size of the average touch-screen cellphone, and costs around five thousand pesos. Now the minuscule size and cheapness are usually signs of dilettantism, but the gadget, in fact, boasts of high definition pictures. Aptly dubbed The Explorer, it is also shockproof and waterproof. Of course, such features are of no import to a person with a mélange of nature-related phobias like me. Still, I was over the moon.
When I was in college and still engulfed in romanticism, I decided I was going to be a filmmaker, but that delusion is now, very clearly, down the drain. I do not have a good eye for framing, I am certain, nor the patience for writing a two-hour long script. Nonetheless, the prospect of once again trying my amateur hand at the craft delights me endlessly. I already have plans for two shorts lined up: one a la Woody Allen, where neurotic geniuses will talk incredibly fast and dramatically gesticulate like there is no tomorrow, and one a la Jean Pierre Jeunet, which, if done properly, should look like a fairy tale. Yesterday, I shot a couple of scenes with Ice the actor and in one of my innumerable close-up shots, I saw in his eyes that he violently regretted presenting me with the camera—and this from a man who is usually overflowing with equanimity. “If only I knew about the things she’d make me do.”
