1997: The Monkey's Paw

Date of Creation: 1997 (maybe early 1998, I don't really remember)

Synopsis: Adapted from the W.W. Jacobs short story, this dramatic thriller explores the supernatural realm. When an old friend from a far away land visits the White family, he shares with them a mystery: the paw of a monkey that grants three wishes to it's holder.

A Brief History: I'm sure this was for some literature class, and I'm sure the girls in our group were probably annoyed with us trying to hit this one out of the park by making a crazy short movie instead of phoning it in, but nonetheless, here we are. My favorite moments are probably the fact that we are all obviously reading from our scripts (though Jenny's was cleverly hidden inside of some huge book), Joe's incredibly delayed reaction to me throwing the paw at the fire, and my thinking that I could easily play two different characters in a five minute movie if I just changed my sports jacket and nothing else. I believe we stole the score from Jurassic Park, though I may be wrong. It's so damn dark you can't really tell what's going on, but those almost completely black screens with video lines dancing all over them are  supposed to be the zombie son walking up to the house. OH, and zombie son was played by Donna, who was obviously a girl, so we gave her a hat. Because that's how you make girls into men in movies.

Critical Analysis: I'm getting bored with this portion of the description, as it's hard to do sarcastically without sounding legitimately condescending and full of myself, so this will probably be the last one. I will say that, from a film language terminology, this would be the first time I ever used intercutting to add suspense to a scene, so while we didn't know exactly what we were doing at the time, it's technically a big step in the right direction. Executed terribly, of course. I believe this was very close to the moment where I realized I was not exactly what you would call a "good" actor, though that didn't stop me from doing it anyway for years.