(Espresso) shot and edited

Okay, I am once again a member of the waking world. Here’s a brief recap of shooting at the cafe, in haiku form:

Between customers

Got mocha on the tripod

I am very stressed.

All went well with getting the storyboarded shots, plus a bit of improvisation based on what I was actually doing at work (e.g., it’s not every shift that I have to refill the espresso bean hopper, but it happened to be empty on Thursday, so I thought, “Aha! Content.”)

A couple moments were re-shot because I was wearing my mask in the first iteration. Don’t get me wrong, it felt deeply weird and a little problematic to be bare-faced in the cafe (I got my first job at sixteen in May of 2020— I have never *not* worn a mask at work), but I also have a LOT of feelings about showing my characters’ full faces. For one, acting: the way Camille smiles as Veda *matters,* and I’d be hard-pressed to ask for expression through eyes alone. Plus, if I’m valuing continuity*, it’s an all-or-nothing deal (why wear a mask by the register but not in the walk-in fridge?). But alsooooooooooooo: prepare for me to wax poetic about this genre.

John Hughes’ “Pretty in Pink” came out in 1986, the year my mom turned 18. Even though the film is now generations old, some moments in it are as true and poignant as any scene in “Booksmart” or “Eighth Grade.” I’d argue the best thing about the coming-of-age genre is its ability to capture something universal and timeless: humans have been feeling exhilarated, exhausted, destabilized, and baffled by the process of “coming of age” for as long as there have been HUMANS (like, “first love” is such an enduring theme in literature because it’s an enduringly profound human experience). I feel like I’d be abandoning that aspect of the genre by costuming my characters in a way that dates the film to a window of 20-odd months. If my mom and I can both see ourselves in Andie from “Pretty in Pink,” I think we should both get to see ourselves in Audrey from “Matcha,” you know?

Fun fact of the day! The drink that said "Audrey" and the drink that said "Veda" were irrespectively consumed by those characters' actors. "Audrey" was written on a caramel Frappuccino, which I gave to Camille, and "Veda" was written on an iced matcha latte, which I myself downed while doing the dishes.