Inspire Me, October (Explosions in the Sky)

This was meant to be a short film that my friend Stephen and I started writing together last September. With a $50 dollar budget, we had spent the course of October and November 2010 shooting this. The original story was about a ten page script, designed for narration.

It's been over a year, and I could never find the right way to put it together. I have finally settled on telling the story with no narration and hardly any clues as to what is going on whatsoever to test my skills as a visual story teller.

The great thing I'm starting to learn about my ideas, is that they're forever changing and growing. We started this idea as a story about a girl who finds herself lost, and changes and grows with the seasons. I now find it this underlying love story of a girl who is lost and then realizes what she had in front of her the whole time.

In retrospect, the concept stays relatively close to it's original plot, but just with the evolved emotion that I feel when watching this back. The memories of working with another person finally who shared a passion such as my own, and getting to reach out and work with a girl I had sometimes seen around school, (who is now one of my great friends), was in itself, an inspirational experience.

"Inspire Me, October" is in fact, the story of a girl who doesn't know what she wants out of life. One night, and inspirational message catches her eye when she's walking through the tunnel. She takes a picture of it, which is sort of her way of remembering things and noticing the beauty that others sometimes can't see. The next day, she finds a new message in the same place...and the next, and the next. She starts to depend on this daily message as a source or her own inspiration and self improvement. She befriends a boy that sits in the tunnel and paints, and assumes that it's him leaving the messages. By the end of October, she confronts him and he explains that he really doesn't know who is the mysterious artist. On October 31st, the girl walks down to the tunnel and finds a note and a burning candle in the usual "message" spot.

The messages stop.

This is when reality hits her that she needed that extra push..that person, or that subtle reminder to keep going. This is also when she realizes that everything she had been looking for was right in front of her own face. She then turns to inspire the world, and lets go of the past (the pictures she had taken).

The rest of the story, and possibly some of my favorite details of it, I'm saving for an even bigger story which I hope to complete and share with the world one day.

The song is "Your Hand in Mine" by "Explosions in the Sky", I thought it was such a powerful song that spoke for itself so that is why I chose it.
I'm submitting this video as a part of my cinematography portfolio submission for film school. We'll see where the future takes me :)
It's never too late to lasso the moon.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Inspire
• Me
• October
• Alexandra
• Wolf
• Stephen
• Volkman
• Explosions
• in
• the
• Sky
• Your
• Hand
• Mine
• Boone
• North
• Carolina
• Spray
• Paint
• Photography
• Appalachian
• State
• University
• Silent
• Film

[iggirl101]

Glad to call you all classmates! Best wishes for your acceptance into film school. Great and inspiring work!

[angel80439]

WoW...

that was beautiful!

you are amazing,keep doing films like this (:

[Kyliexmichellex]

simply beautiful-3

[odondietcokes]

bloopers.



[divesformegalodon]

Awesome job Alex. It was such a pleasure to meet you. Look forward to your future works of art. L

[cocounsil]

you're kind of a film genius.