A young boy, no older than 12 wakes up in a pitch black room. He hears and sees nothing, but there is a small breeze in the air that feels to be coming from a vent. He gets up confused an slightly frightened from sensory deprivation. He hears a disembodied voice engrained with low boomy vocals which make it difficult to locate. ” Log on to the computer in the room and research video editing within the half hour. If not I cannot guarantee your safety.” the voice said in a monotone serious manner. A light flickered to with the all too familiar sound of a booting computer. The boy frightened,but still curious walks over to the computer screen and sits down. The seat is cool and the cushion is well worn, but comfortable. ” This seat is oddly familiar along with the mouse and keyboard” the boy thought to himself. He logged on to the computer with a desktop with only one program and some video clips. Final Cut. The boy, already knowing that final cut is a editing program decides to either jump straight to the program and learn it by doing or goes to google to look up how to tutorials.
Jump to page- The boy quickly gets frustrated not going anywhere. The voice told him he has 5 minutes left. The boy panics from the stress and finds himself with a severe lack of skill. END
Google- Gets on google and quickly looks up final cut. He tries to open up facebook in another tab in hopes one of his friends can help him, but is unable to do so. A pop up on the computer reads ” You must do this alone without getting helped directly. The boy panics, but Comes upon many tutorials which can guide him through. He opens the program and starts fiddling follow guides. He learns about importing the video and making basic cuts. ” 10 minutes left child” the voice boomed. The boy quickly slapped the three clips together and added transitions. Imported some music from random website. The voice comes back ” I see you have learned the basics. Good, but now l need you to advance. Learn How to do a light saber effect in 2 hours.” The boy visibliy annoyed and scared, turns back around to his computer. There he sees a pop up saying all sites are now unblocked. Good luck. He has a short sigh of relief then hopes onto face book searching through his friend messaging each one that might help him start. After sending messages he starts to google. He comes across a special effects discourse forum with many active members. He decides that asking them how to get started . He writes ” HOW DO I MAKE LIGHTSABERS.PLEASE HELP IT IS IMPORTANT!!!!!” or ” Hello everyone, I was wondering where the best place to learn how to do the light saber effect would be. Thank you ahead of time.”
All Caps Response – The boy gets no comments for 30 min. Then the comments are just complaining about his politeness and lack of respect for forum. His friends don’t seem to know how to help him so he is stuck and just draws a blue rectangle. ” You have sealed your fate…”. END
Polite questioning- The boy look in excitement. That only after five minutes there are already ten responses to his plea for help. One user goes so far into depth and wrote out a quick step by step tutorial. Written plainly and simply. Another user posted rotoscoping techniques to get the light-saber to move. The boy is exhilarated. He sees a clip of a guy swinging a wood stick around on his desktop. Assuming this man is who the boy must give a lightsaber he imports the clip into final cut and gets to work. ” 45 minutes left.” the voice from nowhere called out. The boy panicked. He hit a wall. This time it was a software issue. Final cut ran into some trouble. In a mad fluster he quickly google the exact error found on his screen. Luckily it was a common error. So there were many other instances of it on the internet. After 10 minutes of wrestling with the program the boy finally got it working again. He put the final polish on the sabers for the video then exported the video file. ” Good!” The disembodied voice boomed loudly through the dark room. You are ready!”. ” Ready? Ready for what.” the Boy thought. The rooms walls suddenly collapsed to reveal a movie set. All the people are hustling and bustling around the set, and the boy is in the middle standing their confused. He heard the disembodied voice, but this time it sounded more real. He looked to his left. Then to his right. He sees a man in a high chair gesturing him to come here. The boy comes to the man in the high chair who he assumes would be the director. ” Your the first one that has been able to learn those skills in that short amount of time.” the director said with a serious tone. The Boy still in shock from the whole ordeal just shrugged shyly. ” Id like you to work on this film. We believe you could be a bigger asset to this film than what you think. I have it planned that you will be working directly with the editor. ” The Boys eyes widened and quietly nodded his head.
brentshafer 