I Wanted To Be the World’s Youngest Auteur.: College Admission Essay Sample

As long as I can remember, I've wanted to make movies. There was a short period when I wanted to be the starting point guard for the L.A. Lakers, but that passed quickly enough and I was right back to the more realistic goal of being a world-renowned filmmaker.I spent most of my adolescence crawling around on my knees to get low angle shots with a video camera that my mother found at Salvation Army. Discovering a beaten down old wheelchair, I immediately put it to good use as a dolly. I read every film book the local library had and made innumerable short films starring my mother and Patrick, a Shi-Tzu dog blind in one eye. The concept of fully realizing a story through not only language but also imagery and sound was irresistible. Despite the vast reservoir of self-acquired knowledge I'd accumulated, however, there was still much I had yet to learn. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that at the time.

When I began college, choosing a major was easy. Just as quickly as I declared myself a film major, however, I became incredibly disillusioned. I wanted to learn how to make movies, not sit in a classroom, listening to professors lecture for two hours on the spiritual significance of John Wayne's shadow in "The Searchers." What mattersI reasonedis having something to prove your talent, if you actually have any. And so, while eating ice cream in Denny's at three in the morning, I decided to make my feature-film directorial debut. The next morning I skipped all my classes and began to write the screenplay, writing virtually nonstop with only minimal breaks to eat, sleep, and watch "The Simpsons." Even that slid comfortably into the catalogue of film lore. Legend has it Paul Schraeder wrote "Taxi Driver" in three feverish days. It was perfect. I too was carving out my own place in film history right there in my cramped, cinder block dorm room.

Within a week of inspiration striking, a full 95-page script had passed through my word processor; the cheerful tale of a father, obsessed with fame and wrought with guilt over his economic failures, poisoning his own children in a frantic attempt to escape the mundane suburban life that has become his prison. It was my editorial on a media obsessed American populace and the descent of the American family into an abyss of consumerism a real feel-good kind of movie. After christening it "Welcome Home to the Evening News," I raised fifteen thousand dollars by working fifty hours a week, begging distant relatives I'd never actually met, and generally forgetting I was also a fulltime college student. My bank account swelled with more money than I'd ever had in my life but it was still less than the catering budget for a single Jean Claude Van-Damme action movieand I was going to make an entire film with it. Local restaurants agreed to donate food to feed my crew and my crewmostly hungry film studentsagreed to work for food. Kodak gave me a discount on 16mm film stock and I cast actors excited to be in a full-length feature film. On June 30, 1997, amidst a frenzy of optimistic dreaming and sheer enthusiasm, I called "Action" for the first time. I was eighteen years old. After the first week of shooting, I could feel myself crumbling under the pressure. By the third and final week, I had completely crumbled, the crew was threatening mutiny, and my lead actress was on the verge of divorcing her husband. Chewing a perpetual wad of Big Red gum, I tried to ward off a nervous breakdown through artificial cinnamon flavor and compulsive chewing.

Shooting concluded, editing commenced, and it soon became apparent there was not to be a happy ending. I'd spent nine months and fifteen thousand dollars creating a poorly acted, poorly paced film about a guy drugging his children. The rented camera had an unnerving tendency to go in and out of focus during critical scenes and the plot holes in the hastily written script were suddenly larger than the craters on the moon. The Sundance Film Festival rejected my brilliant masterpiece, despite my assertions that I was the world's youngest auteur, and I was forced to acknowledge that maybe I wouldn't be winning an Oscar that year after all. Maybe John Wayne's shadow was important. Maybe I didn't already know everything. To this day a video copy of the film sets next to a box of oil paints in my closet, an incredibly expensive souvenir.

Despite the dismal failure of the production, I don't regret doing it. Actually making a film taught me more than I ever could have learned in a classroom. Not how to direct actors, or how to frame a shot, but rather, I learned things my own ego at the time wouldn't have otherwise let me learn: The importance of qualifying ambition and passion with preparation, and the necessity of humility. Passion is a crucial ingredient to achieve virtually anything in life but passion alone cannot enable you to achieve what you desire. Instead, passion is the fuel that empowers a vehicle that is otherwise ready, prepared, and able. My greatest wish upon completing "Welcome Home to the Evening News" was to have the fifteen thousands dollars back to try again and do it right. The money was gone, however, and there was to be no second chance. I'd been passionate but I hadn't been prepared. I'd confidently sauntered into the center of town at high noon and counted to three, only to realize I'd forgotten to load my gun.

Since my ill-fated film production, I've continued to nourish my creative desires. I've written numerous theatrical plays and screenplays, directed significant theater productions on campus, and helped found the BYU Performing Arts Club. My passion for film and theater is something that will never subside. However, my interests have expanded in scope. Aware of the other elements necessary for creative success, I'm no longer interested in only the singularly artistic aspect of filmmaking but the legal and economic elements as well. Filmmaking, like any creative endeavor, does not exist in a hermetically sealed bubble. Rather, it coexists with business and law in a mutually dependent environment, success the product of synergy between the different parts. It is my goal to be a catalyst in that synergy. To be such a catalyst, preparation is crucial. With the knowledge gained through legal education, I believe I can best be prepared to help strengthen and facilitate the necessary relationships between imagination and commerce, art and law, ultimately resulting in an enduring contribution to the world of creativity which I love.