When the world gets crowded with too many ideas and obligations, I think back to sitting on the couch with my family, pizza in hand, watching our weekly movies. Film has been something consistent throughout my life – it is what I go back to when I need to wind down and enter another world. As I have grown older with studying film as part of my major, its meaning to me has evolved. What I once saw as purely a different world, I now see as a form of art that is influencing my daily life. I have begun to admire films as more than just a creative storyline, but as a beautiful insight into how people think and view the world around them.
I created my own short film recently, and doing so made me notice that every clip and every item in a scene has a purpose with an emotion, or idea, tied to it. I began to build daily objects and scenes into something beautiful, by thinking of them in the eyes of a cinematographer. What I once saw as a dead leaf on the ground during fall, I now look at and see how the light hits a tree, gloomy, and backlit, while a single leaf falls down, blowing slightly in the wind, and gracefully touching the ground. I think it is more than just finding something aesthetic to look at, but creating a meaning behind different things that stand out to us as humans. To me, that leaf was not just falling, but going through a brief journey that only I was able to witness in that moment. These thoughts may seem outlandish or disconnected, but film is a form of art, just like any other, that inspires creativity and motivation.
Recently, I went to see Wildwood (2026) in theaters and was in awe the entire time of the skill it took to create such a beautiful piece of work. It is on track to lose money in the box office, which is bewildering considering all the complaints we hear about a lack of original ideas or too much AI use. This film was handmade and took the creators well over 10 years of development to produce. While I was watching, I could not help but think of how films have been making me feel. I kept admiring the people behind the camera any time I saw something that appealed to me. I continued to see details on the screen and realized that the people who made the work put everything on the screen with a specific intention. It is truly a beautiful thought to me that we get to see these stories through the eyes of people other than ourselves.