Nice Background Noise

Two aspiring filmmakers go through separate paths of creativity, leading to drastic changes for both creators' careers.

 

              Unhappiness is insignificant to a picturesque farmhouse or a whimsical creek. It manipulates one more than they want to change themselves. They are strayed from their intentions, while its loveliness lingers. 

           A kid sits at a landscape. He enjoys what he has here. His protests do not arise despite what he has said. It's good to be happy now. 

           The kid had focused on how things look for several months. He had several opportunities to do something, but his brother was seen as close as anything the kid desired to have. 

           The brother wasn’t outspoken or vibrant, but the kid knew few enough things about him to expect goof h. 

           This was normal. Having enough small facts to expect a larger outcome. His results didn’t speak for his thoughts, though.

           “There’s a sound crew for every film set?” he asked his brother. They were at the video rental his brother worked for, not on his hours. His brother was more capable then and handled his interests with a precision he didn’t often carry. 

           “Yeah, Alex, most big movies need something like that to capture the scope of the film they’re making. If you’re just starting though, you might not need a crew.”

          As these words passed over Alexander, he focused instead on the small television in the corner. A buzz transported itself to his ears and he thought of a moment made only from this sound. An attempt at silence, but an intentional failure. He felt this would be worth enough to make and that he could do something, tracing the path from his mind to the dust-covered rays.

           His brother, Francis, felt the same whimsy through movies. Besides him, Alexander’s ideas were made from plastic art and green screens.

           “Did you want to rent something?” Francis asked. 

           “Oh yeah,” Alexander said, “what movies do they show you in film school?”

           “All the ones in the public domain. I wouldn’t mind watching Citizen Kane again.”

           “Oh yeah, that's cool! I don’t think I’ve seen it yet.”

           The time Francis spent deciding and renting a movie, which he had seen enough times to gain ten percent of the joy he had the first time watching it, was something more than his past weeks has been. These actions expressed something Francis had less of, but this instance gave him enough. 

         The heat of an evening Francis felt gave him memories of the thoughts Alexander had. Potential to capture beauty was there. But most things had left. Now, the energy it took to move his eyelids for a blink felt wasted. But Citizen Kane didn't waste energy. Neither did getting Alexander to watch it. It was something that changed how a person would act and think. It escaped Francis recently, but that film achieved it. 

           When Alexander saw this film, he thought different than Francis. It was an experience they were better with, but Alexander could do something new. 

           Francis wouldn’t give much thought to these moments after they happened. But, Alexander had turned them into something he saw solely in his room. He had reminders of the A.V Club, kept himself away from disorganization and other things in his room. Alexander himself didn’t feel quite like this. He returned to a pressured state. Around his mind, he scorned himself for not knowing Citizen Kane was good and began writing down techniques and observations. 

           Alexander spent the night trying to give his mind to this. He thought to blame his parents for killing his art, for keeping his mind from the place he needed it to be. Going to thoughts that scorned where he was and where he had been, but never saying anything. This would surrender his thoughts to being true, and though he did know his family caused his problems, he never wanted to say something was true. 

           Alexander loved this. How his thoughts spun, never thinking a destination was necessary. It was difficult to see how problems could end this way, but he talked around these things and made them something else. Now, he was bitter, but other people have caused this and kept him from a better place. 

           He sat for a while after, with a license of someone else’s fault. But Alexander could see his anger end. As if he planted dynamite in an ocean, just to keep it from the mountain but still cause a fire, only for it to make a giant hole where it wasn’t supposed to be. It was almost where it should have been, but he would have to tell the dynamite company that it didn’t work, even though it was tailor-made for the tunnel. He would now be known for never having tried to make the tunnel and asking the company for things that Alexander wouldn’t condone writing down, as the metaphor was going to a dreaded place. 

           When he had gone to sleep, he saw odd apparitions around him. They haunted something, only Alexander couldn’t tell. They demeaned him and intimidated him, but in theory. It was a failing theory, though. And as he was in peril, there was nothing he could do. An odd peace fell here. 

           Alexander’s dream-terror was not a thing he could keep. The obligation he felt of going to a religious class which started at empty hours to keep his parents’ mild-mannered had separated this thought. The class wasn’t compelling, but there was substance. Knowing other people were doing the same thing, inside someone’s house. There could have been contempt there or knowing what they were saying. Becoming invigorated to do something because of these lessons, become better or at least different from a few words at hours which no one knew of. 

           It lifted itself above every intention it had. To Alexander, that is. But Francis saw something. Alexander thought. Francis didn't transcend here, but it amplified his mind back to itself. 

            “Where are the bad people, Alex? If they’re here, and we can say they’re bad- good people would be here too. Could that make us responsible for how our lives are influenced if we know if people are good? That would mean we could choose too; and all these things we ignore, take our virtue further.”- Francis thought. Driving to their school felt like other mornings. 

           Nothing significant was in Alexander’s mind later, but he missed something. 

           “Um- Isn’t AV Club today,” Francis asked him. This wasn’t common, as they tried making school separate from everything else. Francis kept himself from these rules, though. But it still kept Alexander out of place. 

           He saw something bland. It annunciated everything bad and his eyes strained. Something empty, the thing beginning to fade. 

           “Are you going?” This intricate portrait of his despair was taken away. 

           “No, I don’t think so. I’m pretty sure I could make a film without spending my time on that.” His astounding representation of universal, human fears could resume. Francis remembered having these odd features before. He used to hold imagination captive, force substance from it, and call it art. But, forgot that last part recently. Alexander was doing a cinema a better justice. 

           At home, Alexander couldn’t tell that Francis thought this. His mind was already somewhere else. Sticking to a screen. It was more than emotion was to him. The people were real, without metaphor. And this took his head’s pain of all the troubles of real-time, the problem with turbulent marriages, vague religions, forced care, unconfronted egos, and slammed them onto a script and into an actor. His nerves weren’t flinching at the thought of his imperfections now. It could make such a good movie. 

           “But where is Francis? He’s liked film longer than you have, but he’s not watching them.”

           “Well, he doesn’t have my dedication-“

           “Like how you don’t have a dedication to the church-“

           “But this is different, you know, I enjoy films.”

           “So, does that mean you’re happy now?”

           “Film makes me happier than what you're talking about.”

           “How many other people are happy because of what you’ve been doing?”

           “Watching films helps me do that.”

           “So go do it.”

           It was a hateful reason. Yet the camera’s action would project a force towards acceptance. This surged Alex to move out of detesting, and act. However, it was night. And filmmaking is more expensive at night. Alex could tell himself to wrap his thoughts for the next day of shooting and cut the crew's pay if they worked late. The analogy was his, and he was ignoring the fact that the author already made an analogy for him. 

           Francis didn’t do this though. He drove, and saw a small house, pleasant fields of things, and didn’t need something else to make him feel okay. Driving past places that felt like art, better ways of seeing things than telling people that it was there.

The stillness of the scenery didn’t feel real. He wasn’t feeling an absence. He was realizing life as someone who saw, but never was. It was beautiful. 

           He wondered if the after-life was this way. Without the hardships of a journey, but a joy. Except for some major plot holes in this perfect paradise. 

           Parked in a place people stopped stopping in, Francis saw an old lady reading on the porch of a cheap house. This could be peace. And if this old lady, who had found a period of rest had lived generations longer than he had and was in a house too ruined for her to deserve, that could not be what she wanted. And Francis saw the world giver her libraries of the most splendid fictions, in palaces of riches and spoils of the Arabian princes. This would keep her happy. And she wouldn’t change. 

           Francis filmed something driving back. More stills in motion, of people living as if the Devil hadn’t ruled the world. It showed shattered houses, melancholy children, and imperfections in the suburbia he drove through, so it wasn't ideal. But his final shot inside the video rental satisfies the art he made. 

           “This should be a fair showcase of people trying to make the world better,” he said. “Because most of these are really bad movies," he said, panning over the shelves, "But that doesn’t keep them from being watched by people who want to skip over their bad parts for the runtime of the film. And even this it’s a very bad example at what I tried to do bok at this,” and he filmed a hodge-podge of disaster, war, and bleak documentaries.

“Those are much more accurate ways to see the world. I don’t think people alone should be in charge of the world, though. Far too many deserve to be happy.” And then, he stopped filming. Spent his shift looking into the movies that gave him a reason to be good. He felt the Passion films of Christ read a different book than the ones his parents tried teaching him but liked them for the good parts. 

           When he went home, he thought about reading the New Testament but figured he liked the Passion films for their production more than anything. Art was usually based on images. 

           "Hey Francis,” Alexander said the next day, as he was watching another movie in the late afternoon. “Have you ever tried to make a film.”

           This was more interesting to Francis than it should have been, considering what he had done compared to what he called his work. 

           “I’d say so. Like a movie, but the pictures just aren’t moving. It’s still there, though.” He dug through his bag for a box of wide-framed photographs. “See?”

           It did look like a film. One of a river flowing through a waterfall, with people in the waterfall’s pool who took a lot from the photo’s beauty as they were bathing there. It made Francis think if he had considered if this was exploiting the homeless, or just unethical.

           “Yeah, you captured sight of intended raw nature, its purity being tainted by people,” Alexander said. 

           “Hm- I think… I probably have better ones than that, just wait.” What he collected would have been good enough for Alexander. It was an art he may have even needed. Francis thought differently, though. 

           “I’m not sure if I should show you these now. They’re not…great for what I’d want.”

           “Is your style supposed to be different than that?” 

It was thoughtful. What was art supposed to be? But how Francis saw the pictures wasn’t that. It was a suspended sin, an action which cursed the beauty of the world. 

“No. I’d like something less graphic.” His collection wasn’t offensive. Having taken the photos meant their portrayal was his, though. 

It was curious enough for Alexander to being something. In no way was the start of this an incredible achievement, but Alexander was a freshman. To see something begin wasn't selfless, but it was a vision! Something that nearly looked like someone else. 

“Something less?” he thought and observed what the picture was. An old lady, reading on the porch of an old house. “Less than this. Less than what someone does.”

He didn’t understand Francis’s meaning. While Francis only saw something with too little care. Francis couldn’t tell what it was for. But with their thoughts battling what truth was there, the creator saw the ending of his art. 

           The art of a beautiful world reached an apex for the brothers in their thoughts. With separation from conflict, they concluded. And Alexander saw what beauty was. To reject the natural image you have taken from the world is a woe that depletes the source of beauty itself. To Alexander. While Francis found peace already in mind.

Now, the story is being given to the artist. Francis hadn’t been able to find how to make the world peaceful that night. So, he no longer thought to create. Instead, Alexander set to satisfy the ideas that Francis helmed. 

           Mid-October

           Francis was showing me the films he had last night, though strangely. There was only one I saw. It felt incredibly raw, and enough to have some merit. He took it without dignity, though. Claiming it wasn’t even art and too graphic for his style. I didn’t understand what he meant, so he showed me his film-making process at his sets or just the locations. There was substance there. Only kids playing on a basketball court, or someone driving slow enough, you knew it was for the scenery. 

           “Something less graphic?” I asked him. 

           “Too close to home. You’d like something else more.”

           Next, he drove to the river which crossed from the town into a forest. The road far from the river, but I understood what he meant. There was less of the world here. The river sounded like a passage from the things we keep ourselves from. Something to be better for. Only, it was a bit far for me to hear it. It seemed to Francis to be enough, though, and he told me what he thought he should do for his films here. 

           “Anything but what I think they should be. I’ll never be able to control what’s beautiful. I can only see that it is, and show people how great those things are.”

           He did something pretty profound later. To tell all the awful things that he won’t be with them anymore. Going through the river to the place it should take him. I haven’t enjoyed the world as much since he left, but why is more than enough for him. 

           I found his letter near the river later the next night. He addressed it to the old lady reading on the broken porch. 

 

           Alexander wasn’t able to write the things he needed to or should have that night. He meant to be sincere with his audience, but he had none. This allowed him to stop knowing what was real for him. As there is an audience for this, it should be addressed that Francis Schumacher had not left. After a year of an art project to detach himself from the worldly materials of what made his ideas, and abstaining from any media which decided to focus on the world, he decided to enlighten the things he hadn’t before. He was later carried to a hospital and went into the care of mental supervisors among other patients until his stability was reached. His letter, which Alexander found hidden under a mattress no longer being used, knew what Francis had needed. 

           Francis missed what the lady reading on a broken house meant. He traded the peace he felt with people like her for something too damaging for an innocent person. He knew what to do once he saw he didn’t enjoy the things he had, though. 

           To send off his letter, he tried redeeming himself through his final remarks. 

           “I imagine now, hope more, that God will forgive me for wasting my life. And bless me with a new one, where I can be happy when I deserve to be. 

           “Please, remember the world can be enough, that most art fails to do it justice. For you, who read this because you love someone who had given up on doing the real right thing, are made to know your life is better than the stories it makes. 

           “I’ll see you when I come back with a mind that can appreciate you enough to deserve you.” 

          Alexander’s thoughts didn’t revolve around his art anymore. For what he envisioned, Alexander resorted to what he saw. Art was easy, and it was anything he could make something with. Except now, the things he could make a thousand stories with didn’t seem the kind of thing he should make. 

           The letter brought something unpleasant. Solemn speeches of things he didn’t know other people felt. But, it was easier to accept what he saw now.       

           With his parents at an ironic dinner table, they both arrived in some sense. His mom hadn’t chosen to say it, yet she had acknowledged it. 

           “We’re visiting him there this Friday, so you won’t be able to go to your AV club. You’ll have to get used to that for a while. They won’t allow minors to visit either, but you should come.”

           “I'll be there if that’s all I could do. I’m not in AV anyways.”

           He never joined AV. Thinking of how Francis would have wanted him to make something of his thoughts brought a potential regret to him. How was Francis now, though? Getting better. Alexander changed his mind and stories to know this. Perhaps AV would be interested in a project to help him, Alexander thought. Something to keep him from throwing away his beliefs when he gets out. 

           The artist decided to make something for a purpose better than himself. He’s earned the right to tell one now. 

           

November

           My last entry wasn’t everything it should have been. Since then, though, I’ve looked over some of my values, and- the past month has been more than enough for me to say this, that I should tell myself what did happen. I didn’t go with Francis to see his sets then. It’s a fictional event, and I made it because it seemed entertaining. But I should keep saying what I know because that was just to keep myself from being even more fake than I have been. And as someone who admits to shying themselves away from real issues, I disagree with what Francis did. He was in an awful state, and he did admit to being irrational because he wouldn’t think of films that way. 

           He wasn’t putting his skills to use, though. I don’t know what these skills would be, but I wasn’t unlike him. There’s a lot I could say about what I think he felt, and what I think led him to this. It’s still pointed to the same place, though. 

As long as I keep using stories to feel with problems, other people will need these stories too because they’re written to keep things from being terrible. I have to make them real to be true ideas, though, or else my mind isn’t producing what it needs to be. At least, that’s my theory. I’ll call Francis late this week. It should clear things. 

Alexander only barely thought was Francis’ confinement was like. Had he, sorrow would have been realized for Francis, the unfair ranks the mind gave to visions, giving thinkers so few possibilities when they stopped. They talked before this ever came to mind, though. And Francis put himself in Alex’s life this time. 

           He saw narrow tunnels, shelving opportunities he had passed up and throwing the shelves into an abyss before he could reach them. It was focused on the end, though. Which he catapulted to as the receiver was answered. 

           “Hey Alex, have you looked back at those films I made since I showed them to you? I might have seemed out of it then, but it’s not as bad as I said it was.”

           “Oh yeah, I said those films have incredible potential. For the past weeks, I’ve been coming up with a feature we could propose to the AV club.”

           Simplicity for people. Not the ideas themselves, but the life they lived in. Residing in these thoughts of bringing ambitions to life brightened the corridor for Alexander, with a clear view of its luminous end. 

           Francis would still be lost in a separate world, going the way he was. Except he knew his world seemed better. He looked at books and movies since he’d been gone, and been glad for them. Going against the fears of an empty, unexplored world for those who would never venture into unchartered waters, Francis talked about art. It placed him in waters, ice-cold with a frost that threatened to stop his blood flow. Instead, he warmed his body exactly in time. He could see the Northern Lights from a view the wilderness only knew. 

           Was this what death is like? The cold felt right enough to ignore the natural warnings. And his body never knew it could feel so peaceful. 

           “Don’t forget,” he said to Alexander, “Making this film means more than a cheap sci-fi movie. It’s not an excuse to do the right thing. You care enough to encourage people. You’ll do that because it’s more than a flimsy excuse.”

           Now, Alexander sat on the edge of his tunnel, standing on the ledge to the light. The light was shaping now, turning into something he knew he saw. He felt the space there, it was anything. Stepping from his tunnel gave him no security. But out of all the shelves that lined the corridor, he only saw an exit here. 

           “My time’s almost up Alex. Can you make this film, or just join a club of something with your skills?”

           “It’s the best thing I’ve ever had to do. Ignoring this as I have been would be awful to anyone who knows it. Well, bye, Francis. I’ll get it started.” 

           Francis felt a warmth from the Northern Lights now. The water kept feeling comfortable. Above all this though, he chased the body’s failure away, taking all his energy to stay peaceful. 

           “You going to leave now?” the secretary asked him. “They’ve been waiting almost a month to have you out.” She told him this with an especial emphasis on the fact that she was real. Unfortunately, not the Northern Lights. Instead, she was a much better reminder that real oceans in the Arctic Circle would be too frigid to romanticize. 

“Oh,” he said, “I didn’t think much time had passed.” 

She told him real directions to the real room people who weren’t constructs were. Though walking across halls of pure, white linoleum hadn’t convinced him it was staying real. Instead, he slipped into a place where he didn’t need to be confirmed but knew he was. This nearly put him into another metaphor, but he had to reach a door before he continued. Walking free to mess up and to stay real. 

           The scenery fell into his mind on the drive home. Made his parents feel more like real people than he had thought them to be. 

           “Has Alex talked much about making any films at home?” Francis asked. 

           “Yeah, he’s been looking over those stills you have him. Those weren’t anything… obtrusive, were they?” his dad asked. 

           “No, I didn’t have the perfect tolerance for some things is all.”

           “I’d like to look at them sometime. I’ve been meaning to get back into movies for a while, I never have the time is all. “

            “Have you ever seen Citizen Kane?”

           Francis was placing himself on another edge, but only one he had to squint to see. It felt more to him like being gently given the moment he had. Taking it, and using it without thinking of the abyss. 

           Meanwhile, Alexander was forming the broken movie Francis left him with and building a feature. A cameraman walking through Purgatory’s peace, losing the camera as he judges himself on the final days. 

           It was a completed idea. Belonging to Francis. With Alexander’s mind gluing the bits together, finding its important moments, an making them. It became more than an unclear string of things someone cared about, but something to know, to talk about. 

           Francis came in and saw a single story. Had it been his hard work? Or only his ideas?

           “You’re going to film this?”

           “Of course! That’s why I kept working, or else I would just think something nice.”

           Something nice. Francis wanted that again. He had thought of accepting the niceties he got, and he had become quite the professional at it. It would mean a deal more if he could create this again. 

           “AV should be happy to give us what we need for this. The Drama kids would like this too-“

           “Or it could be in a style raw enough to not need actors, only a regular neighborhood.” 

           “Yeah…” said Francis. 

           They gathered what they needed. 

 

           Early December

           It’s frigid here, but the fact that trees are dying should make this film much more poetic. Francis has been scheduling a lot so AV and the rest of our crew don’t have to get so cold, so I don’t think he quite gets the artistic advantage, but I can easily work with him. So far, scene one has worked well enough. For Francis at least but- I make films now. I’m glad.