8 Millimeter

Basement rock stars. We were on our way. Most seniors spent their free time playing football or rugby, cheerleading, going to a coding club, or playing video games. But us? We made films.

Destiny would be the most popular among us if that was an option for anyone near our group. A natural beauty without trying, she was the only one of us who people outside our group gravitated towards. She could have been a model or an actress, but she was much too ambitious for that. She was a camera girl through and through. She had an eye for detail and could capture the prisms in a raindrop on a leaf. But her passion was capturing unsuspecting classmates in unusual habits. All those under-level followers gravitating towards her were unaware that she was filming their pen clicking and mismatched socks.

Liam was our sound guy. A scrawny twig who still tight rolled his jeans. He couldn’t catch a ball or hit or kick one. At least, I think he couldn’t. He may have just not wanted to. He spent every P.E. class sitting in the bleachers, listening to his ear buds, and writing music of his own. His dream film to make – comedies about high school narcissism. And although we all mistook him for a weakling, he showed us what his biceps were made of when he held the boom pole for hours without a sigh.

Casey was our sci-fi guru. He was probably considered a weirdo by the cheerleaders, but a genius by the math teachers. His room and all his gear bags were plastered with alien stickers, so of course, his dream story was of an alien invasion that would conquer earth and start restoring it to sanity. He was our editor and digital designer, although we hadn’t gotten that far yet because we hadn’t had funds yet for a high-powered editing computer, until now. All the car washes, yard mowing, and candy sales had gone towards camera first, then sound equipment, then lighting gear, and a computer for scripting our stories. But he had been practicing on tablet apps and we knew he would know what he was doing.

Jordan loved horror. He was our screenwriter and always had to resist the instinct to add a flesh-eating monster chewing the head off a lover in the rom coms I enjoyed writing. Casey said it was a sign he was crushing on me, but I hadn’t really thought anything about that. Maybe after we finished submitting to this contest, we would have time to look around and decide if any of us wanted to go out. But right now, we were focused on our goal. Next month was the film challenge, and the winning film would be streamed on TV! That was us. We knew it.

Oh, and I was A.D. – the very organized person to keep us on track. I was in charge of breaking down the screenplay, getting the cast to set, and making the schedule, writing quirky romantic love stories with predictable endings on the side. Liam says predictable contradicts creativity, but I found it freeing to know my structure and put my focus on all the crazy scenarios that the same step-by-step storyline and predictable ending could evolve from.

Since we hadn’t had money for an editing computer, our choice in what film to make had been easy. We made all of them. We took turns while we saved up, writing everyone’s script, cutting classes when we needed to, and shooting all of our films. Now we had five hard drives of three years of footage, and we finally had enough yard money to buy the editing computer. So we all made an agreement. We’d put all the films together and then we’d vote and submit the best one to the contest.

We discussed going to the computer megastore with the warranties and the geek squad. But Destiny found an ad online for a computer that sounded perfect, and it was five yard cuts cheaper than the megastore sale. Since Casey was already starting to concoct a story about teenagers murdered at the door of an online sale inquiry, we decided to all go together to pick it up.

There was something we couldn’t quite put into words when we turned onto the street. The cars were all older model, but the buildings weren’t particularly run down. The teenagers in the street were dressed different. They had on neon colors and sweatbands around their foreheads. One was carrying a radio over his shoulder that was as big as a desktop computer. Some were playing foursquare and others were sitting around listening to Run DMC. No cell phones were visible. But mine dinged. So I looked down and replied to a message from my mom, letting her know we’d all be back to our house in time for dinner. She was ordering Door Dash.

We knocked on the door, and it was opened by a man who looked like a lead guitarist from an 80’s rock band. He had long curly hair that feathered on the sides and wore a black leather jacket with fringes down the back and sleeves. A chain connected his earring to his nose ring, and his fingers were embellished with turquoise stones. His jeans had roses printed down one leg, and his python boots had steel toes. I thought he might break out in a Motley Crew song, but he just sold us the computer instead. He was friendly enough and told us this was the best computer to put together our films. It already had the editing software on it, and he had used it many times. He said this computer would take our filmmaking to another level.

We got back to my house in time to see the delivery driver rolling out. We grabbed our salads and went down to the basement with our new toy. Since Casey was the editor, he was the one to volunteer an opinion on how it would get done. “Alright, three rounds of quarters. The one with the most quarters in the cup gets their film edited first.” So we all started tossing. And even though I’d never beat Jordan at quarters before, that night I did. Maybe Casey was right. Jordan might be going soft on me.

“And the winner is rom-com!” Casey announced. I handed the hard drive to him. An excited chill went through me as he plugged in the computer. We’d spent three years filming everything we dreamed, but none of us had ever seen our footage before on anything larger than our phones. We were about to see our work in action and to see it come together into a real full film.

Casey grinned, “Ready” Then he hit the power button and everything went black.

I don’t know how long we were out. But when we woke up, the computer was gone. Liam gasped. “Someone knocked us out and stole the computer!” It couldn’t be. My parents were upstairs. Right?

“I’ll call mom,” I said. I reached for my phone. But I didn’t have one. None of us did. “OMG,” Destiny replied. “They took everything electronic.”

I opened the door of the basement and heard music coming from upstairs. “Billie Jean is not my lover...” My mom was singing to it while she swept the kitchen.

“What’s going on?” I asked mom. She stopped sweeping and said, “Why do you ask?” “OMG”, said Destiny. “Your house is different.”

On the wall above the kitchen counter, a telephone with a curly cord was hanging up, like it lived there. A dial radio with a clock sat on top of the microwave. A square TV with rabbit ear antennas sat on a TV stand across from plaid couches I’d never seen before. All of our tablets, laptops, and cell phones were missing.

“Where’d all this stuff come from?” I asked. “What stuff?” my mom replied. I tried again, “Did the Door Dash guy come inside?” Mom looked at me blankly. “The door what?”

Suddenly in the basement, Liam screamed.

We all ran downstairs, leaving mom perplexed in the kitchen. “I think I found our movies,” Liam stammered. “OMG,” Destiny replied.

Liam was standing in the middle of the room holding several reels of tape that had been filmed on 8 millimeter.

We all moved in closer and carefully looked at the strange reels. I asked, “What are we going to do?”

Casey grinned. “Got any scissors and tape?” I nodded and ran out to get it.

Then we all got busy.

The next month was different. No signs of computers or cell phones or cars from our century. Suddenly all of our classmates were tight rolling their jeans, so Liam fit in. The music we were used to didn’t seem to be available, and the only way to listen to any at all was whatever was on the radio. It seemed to be all songs from our parents’ generation. But it was kind of growing on me. I even got into the fluorescent colors. And sometimes at lunch recess, some of the kids with tall hair would start dancing on their heads, so that was cool.

After school was still the same. We still went to the basement everyday and worked on films. Our work was just different now. Instead of working with digital footage, we spent our evenings holding tapes up to the light to try to see what was on them and then taking a guess at it and cutting and taping them together. We weren’t completely sure what it would look like, but we knew we were entering the contest.

And then the deadline came. We knew because it was on our calendar. We had no access to online submissions, so we knew we had to drive our masterpiece to the studio where the contest was being held. It was two towns away in L.A., but we knew we had to get there.

As Casey lay the final piece of tape, he asked, “Are we ready?” We all nodded and piled into the Trans-Am that had somehow replaced my Tesla in the driveway.

We drove the open highway as liberated as we had ever felt. All our creative efforts were rolled together into something that was about to go national. “Woo hoo,” I cried, with the wind blowing my hair through the manually rolled down window. I popped in a cassette of Duran Duran, and pumped my fists in the air in excitement. Jordan looked over at me from the driver’s seat and smiled, and I saw it for the first time. It was true, he was cute. He had dimples I hadn’t noticed before. “We did it!” Destiny hollered. We all cheered.

Then we swerved into the parking lot and ran towards the studio with our tape reel in hand.

Inside, the producer looked up at us and smiled. “What genre is it?” he asked.

We all looked at each other. We weren’t really sure exactly how it had gone together. I answered, “Can we just watch it and then decide?”

“Sure,” he replied warmly.

He put it in the projector. The lights went out. And there it was. Our rom-com horror movie about an alien invasion that wiped out teenage narcissism and selected new leaders based on unusual classroom habits.

“Bravo!” said the producer when the film was over. “Now this is original. How did you do it?”

Jordan laughed. “We improvised.” He took my hand and led us all out to my Tesla that was waiting in the parking lot. We opened the doors and all of our cell phones were waiting for us in our seats.

“Thanks Motley Crew computer guy. Thanks for taking us back to real filmmaking.”

We all cheered and drove into the L.A. sunset.