Anticlimax

Disclaimer: the sentiment in this post was just a snapshot of how I felt at the time. I have since been informed that my words are quite hurtful and I now regret this post. Rather than delete it, I have expanded on it below in an attempt to be more nuanced in my expression.

The first semester ended on kind of a sad note. The group projects were supposed to be the climax, a first chance to meet people and form bonds with those you will work with in later years and maybe even in the real world. But for me, it was a disaster.

It was an absolute shitstorm of pissing contests, misalignment, emotional insensitivity, lack of ambition, resentment and mental breakdown. Seeing how the other groups made work with actual artistic value while ours was riddled with imperfections made me feel like I achieved nothing this year. Like I was just a fucking noob who had gained nothing. No skills, no direction, no talent and no companions. But I know that’s bullshit.

I’m not where I thought I’d be, but I’ll get there. I guess I just need to be patient. And surround myself with people worth working with.

EDIT (Jan 30, 2021):

Today, a group project member texted me to tell me how she was hurt by the above blogpost. I admit that I chose my words poorly. Especially the last sentence: “And surround myself with people worth working with.”

This sentence implies that the people I was on the project with are not worth working with. While at the time of writing I believed this to be true at least for one single member of the group (not the one who messaged me), I no longer see it this way. I believe none of these people are inherently not worth working with. It’s unfair to make this judgement at the end of the first semester of a 4 year school program, and even towards the end it is a horrible thing to say. And who am I to say who is and is not worth working with?

All of the group members brought valuable ideas to the table and contributed to the project. My main problem was not in the what people brought to the table, but in how they did it. I’m 24 years old, and I have experienced working on and leading big projects with large groups of people and doing so in a respectful and enjoyable way. This group project was much different from anything I’ve ever experienced.

From my perspective, most of the problems during the project stemmed from the behavior of one particular group member, who was very controlling and bad at communication and collaboration. I disliked this person from the start and I still do. Nonetheless, I have come to see that they are just human. At 18 years old, I was a lot like them (and I still am). I was quite arrogant, I had a big fragile ego, I didn’t know how to talk to people, and I wouldn’t have been able to recognize when other people had an idea that was better than mine. I still struggle with a lot of these things.

During the project, this person was the one who was operating the camera. It was clear to everyone that he was quite skilled at it, but it also became clear to me that he chose this role for a different reason as well: control. By being the person who presses start and stop on a camera, he had a powerful instrument he could use to gain the advantage in a discussion about how we would film a certain scene. He did not have to listen to people argue why their idea was better than his. He could simply refuse to shoot something until they agreed with him out of frustration. This made another group member break down and become overly emotional to the point where it was impossible to continue working with them. It felt incredibly unjust to me: the perpetrator gets to continue working with the group while the victim is outcast because they cannot keep their emotions under control. And I felt unjust as well: I was enabling this perpetrator by not calling him out and taking a clear stand against his behavior.

The next day, the exact same thing happened to me. As the main actor in the film we were working on, it was incredibly confronting to see how bad the first version of the edit turned out. It had a lot of problems, though not unfixable, but we only had a few hours left before we were supposed to submit the end result, which was to be shown to all ~100 fellow students in our program. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I feared being completely humiliated in front of all my classmates. I don’t remember exactly how I expressed my dissatisfaction with the edit, but I do remember this person taking it very personally that I did not like the work he did, and that I wanted to have some influence over it. He said that I needed to let go of control, like I would need to on a real movie, ironically all the while never letting go of the keyboard and mouse that controlled the edit, just like he did with the camera the day before.

He offered to listen to my feedback and make changes based on it, but I was overly emotional and the changes I felt were needed were both so extensive and subtle that it would be impossible to put them into words, especially in the state I was in. My proposal was to give me the footage and project file so that I could independently test out changes to the edit on my own laptop and then show them to him so he could decide to incorporate them in the master edit. I think he believed I wanted to make my own independent version of the edit, building on all the work he had already put in. Even after I tried to assure him this wasn’t the case, he rejected my proposal. Other people in the group tried to negotiate between us, but failed. Eventually I gave up and tried to sit with the group and give verbal feedback, but it felt pointless. I didn’t believe I could actually have an influence over the outcome, so I left.

That afternoon, I went to an intake session with a psychologist to start up a diagnosis process for autism and ADHD. I vented about how misunderstood and isolated I felt, and I remember feeling so empowered when the therapist talked about neurodiversity not as a disorder or handicap, but as a different way of being. My sensitivity, my energy, my emotional intensity all seemed to be assets to my dream of being a filmmaker and actor. I felt great.

When I got home, I saw that the final version of the edit had been sent over, and I broke down again. He had left in several shots where I looked directly into the camera, the worst and most basic mistake an actor can make. Obviously, I’m no professional actor, but it felt like he was crushing my dreams. I asked if there was really no way to cut these blatant mistakes out of the edit. He said that the whole group together had decided that this was the best possible version of the edit. What followed was a heavy discussion where he (perhaps rightfully so) accused me of expecting too much from film students and not being able to relinquish control (all the while ignoring his own inability to do so). I responded by saying that I was unhappy that I wasn’t allowed the chance to make some changes, and that while he did offer me the chance to give feedback, it felt impossible for me to do so because I was overstimulated. I then admitted that I was seeing a therapist to possibly diagnose me with autism and ADHD, and that could give some more context as to why I couldn’t give feedback the way he wanted me to. This was his response:

“I think if you can’t do that then the audiovisual sector isn’t the right place for you. It’s teamwork and letting things be out of your hands. A director has to be able to do this most of all. But to blame everything on us is not the way to go.”

Now I don’t know about you, but the contrast between how my therapist made me feel about neurodiversity and how this guy’s response made me feel about it is pretty strong. I get that perhaps he didn’t mean that people with autism and ADHD don’t belong in the film industry, but really, how could I interpret it any differently?

I told him how shitty his response was to what I had said and that it showed zero empathy. All I got in return was another person in the group chat telling us to stop fighting. It felt dismissed, like no one was willing to stand up for me, completely isolated. I felt like this guy had succeeded in getting everyone on his side, making them believe I had disrupted everything and that I was the one who had made this project a horrible experience. No one validated any of the emotions I was feeling, no one reached out to ask how I was, even after they had seen me break out in tears that day.

To top it off, a few days later, I privately messaged the guy to ask if there was any way he could strategically hide the shots of me looking at the camera because it was very confronting, and I said I would be forever grateful to him if he did. He ended up hiding one of the instances with a visual effect and even ended up finding a different take of a shot that worked much better in the edit overall. I thanked him and didn’t think much of it, but afterwards, I couldn’t help but feel like he could have made these changes all along. Why did he feel the need to humiliate me in the group for asking to change these problems? Why did he feel the need to make me feel like I was the one who wouldn’t let go of control? Why did he feel the need to use cheeky emojis in his texts, to seem unbothered by the conflict, when I was trying to be truthful and vulnerable, to show people what I was going through?

I realize now I had much greater expectations than I should have had of a bunch of kids who were straight out of high school. I should have realized that when I was 18, I had no emotional intelligence whatsoever, and that it had taken me 6 years to get to the point I was at now: still quite inept but at least somewhat sensitive to other people’s emotions. I should have focused on what was in my control. I should have realized that if I had shown greater care in the way I expressed myself, I would have been met with less resistance and I would have gotten more of what I wanted. That I could have tried to subtly teach some of the things I had learned to these kids who still had a much longer way to go.

But is that really the lesson I should have learned from this story? That when I’m dealing with a person of this nature, I should accept them and expend all my energy trying to appease them and keeping myself under control? I think not. I had a right to freak out. I had a right to lose control when I was clearly being manipulated by someone who was incapable of showing his own true emotions. I would like to have been able to control myself, but I do not blame myself for not being able to. Sometimes, too much is too much. I will not let anyone invalidate my experience. Some will say this story doesn’t seem like a big deal and that I am blowing this whole thing up. Some will think I’m weird and neurotic and arrogant. Some people from school will read this and think twice about working with me in the future. I regret having lost face over this issue by complaining about it to so many people and on this blog. But I do not regret speaking out and making my emotions be known, no matter how much they were invalidated by other people.

I would like to emphasize that I have written this from my perspective and I have little direct insight of how other people in the group experienced this project. I’m sure it was difficult for them as well. I don’t want to invalidate any of their emotions. If anyone feels like I did, please reach out and let’s have a talk, there is nothing I would like more.

I don’t know who will end up reading this, but if you’re from my school, here are a few messages to you.

To the guy who caused all of this: I’m sorry if this post feels like another personal attack. I have wanted to talk to you many times since the project, but I have been unable to. I even wrote you a few letters that I didn’t dare share with you. I hope one day we can talk so I can let go of this.

To the other group members: I’m sorry for my initial blogpost, you didn’t deserve that. I’m sorry for this blogpost as well, because it might not come across much better, but I hope you understand why I needed to write it. I still feel like you could have tried more to understand me and to stand up for me when it was clear I was having a hard time.

To everyone else from school: I hope you can look past this if you ever need to decide to work with me or not, but I understand if you can’t. I’m a strongly emotional person, I have high expectations and I can be very difficult to work with. But I hope you can also see my qualities and know that if you are honest with me, we could make a great team.