Living with a Teenaged Filmmaker

We have conversations like this one all the time …

Me: I noticed your green eyeliner in the bathroom. We should probably get you a new one, because this one doesn’t have a cap.

Daughter: That’s all right. I’m not using it.

Me: Good.

Daughter: It’s only for my videos.

Me: Oh. Well, we should get you a new one then. You don’t want to get an eye infection, or you won’t be able to wear your contacts.

Daughter: No, I don’t use it on my eyes. (Points to area around the mouth.) It’s for here.

Ah. Good to know. Which leads me to …

You know you’re living with a filmmaker when:

1. Your intimate belongings show up in a YouTube video, usually occupying a role that renders them unrecognizable. (This is a good thing. Trust me on this one.)

2. You’re playing your favorite smash-em-up game (aka Babo Crash) on your iPhone while on the treadmill, and you get a request to “Please. Mom. Turn down the sound. We’re filming and all we can hear is crash, smash, bang.” Accompanied by an eye roll, a head shake, and a “Geez.” Which is quite effective at making you feel suddenly like you’re the teenager, and not the other way around.

3. Your green bed sheets are hanging around all over the place. Works almost as well as a professional green screen, apparently.

4. Everyone is walking around with hand drawn, dark green (see conversation above) mustaches and goatees. (Gender is irrelevant.)

5. Your small portable fan is used to blow up this very weird suit, thereby transforming your daughter’s best friend into a sumo wrestler superhero.

6. You’re sitting in your favorite reading chair, and suddenly outside the window you see someone running back and forth, carrying a tripod, chasing or being chased by someone not carrying a tripod. This keeps up for at least ten minutes. No-one ever tells you why.

7. You’re resigned to strangers on YouTube seeing parts of your house in various states of mess, disarray and incompleteness. You know with certainty that the day you don’t make your bed is the day your bedroom will become a set. (If you’re like me, you’ll still forget to make the bed occasionally.)

8. You have learned never to grab a glass of something that looks enticingly drinkable without first sniffing it, then calling out, “Is this real? Can I drink it?”

9. You have butterscotch pudding on your grocery list because it’s good for those vomiting scenes. But tapioca pudding will work if butterscotch is unavailable.

10. You get so used to strange sounds, yells and screams coming from all over the place, you forget to explain to the person you’re talking to on the phone until he or she exclaims, “What on earth was THAT?”

In fact, you get so used to such strange sounds, one day you hear screams coming from your daughter’s room, and it takes you a full 60 seconds or so to realize the sounds are for real, after which you rush upstairs to find that your daughter has somehow managed to get her finger wedged under her dresser. (She likes to tell this story to top everyone else’s “my parents just don’t care” tales. So now you know. We are that uncaring.)

Yes, I live in a rather weird and wacky world. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

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Tagged as: filmmaking, videos