Prompt: 7. Late nights (bonus points if it’s pre-Grad Night or early relationship bc I’m sad and pathetic and it’s all I want 🥺)

it's been soooo long but i finally cranked this one out! i challenged myself by writing pre-grad night, and it was so much fun :-) i hope you love it! here's the ao3 link.

"What do you mean you've never seen The Princess Bride?"  Patrick mock-glares at David, then turns to Stevie.  "Did you know about this?"

Stevie shrugs, and the look on her face tells David that she cares less about the actual fact that he's never seen the movie than she does about bothering him to death.  "I can't say it's ever come up, but I naturally assumed he had."

David leans against the counter, supporting himself on both hands as he lets his shoulders slump.  It's nearly closing time, and this conversation is ridiculous, but he feels comfortable.  The store has only been open for a little over a week, but the three of them have spent so much time in this space together that it feels natural, standing at the counter and getting harrassed by the two of them.

"David, you have to watch it.  I can loan you my copy —" Patrick actually does seem invested in this, which David, God help him, finds endearing.

"There's no DVD player in my room," he says, engaging because Patrick's eyes are sparkling, and he's got his top two buttons undone, and no undershirt on, and when he gestures, the shirt gapes a little too wide, giving David a glimpse of collarbone.

And because Alexis and Stevie have hooked David on the idea that maybe Patrick might be…not totally straight.  And not totally not into David.  He's helpless to the maybe of it all.

Which is why, when Patrick says, "Well, Ray's not home tonight, why don't we have a little watch party?"  David finds himself agreeing.

Stevie agrees too, when David shoots her a sharp glance, and if Patrick has any reaction to that, he doesn't show it.  But Stevie is, despite all her and David's constant bickering and blustering, an excellent friend, and she understands without him having to say a word that watching a movie together, alone, on Ray's awful floral couch, lights off, probably a bottle of wine open…it would destroy him.

"Great," is all Patrick says.  "I have a thing after we close, but you guys can come by at like eight?  I'll make Jiffy Pop."

There it is.  Already.  The very idea of Patrick standing at the stove making popcorn the old-fashioned way is enough to make David want to bury his face in his hands and squeal.  This is why he needs Stevie.

"You're my buffer," David explains to Stevie on the drive over.  He's got two packs of brand-x licorice, because the single sad convenience store in Schitt's Creek actually can't afford to sell name brands, and a bottle of wine he pilfered from his mom's stash before they left.

"I don't think he's planning to sleep with you tonight," Stevie says mildly.

"My emotional buffer."  He curls one leg up, putting his heel on the seat of Stevie's passenger seat.  "Because I really like him, and I don't — if I'm left alone with him, like that, I'll definitely say something stupid and ruin our friendship, and then he'll pull out of our contracts and I'll run my business into the ground and be back to only having one friend."

Stevie snorts indelicately.  "Who's saying I wouldn't take Patrick's side in the divorce?"

He ignores her, watching out the windshield as they pull into Ray's driveway.

Patrick greets them at the door and leads them to the kitchen to pour the wine; David stands at the counter and observes that Patrick actually has made Jiffy Pop.  Something about it seems weirdly nostalgic to David, despite the fact that he himself had a professional popcorn machine growing up, and it makes him ache in a way he doesn't want to poke too closely.  This is probably a relic of Patrick's growing up.  David can almost picture tiny Patrick, standing on a chair to reach the stove and observing the foil rising into a ball for him.

While David has been lost to this thought, Patrick has found three stemless wine glasses and poured the wine.  Stevie unearths a big bowl from the depths of Ray's cupboards for the popcorn, and together the three of them troop to the living room.

It's so much worse than David could have imagined.

There's just the couch — there's an armchair, but it's beside the TV rather than pointed at it, and there's nowhere to move it to.  They'll have to share the couch, which has a horribly ugly, probably handmade and supremely cozy-looking afghan draped over it.

Stevie and Patrick claim the ends of the couch, leaving the middle for David, which is reasonable — they're both better friends with him than they are with each other, and it's the first time David has experienced that dynamic in his life — and a nightmare, because now he has to sit beside Patrick.

Patrick is unbothered, because it's normal to sit squished on a couch with someone you only consider a friend.  Or because he's just completely unflappable; thus far, David has yet to see him express emotions outside of frustration, focus, and varying shades of amusement.

David plops between them, and his thigh grazes Patrick's.  He tries to squish closer to Stevie, and she pushes him back.

"Are you uncomfortable?"  Patrick turns toward David a bit, pushing the whole solid line of his thigh against David's.  This was a mistake, this whole thing.  David should have come up with an excuse not to come.  A prior engagement.  Dinner with his parents.  A Sunrise Bay viewing party.  A trans-continental flight.

David gives in when Patrick hands him the popcorn bowl, cradling it like a child and trying to ignore the line of nerves lit up where their legs are pressed together as Patrick queues up the movie.

David focuses on the screen studiously, like he'll be tested on it.  Sips his wine, crunches his popcorn, lets the vaguely European fantasy hijinks onscreen take up as much real estate as they can in his mind.  It's an easy movie to focus on, funny in a way that means he can see why it's such an icon.  Romantic enough that David can't help but be a total sucker for it.

It's not until midway through that things get dire.  Wallace Shaw has just laughed his last victorious laugh and keeled over, and Patrick nudges David, taking the mostly-empty popcorn bowl and setting it on the coffee table.  He reaches back for the afghan and tugs it from behind their backs, and passes the end to Stevie, so that the three of them are snuggled beneath it, and David is the middle of the coziest little sandwich.

It's a nightmare.  He glances at Patrick, who's watching the screen with a little smile, and then he looks back and turns that little smile on David, and David takes a deep breath and turns back to the screen.

It's fine.  What's changed, really?  That they're warmer now?  They aren't cuddling, or anything.  Although Patrick looks cuddly to the max in his little blue sweater.  It's almost definitely synthetic and remarkably soft for the fact.

David sneaks a glance at Patrick out of the corner of his eye; he's so relaxed, so in his element.  David feels like he's never seen Patrick out of his element.  Is everything his element?  David is struck with an urge — or maybe a quiet desperation — to find the borders of Patrick's comfort zone.  To prove that they exist.

David's borders are everywhere.  They're under this blanket and along the side of his thigh and at the bottom of his empty glass.  His comfort zone is smaller than his body, and so everyone is always rubbing his edges.

But with Patrick, he instinctively minds less than with…a lot of other people.  Surely that must mean something.  Maybe not something cosmic, but…something.

It gets even worse.

David is focusing as studiously as he can on the movie, doing his best to ignore Patrick's thigh against his, his shoulder against his.  Wesley is mostly dead, and David is caught up in the fantasy peril, he is, and then Patrick yawns, pressing his whole palm up to his mouth, and slumps and rests his head against David's bicep.

It's unacceptable.  To be that casually touchy with a friend.  A coworker.  David wants to shove Patrick off and shout that there are rules about how to treat people you don't want to date.  He wants to hold him close, wrap an arm around him and whisper and gamble on that…maybe he does.

Rather than doing either of those things, he turns his head slowly to glare at Stevie in total panic.  She meets him with an excited little smile.  "Yes," she whispers.  "Love this for you."

"Don't rush me sonny," the healer guy onscreen says.  "You rush a miracle man, you get rotten miracles."  Like having an unrequited crush on the guy sleeping on you, David thinks sourly.

"Hmm?"  Patrick lifts his head from David's arm to look at him and Stevie, and David immediately misses the warm weight.

"Nothing," David says too quickly.  Patrick frowns, and he doesn't say anything but he supports his own head for the rest of the movie.

David knows he's in too deep now, because he wants to tug Patrick back to him.  He wants to hold him, and this isn't — normal, for David, is what makes it horrible.  He's not used to slowly growing to like people.  He's not used to liking people, flat out.  Attraction is something he can handle, the invisible line that draws two people together for a night or a week or a month, keeps them in the same bed until they find new beds to fall into.

But this?  Getting to know someone, feeling warm in his gut when they smile at him?  Wanting to know someone better, and wanting them at the same time?  This is new.  And to have these feelings for Patrick, who's so buttoned-up and straight-laced, nice and smart and clean?  Even if sometimes David thinks… 

Because you don't lean your head on someone's arm if you don't like them, right? 

David loses the whole finale of the movie, trapped in his head with Patrick beside him, warm and soft and sleepy.  Imagining things too far and then reeling himself back in — like what if after the movie, Stevie left, and David and Patrick put in another movie and fell asleep sweater-to-sweater on this couch?  But no, stop, because Patrick…who knew if he felt even a spark of what David felt?  He couldn't risk this, their friendship, their business… 

"So, what did you think?"  Patrick asks over the incredibly sappy song rolling in the credits.

"Mm," David says, trying to think of something to show he's been paying attention.  "I normally am not a fantasy fan, but young Robin Wright is a gift."  God, that makes him sound like he's into Robin Wright, what the fuck is wrong with him.

Patrick's invisible brows raise half a millimeter and his mouth curves with something akin to fondness as Stevie pokes David harshly in the shoulder, no doubt ribbing him for saying something so stupid.  It's hard to care when Patrick's expression is making David feel hopeful that maybe, maybe what he feels between them is double-sided.

"That she is," Patrick says.  He's alert enough, but he looks sleepy, his eyes ten percent warmer and wider than usual.  David wonders what it would be like to have a night like this and then stay; to let Patrick nod off against his shoulder and not wake him.

"We should get going," he says instead.

Patrick follows David and Stevie to the door; Stevie is already halfway down the driveway, having said her goodbye, when Patrick puts a hand on David's elbow.  "We should do this again sometime," he says.  "I had fun."

For a second David lets himself imagine that this is the end of a date.  That he could smile and pout and lean in and Patrick would lean too and they could kiss and hug, that David could leave feeling warmed up inside.

Just for a second.  Because this isn't that.  "Me too," he says, and despite the bite of just friends when he's so desperate for more, he means it.  He'll take friendship with Patrick, movie nights and long days at work, anything he can get.

He turns and joins Stevie, and Patrick waves from the doorway as they back out.  David rolls his eyes but he waves back, and it's strange — he does feel a little glow, as if they did have a date.  He turns to Stevie, and she's smiling at him just a bit, just out of the corner of her mouth.

Don't rush it.  Maybe, maybe, he thinks all the way home.

OKAY DEATH NOTE 2017 THOUGHTS

Under a cut for length not spoilers because honestly who fucking cares

-So the movie commits many sins but principle among them are two 1) The Death Note is basically just a vehicle for gore porn, pretty much indistinguishable functionally from any other 'Cursed Object' type horror movie.  There's lip service paid to the suspense trappings of the original work but Wingard is clearly much more interested in the kind of brutal deaths that can be extracted from the Death Note's flexibility of options and far less in the moral quandaries that such an object would create, and Wingard's pre-release interview that expressed an interest in creating a Hard-R version of the story was at least for me a clear indicator that he was Wrong for the project, since grisly deaths are not what makes the story interesting, or in fact are even a priority.  The fact that the default way the Death Note kills in the original canon is a heart attack (by all intents a fairly 'clean' method of death) is there for a reason, as is the 2017 version's curious decision to specifically omit that detail.

(In Wingard's interview he expresses a desire to include the "adult themes of anime" which specifically include "nudity, swearing, tons of violence" to him, which suggests that his familiarity with the medium starts and ends with Ninja Scroll and nothing else and that he probably didn't actually watch Death Note outside of a cliffs notes he had an intern scribble out or something)

2) And this is much more fundamentally antithetical to the original work, but Light's transition from Villain protagonist to Reluctant Misunderstood Anti-Hero.

in the original canon it's certainly possible to find Light's end goal aspirational, even if the actual empathy with Light himself doesn't last very long, and part of the paradox of the manga/anime is Light being a pointedly and unmistakably Terrible Person while also being a compellling and interesting protagonist.  Even if you don't necessarily want Light to succeed, watching him operate and maneuver through various obstacles on the path to his goal is fascinating on its own terms.

Death Note 2017!Light, by contrast, is given great, excruciating measures to make him Highly Sympathetic to the audience, and indeed we are meant to interpret him specifically as a Good Kid Who Took A Wrong Turn and is now Way In Over His Head.  His mom died at the hands of Joe Chill a crook who got away with it, giving him a nice clean Batman justification, he's bullied at school, is extremely concerned with his actions being percieved as good and perhaps most crucially, tries to limit his body count outside of criminals (American!Light reacts extremely negatively to the mere IDEA of killing his dad when he calls Kira out, whereas canon!Light, while certainly not enthusiastic about the idea, was right there weighing the pros and cons, reasonably prepared to do so if he proved to be enough of a problem).

He doesn't even use the Death Note initially of his own volition; Ryuk has to be there to straight-up Devil on His Shoulder-him into it (in a hilariously over-the-top introduction, more on that later), and Misa (sorry, MIA) is constantly pushing him to go darker when his resolve wavers, and indeed seems way more into the idea of using the Death Note on a visceral level than Light is.

All of this is contrary to one of the crucial points of Death Note in its original form-- Light was a person of privilege surrounded by a loving family and with infinite potential who had absolutely no reason to have become a power-hungry arbiter of "justice" with a god complex, and yet when a bit of power happened to fall into his hands that's exactly what he became.  He didn't need a traumatic event or a bad situation to become Kira, just the possibility that he could do it and get away with it.  

But even in a Death Note adaptation where the first death we get is someone's head being cut off at the jaw with a fucking ladder, this seems like too dark a conclusion for Adam Wingard to come to, so even when his body count starts rising we get constant excuses and reminders that he's A Good Kid, Honest, He's Really Trying To Do The Right Thing He's Just Got So Many Bad Influences That Pushed Him This Way and in the face of the original work's frankness (and Wingard's talk of "adult themes") this just comes off as cloying and toothless.

Nevermind that in light (heh) of the extremely whitewashed nature of this adaptation, the almost fetishistic effort of the writing team to sanitize Troubled White Teen Boy Light Turner (Who Has His Whole Life Ahead Of Him) of as much active culpability as possible is certainly quite telling isn't it

Okay that out of the way, time for some just Random Bad Shit lol

-just so we know exactly what we're dealing with and what director Adam Wingard thinks is cool one of the very first shots of the movie is Misa (sorry, MIA) at cheerleading practice but see she's not like THOSE OTHER SHEEPLE who are all ACTUALLY PRACTICING AT CHEER PRACTICE SHE'S A COOL DISAFFECTED REBEL BECAUSE SHE DOESN'T WANNA PRACTICE AT CHEER PRACTICE god look at these PHONIES all having fun and laughing OUR GIRL IS SO COOL SHE'D MUCH RATHER SMOKE AND LOOK BORED WHAT A BADASS -And like later in the movie she's all to Light "I'M A CHEERLEADER nothing i ever did mattered before i met you!!" like then WHY ARE YOU A CHEERLEADER WHY WERE YOU THERE IN THE FIRST PLACE?????? YOU CAN DO LITERALLY ANYTHING ELSE MY KIDDO -So the Light/Mia relationship is kind of a mess because not only do they try and play it up as the emotional lynchpin of the narrative (no, for real) but the reversal with Mia being the one who becomes super obsessed with the Death Note (even to the point where she tries to set up Light to die so she can get it) and her being the Other Bad Influence on Light really manages to make even the original Death Note's bad track record with its women fucking shine by comparison.  If the original Light/Misa dynamic was basically a Joker/Harley setup written by someone who understood that it's an abusive relationship, new!Light/Mia is the Hot Topic Romanticized Joker/Harley but also Joker is the Real Victim here apparently -Like they literally get off to using the Death Note together and make out while scanning the internet for targets-- like there COULD absolutely be a place for there to be commentary on Bored Well-Off White Kids abusing power for the fun of it, but again there's no room for insight when there's those practical gore effects to throw around -Dear god there is not a HINT of subtlety in this fucking thing, an especially egregious stylistic choice when the manga/anime is (while ofc prone to Light's.... extreme and borderline comically evil reactions) overwhelmingly grounded with-- especially compared to many anime and manga in general-- comparatively moderate supernatural elements and touches, especially in terms of its visual detail and art direction.  Wingard's Death Note on the other hand, has thunderstorms AND flickering lights that accompany Ryuk's appearances until they... don't (ARE YOU PICKING UP THE SUBTLE FAUSTIAN ELEMENTS HERE AUDIENCE????????), a trip through a Spooky Dark Abandoned Mansion that features a close-up of a busted doll accompanied by a creepy child's laugh NO REALLY IM SERIOUS and deaths that frequently end in torrents of blood because that's what we're really here for apparently -Speaking of a lack of subtlety, while I get the logic in casting Dafoe for Ryuk he ends up being both underutilized and a sadly uninteresting choice, since the apparent direction for him to go more Norman Osbourne really takes away any degree of ambiguity Ryuk has as a patently neutral party in the whole thing (at least as far as the original goes; this really wants to set him up as a Red Herring possible antagonist in a thread that goes absolutely nowhere and ends up meaning nothing).  Like I think he could have worked if the performance was a little lower-key and he had not-terrible writing to work with, but at least someone's having fun in this mess so wth -L fans are gonna be fucking pissed off because HOLY HELL they didn't not fuck him up either -Canon L: Sherlock Holmes but with sweets instead of hard drugs and also he sits weird sometimes -Death Note 2017!L: Fucking Weirdo Asshole With Bizarre Rituals galore and also he can't sleep without Watari awkwardly singing the greatest hits of Celine Dion SHUT UP IM SERIOUS because okay -So the wierd race bullshit definitely doesn't stop at Light because the framing of L (who is played by Keith Stanfield, a black actor and OH BOY I CAN ALREADY HEAR THE IMNOTRACISTBUTS COMING IN) is pointedly, aggressively antagonistic.  Rather than giving Stanfield the collected, analytical, somewhat awkward detective characterized in the source material, Death Note 2017's L's erratic tics and behaviourisms are meant to make the audience find him uncomfortable rather than compelling in his own right, because autistic-coded super detective is such an interesting and not at all gross and played-out formation of a character.  Because again, the movie has no real interest in being suspenseful or focusing on the cat-and-mouse game, L figures out that Light is Kira with very little deduction or buildup, and indeed aside from a pointedly brief midpoint conversation and a completely stupid and pointless chase scene near the end, the two barely interact, so the whole aspect of two strong wills directly competing within inches of each other is tossed aside. -Also WHO THE FUCK THOUGHT A SCENE OF A YOUNG BLACK MAN BEING SLAMMED INTO A TABLE AND NEARLY CHOKED OUT BY A WHITE COP WITH ANGER ISSUES AND A SELF-RIGHTEOUS STREAK IN DEFENSE OF A GUILTY WHITE KID WHO ULTIMATELY GETS AWAY WITH IT WAS A GOOD IDEA TASTE WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT -Speaking of poor taste we couldn't find more than one Japanese actor for a speaking role (Watari, natch, with barely a handful of lines) BUT WE CERTAINLY COULD FOR THIS SEX CLUB SCENE WITH A ROOM PACKED FULL OF DEAD JAPANESE PEOPLE IN FETISH GEAR -Ryuk himself also looks Fuckin Bad and they know it since the overwhelming majority of his shots are him BLURRED THE FUCK OUT IN MIDDLE DISTANCE OR OFF IN THE CORNER -"many people have tried to write the 4 letters in my name into the Death Note but nobody has gotten farther than 2 :)" your full name was literally in there but ok -"all the deaths have to be physically possible" Ferris Wheel magically collapses for no reason to facilitate a death -"I need L's full name to kill him, I'll just take control of Watari with the Death Note EVEN THOUGH WATARI IS A FUCKING ALIAS" and also if this was in fact his real name and L knew it WHY WOULD HE HAVE LET HIM GO AROUND WITH HIS FACE UNCOVERED LIKE????????????????????????????????? -Reveals L without ceremony during the nightclub murder investigation/pretends like there's a mystery and a reveal to be had for the audience and awkwardly attempts to re-enact bits of the original introduction to the character anyway

Ultimately there's more that I'm probably forgetting but wow Death Note 2017 is just impressively dumb.  Like, original Death Note could get pretty dumb especially in the last half, but that was more a case of working itself into a corner over time and its reach extending beyond its grasp on occasion.  This just has no aspirations to even try.

Like, shit, I honestly don't like Death Note all that much but I can at least appreciate that it has some weight to it and made an effort to build a complex character-driven narrative while proposing a thoughtful moral paradox, which is more than I can say for the 'fans' who wanted to adapt it and decided this was the best possible approach lmao

L.A.D.S.

Whats up tumblr its your boy! i say that like i have tons of followers, i do not, this is to the 150 of you who have been following. i use to post directly from IG but my link isnt working. so from now own im gonna be posting articles on the work i do, with the exception of the stuff i cant contractually talk about.. ill be going over the project, from shoot to edit and post some BTS when available, as well as the camera, and lenses i used. hope you guys enjoy and without further ado i bring you the first post.......

Project: Music Video

Song: L.AD.S.

Artist: The Honey Farm

Location Edinburgh, United Kingdoms

Director/Cinematographer: Douglas Ferguson

Editor: Douglas Ferguson

CONCEPT:

So a bit of back story i met THE HONEY FARM while i was in Scotland working on my documentary entitled “beats and bagpipes.”  I met them through a mutual friend of theirs who i connected with on Tinder of all places. It really was fortuitous, as i was shooting this doc i kept running into alot of male artist,  and couldn't find not a single female rapper and then boom i found three. Went to interview them and knew they had something, they reminded me of a female version of the beasty boys.

and its not intentional on their part its just their swag.. seriously 

that was not on purpose, it wasnt till after i edited the music video that i saw the similarities between that shot and the one from the beasty boys video.

So fast forward a few months later i was coming back to Scotland, to give a lecture on being a working filmmaker and to hang out with my friends. the girls contacted me about shooting the video for this song and the concept they had and i thought it was brilliant. The song deals with Toxic masculinity LAD/BRO culture in a satirical and sometimes sadly truthful manner, as a man its hard for us to see the dumb and often hurtful things we do and say to women, and so to that effect the ladies thought it would be a good idea to do some gender reversal where they dressed as the titular LADS and they had some guys dress as ladies, the results were hilarious take a look at the full video:

While i would love to take credit and say it was the way the video was shot and edited that makes it worth watching, it was really all them, i gave very little direction and just worried more about blocking and camera position, my job was easy. the only footage that wasnt originated by me was the club footage which was shot after i came back to the states. 

CAMERA/Lens:

I shot with what has become my favorite combo.

Camera Black Magic Cinema Camera 2.5k with metabones speedbooster

Lens: Sigma Art 18-35mm 1.8

Format 2.5k RAW

this is hands down my favorite and go to combo for most projects, i rarely shoot with any focal length over 35mm, with my sweet spot being between 21-28mm on cropped sensors on a full frame id be between 35-85. with my sweet spot being 35-50mm. but for the bmcc you cant get any better. Sigma has stepped its game up with its Art lens series giving you clean crisp slightly cool images from end to end.  i shot in RAW because when it comes to this camera you wanna use all 13 stops of dynamic range, one of my biggest concerns while shooting were the weather conditions in Scotland which can go from sunshine to cloudy with the drop of a hat having that full dynamic range available meant that i didnt have to worry about my highlights, the trick to shooting with the black magic is really getting as much light to the sensor as possible or exposing to the right side of your histogram or ETTR:

This process allows you the best image quality and the most color range, its not something i always follow, but its good rule of dumb when shooting with this camera. 

EDITING/Colorgrading

the editing of this music video unlike others i shot was fairly simple mainly because i didnt really need to any kind of special effects like you would for most hip hop music videos, i just let the images and costumes dictate my cuts, for this video thought i wanted fast cuts and for the performers to be often mid sentence.

by adding edits mid sentence it makes the audience feel like they are going on a journey and apart of the narratives being told, my first edit actually had a cut every 4 seconds but i thought it was excessive and instead went for a 4-8 second ratio.. the song is unusually long for todays hip hop standards, with most songs falling in the 2-3 minute range lads clocks in at just over 4 minutes, so my plan was really to treat the video like an action scene in a movie, it really did help with the overall flow it. The coloring process was easier. i used one of my own LUTS(Look,Up,Tables) based on KODAK KODACHROME 64

You can purchase the package from me if you like it: https://sellfy.com/p/BhI7/

and i combined it with Red Giant Universes Retrograde

but before i that i had to color correct the footage and i wanted to do it based off the final look...so in Davinci Resolve i went:

using resolves LUT feature in a node i was able to adjust the RAW footage bringing down the highlights and the shadows boosting the midtones, to create the best footage to match the final look, this was the tedious part of the whole process as it required me to toggle on and off the LUT  to make sure the footage would look great and the skintones were fine.

CONCLUSION:

This was probably the funnest video i ever had a chance to shoot and look forward to shooting another with the honeys, hopefully stateside. hopefully you found this post informative ill try and keep them breath but no promises. hopefully someone reads these things. goodbye and good luck shooting.