Lights, Camera, Middle School!

by Jennifer L. Holm

  In spite of all the clown-terference, we got our shot. The picture was in the can.

  In film-speak, it was a wrap.

  Still, we weren’t finished yet. Even though we had shot all the scenes, they weren’t in any kind of order. Now I had to edit the raw footage into a movie.

  But I was ready to go!

  Besides, how hard could it be?

  There was an editing software program on the computer in the Film Club room. I fired up the computer and got to work.

  Editing a film was harder than keeping straight whiskers.

  I was trying to open stupid Locker when Georgie dipped his head down.

  “Need some help, Babymouse?” he asked.

  “In more ways than one,” I admitted.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t figure out the editing software! I haven’t even figured out how to download the footage. At this rate, the film will never be finished.”

  He tilted his head. “I’m pretty good at that sort of stuff, Babymouse. Why don’t I give it a whirl?”

  “Really? That would be so great!”

  “No problem,” he said. Then he banged on my locker, and it popped open.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  We sat down in front of the monitors. Georgie had the keyboard in front of him.

  “We shot a lot of video,” he said.

  “We did?” I asked.

  He peered at the monitor. “Looks like we’ve got close to fourteen hours’ worth.”

  “How long is the movie supposed to be?”

  “Ninety minutes, tops,” he said.

  I groaned. “We’re going to be here forever.”

  “Pretty much,” he agreed.

  We spent hours in the editing room selecting our favorite takes of scenes. Then we started cutting it together. It was slow going but worth it because when we were done, we had a rough cut of the film.

  The only problem was that it was long.

  Really long.

  Five and a half hours long, to be exact.

  “We need to cut some scenes,” Georgie said.

  So we started to trim our film down. It was painful. Every time I had to take a scene out, a little part of me died.

  After working late into the night for days on end, we had a new rough cut.

  “How long is it now?”

  “Four hours and fifty-four minutes,” Georgie replied.

  Le sigh.

  I had no choice. I had to be ruthless when it came to cutting scenes.

  But just as soon as we solved one problem, another appeared.

  It turned out that a lot of the audio from our footage was bad. As in, you-couldn’t-hear-a-word-the-actors-said bad. And, unfortunately, most of the bad audio was from Felicia.

  And she’d quit. Typical.

  “Maybe you can have someone else record her lines and dub them in,” Wilson suggested as we waited in the lunch line one day.

  I’d thought of that, too. “I don’t think it will work because we’d have to have that person re-record all of Felicia’s lines in the film. That would take forever.”

  I was still trying to come up with a solution when I walked into the editing room after school.

  “Babymouse,” Georgie said. “We have company.”

  Felicia was sitting right next to Georgie.

  “Bonjour, Babymouse!” she said.

  “Uh, hi,” I said.

  “So I understand you need me to re-record some lines,” she said.

  “Yes! We do! We can record you right now.”

  “Not so fast, Babymouse,” she said. “What’s in it for me?”

  I didn’t know what to say. “What do you want?”

  A crafty look came over her face.

  “I was thinking in return for re-recording my lines, I would get a producer credit.”

  “But you didn’t do any producing!” I exclaimed. “Duckie did everything.”

  “Your call, Babymouse,” she said, moving as if to climb out of her chair. Georgie’s eyes met mine.

  “Fine,” I said. “You can have a producer credit.”

  “On second thought,” she said with a smarmy smile, “better make it executive producer.”

  Duckie wasn’t very happy when he learned about Felicia, but I had other things to worry about.

  Musical things.

  I had given Georgie a playlist of songs from the Internet to use in the movie, and he’d informed me that we couldn’t use them.

  “But why not?” I asked him.

  “Can you afford to pay a royalty to the musicians who made the music?”

  “I can’t pay anything,” I said, shaking my head.

  “You have to get someone to make you original music,” he told me.

  That night at dinner, I felt overwhelmed.

  “What’s wrong, Babymouse?” my mother asked me.

  I explained the whole music situation to her.

  “Hmmm,” she said. “You know, your grandfather’s very musical. And he plays piano. Maybe you should talk to him.”

  Well, beggars couldn’t be choosers.

  I called Grampamouse on the phone.

  “What kind of music are you looking for?” Grampa asked me.

  “I need a few different pieces,” I explained. “Some romantic music for the love scenes, some sweeping music for the introduction, and something moody for the mysterious parts. Ooh! And something fast-tempo and galloping for the horse-riding scenes!”

  “No problem,” he said. “Why don’t you come over tomorrow and you can record me.”

  The next day, my grandfather met me at the door when I arrived.

  With his…accordion?

  “But I thought you’d be playing the piano,” I said.

  “The piano’s out of tune, and the tuner can’t come until next week. Besides, everyone likes the accordion. It’s classic!”

  As he started playing, I realized he was right. The accordion was classic.

  Classically awful.

  We had one last thing we needed to take care of, and that was the poster for the movie.

  I decided to design it myself on the computer. I stayed up all night working on it and was really happy with the result.

  But when I showed it to the crew after school, everyone had an opinion. And I mean everyone.

  “You should put the Eiffel Tower on the poster,” Wilson said. “That’s the best scene in the movie.”

  “You should put Bigfoot on it,” Georgie said.

  “You should put ME on it,” Felicia said.

  Even Squeak put in his two cents.

  “You should definitely put the boat shot on it,” he said.

  In the end, I put everything on it.

  Finally, we had a finished film!

  “We’re done!” I told Ms. Octavia at our next Film Club meeting.

  “Brilliant!” she told us. “We’ll have a screening at school two weeks from today.”

  We jumped up and down in happiness.

  “You should plan to dress nicely for the screening. The whole crew will come up onstage afterward to talk about the process of making the film.”

  If I was going to be seen by the entire middle school, I needed to look good. I needed to look great.

  I needed to look…

  I ran through the contents of my wardrobe in my head. My everyday look of leggings and a T-shirt was not going to work for the screening. They did not shout “Red carpet.” In fact, I had no idea what they shouted. Maybe “Cafeteria”?

  It was clear this was going to require a trip to the mall.

  I raced home after school to tell my mom.

  “Our film is going to be screened in front of the whole middle school! Can we go shopping?”

  “Babymouse,” she said, “do you have money saved in your allowance to buy a new dress?”

  I looked at the whiteboard on the kitchen wall.

  Ugh! What was I going to do?

  In the end, my mom took me shopping. (I
had to promise I would babysit Squeak for free for the next year.)

  Le annoying sigh.

  I wanted to find the perfect dress. Something that shouted that I looked “directorial.”

  The day of the screening, the film crew met at the theater. Everyone was in their best duds.

  “Time to go in!” Ms. Octavia announced.

  All the students were already seated when we walked down the red carpet on the center aisle. (Technically, it was more of a brown carpet that might have been red at some point. It was hard to say.)

  Suddenly, it felt real.

  “Excuse me!” a kid called from the crowd. “I’m from the student TV station. Can you spell your name for me?”

  “Of course,” I told him. “It’s Babymouse. B-A-B-Y-M-O-U-S-E. One word. Like Madonna.”

  “Not you,” he said, shaking his head at me. “I meant her.”

  He pointed past my shoulder.

  I turned around and almost choked. Holding court on the red (brown) carpet was…

  Le I-give-up sigh.

  I settled into my seat in the same row as the rest of the crew. Wilson sat next to me.

  “Are you nervous, Babymouse?”

  I nodded.

  He patted my hand. “It’s gonna be great!”

  Then the lights went dark. The title of our movie came up, and my heart started pounding fast.

  Then I was swept away by the action on the screen.

  When the film ended, the theater was completely silent.

  Clearly, everyone had been deeply touched by the film. I could already see the headlines for the reviews:

  And then it started. Not applause, but…

  …laughter?

  “That was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” I heard a kid hoot behind me.

  “Hilarious!” another chortled.

  “Loved the clowns!” said a third.

  The laughter just kept coming. Not a single kid in the auditorium could stop cracking up.

  I looked at my crew. They looked at me. I looked at them some more. They looked at me again. (It was like a bad montage sequence.)

  That was when I knew I’d gotten it all wrong. Middle school wasn’t a monster movie.

  It was a comedy.

  A bad comedy.

  Onstage, Ms. Octavia said, “Now for a few words from the members of the crew. First, we have the director, Babymouse.”

  ACTION! What the director says to tell the actors to start performing a scene.

  BACKDROP: Painting of a background scene.

  CAST: The actors.

  CLOSE-UP: A tightly framed camera shot.

  CRAFT SERVICE: Snacks on set for the crew and actors.

  CREW: The people who do all the behind-the-scenes work (basically, everyone besides the actors).

  CUT! What the director says to stop filming.

  EDITING: Putting filmed scenes together, cutting them where needed, so they form a complete movie.

  EPIC: An expensive costumed film with historical scope.

  EXTRA: A minor cast member who has a nonspeaking role (such as someone in a crowd).

  IN THE CAN: When a shot is finished. In the old days, film actually was stored in a metal canister.

  LOCATION: A real place (not a set) where a scene is filmed.

  MAGIC HOUR: Right before the sun sets, when the sky may be golden pink.

  PA: Production assistant, who helps everyone else on the crew.

  PRODUCER: The person who manages the production of a film. May also be a financier.

  PROP: An object used in a scene (short for “property”).

  SLATE: A board that shows the scene number, with a stick on top—the clapper—that is snapped down to mark the beginning of a new take.

  THAT’S A WRAP! Announcement at the end of shooting.

  Jennifer L. Holm and Matthew Holm are a New York Times bestselling sister-and-brother team. They are the creators behind the Babymouse, Squish, and My First Comics series. The Eisner Award–winning Babymouse books have introduced millions of children to graphic novels. Jennifer is also the New York Times bestselling author of The Fourteenth Goldfish and several other highly acclaimed novels, including three Newbery Honor winners: Our Only May Amelia, Penny from Heaven, and Turtle in Paradise. Matthew is also the author of Marvin and the Moths with Jonathan Follett.

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