My summer movie
Ethan Wang

Ride on shooting star - The Pillows
Filming Note: 35mm Lumix S f/1.8 Lens; slow shutter speed to create dream effect.
In the last few days of the summer, an Alaskan Malamute visited Ethan while he was sleeping and told him that he had to make a movie before he left for college. Every time the dog would talk to Ethan, it would let out a gentle “arf arf” to remind the audience that it was not a talking dog but a dog that talked. The dream took place in an endless field covered in white tulips, and the dog introduced itself by laying on its back and blending in with the flowers. The dog began as a puppy with a soft white belly, but as the dream progressed, the dog slowly aged until it was fully grown and dark with age. Ethan asked the Alaskan Malamute what the movie should be about, but the Alaskan Malamute ignored him, slowly walking away from Ethan who remained rooted in place.  

Summer - Joe Hisaishi
Editing Note: Every beat to the song is a cut to the next scene in the sequence below. During the timelapse, create an interpolation effect. Saturate the greens.
Ethan paced back and forth in his room with his thumb and pointer finger tucked along the bottom of his chin, brushing his nonexistent beard. He sat in a swivel chair and spun seven times, got up, and then sat back down because standing became uncomfortable. Ethan tapped his forehead with the eraser part of a Number 2 Ticonderoga Pencil until the pink shavings looked like a bindi.
Ethan walked to the park behind his house and took his shoes off. He laid on a hill that led up to an old baseball field and watched the sky move across the world until the clouds’ shapes began to repeat and fireflies rested on his arms to observe the stars with him. Blades of grass played tag with each other, a dark breeze blew the humidity away, and Ethan felt like he had wasted the entire day. As he was walking back home, he thought about how he was ambitionless; how he had this same goal of making a movie every summer, and how he never got close. He thought about how pathetic it was that an Alaskan Malamute that visited him in his dream was the reason why he was even trying again, and he thought about Minecraft. In the summer of 2011, when he was six years old, a family friend and the rest of the family of the family friend visited his home in York, Pennsylvania. In the family friend’s family was a boy named Jack, and Jack was the same age as Ethan’s brother, John. Linda, who was part of Ethan’s family, was Ethan’s sister, but she didn’t feel like family anymore because she had gone to The University of Pennsylvania in 2008 when Ethan was four years old. One time, during winter break and right before Linda was going back to college, Ethan cried. He didn’t want his sister to leave because he remembered when she used to cook him dinner and read Dragon Ball Z to him. Linda said to their parents that Ethan was only crying because he wouldn’t be able to use her laptop anymore. She might’ve been right… He couldn’t remember. He did love that laptop because it had Minecraft.  
Jack showed Ethan and John YouTube for the first time, showed them videos of GTA 4, Minecraft, Nyan Cat, and Annoying Orange. Ethan remembered, hyperbolically, sticking his nose against the TN panel and leaning his body forward until his forehead touched the screen in an effort get as close to the universe that lived inside that computer. There was a Minecraft video that he watched of people on an island fishing, cracking jokes and being friends. It felt like when he used to watch his brother play games in-front of their box TV. That day cemented a dream of creating his own YouTube channel one day.

Intertitle: Three Days Remain.
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel
Editing Note: This sequence is cropped to be 4:3 and is in black and white.
Ethan stepped into the Graham Aquatic Center, a facility that belonged to the YMCA of the Roses. The inside of the building contained two pools: one ten-lane pool, and across from it, one six lane pool. The ten-lane pool was orientated towards the front of the building, and the six-lane pool was turned on its side to face the boy’s locker room which was on the right side. On the left side was the girl’s locker room, and even further left was an alternative entrance into the pool deck that swimmers used when the York YMCA hosted swim meets. To the left of the building was an outdoor pool with six lanes and too shallow of a depth for diving, but people dove anyway. There were overhead fountains the shape of mushrooms, and two slides, one large and one small. The red one was the large one, and the only time Ethan ever went on the slide was two years before he quit the swim team during a charity event called the 24-hour relay, and he went down the slide at 2 AM with a couple of his, at the time, best friends. It was a summer night like the one from the previous day. The very front of the building contained a lobby with televisions that displayed the news of the death of Michael Jackson on June 25, 2009. His Dad made a comment about it when it happened, and Ethan didn’t understand what death meant. He also didn’t know what Michael Jackson meant, but he liked the sound of the name, and he stored the fact that he did in the recesses of his mind. When he was young, every piece of information seemed important because he didn’t know how large the world was; he believed that he could figure it all out. Ethan thought it was sad that he no longer clung onto knowledge as if he could complete the encyclopedia of the world. He felt more shortsighted now than the Ethan on June 25, 2009.
The furthest area on the right was a hallway that led… Ethan did not remember well. He did know that it led to a mysterious room that contained… machines? When he was four, he used to play with the other children who were not on the swim team but had siblings that were on the swim team. Once, around Christmas of 2008, he was roleplaying the story of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer with a few other children. He was Donner, and they were girls. When the story evolved to have the setting take place in the locker room, Ethan was excluded. He went back to sit with his mother. He was bored sitting with his mother who read from her Chinese story book. He did not explore the mysterious room because he was afraid, but when he wasn’t afraid of the room anymore, he forgot about it until now. The mysterious room on the right side of the building, Ethan was realizing was not on the right side of the building. He was standing in front of the entrance, and the room was at the very back of the building. There were no machines, and it was an empty room with two doors. The doors were locked.

wind,glass,girls - Kensuke Ushio
Editor’s Note: The image remains in 4:3. Color is back, but the image is still dull. Desaturate the blue of the water.
Ethan thought he wanted to go on the pool deck, see if there was anyone he still knew, maybe say hi to some of the coaches, but he didn’t want to anymore. He looked at all the swimmers and realized that even though he remembered the Graham Aquatic Center, the Graham Aquatic Center did not remember him. The lane lines were different with brighter colors and fuller plastics, the blocks had a fin attached to the back that he never practiced with, and there were two coaches that he had never met. The ones that he did know were gone. When he quit the swim team in the fall of 2022, he didn’t tell anyone. He just stopped going one day.
In order to walk to the parking lot where his 2004 gray Toyota Sienna was parked, he had to walk past the outdoor section of the facility, down a yellow bridge that was less yellow than he remembered, and past a small field that sat next to a creek. He used to play wall ball against the side of the building with Sam Stoner when he was six, Riley Thomas would climb the large fence that surrounded the outdoor pool until the head coach came out and yelled.
Ethan’s mother purchased the gray Toyota Sienna right before he was born. Along the walls of the gray interior of the car were stickers that Ethan thoughtlessly slapped on when he was a little older than a baby. One was a ladybug with beady eyes that liked to look at you. After a swim meet, when he was eight, Ethan’s mother took him to get Chick-Fil-A. When the mini-van stopped at a redlight and the French fries spilled all over the floor, Ethan began to cry, but his mother noticed that the fries were scattered on top of an umbrella, and she said they were okay to eat. He ate them. Ethan realized now that there was not a large difference between the car floor and the umbrella. They were both dirty, but his mother wanted him to enjoy the French fries anyway.

Intertitle: Two Days Remain.
Life is a Highway - Rascal Flatts
Ethan was walking up Tennis Court Hill to the back entrance of his high school. He used to like to park in the back of the school because it was more secluded. The main parking lot was prone to accidents from reckless 17- and 18-year-olds trying to increase their family’s monthly car insurance bill. Ethan had a few friends that he kept close during high school, but he missed a feeling of community ever since he quit the swim team. Things changed when he became the Public Relations Officer for Student Council during his senior year. The main reason he applied was because he wanted to get closer to a beautiful girl that he was in love with, Kayla Sebastian. She was the president. When they started dating, Ethan became one of those reckless 17- and 18-year-olds when he crashed his car into Emma White’s because he was so excited to see his girlfriend in the morning. The accident happened right in front of Kayla, too. Ethan used to hold hands with Kayla while they walked up the hill, but when they got close to the back entrance, Kayla would let go of Ethan’s hand because it was “cringe.” Now that they were in college, when they visited each other, they’d hold hands the whole time.  
One of Ethan’s favorite photos that he had ever taken was during Movie Night, an event hosted by Student Council. It was taken a few weeks before graduation when people were holding on and looking forward; when the air was a flavor you only tasted for one period of your life. Kayla was towards the right side of the image with her hands on her hips looking towards the photographer. She was wearing a navy-blue Michigan sweatshirt, and her eyes said, “finish up your photo and come sit next to me.” Next to her was one of those portable plastic tables with an array of baked goods, chips, and wrapped Chick-Fil-A sandwiches. To the left was a scene of students setting up blankets in the grass along the edge of the school’s baseball field. There were food trucks in the very back left corner, and it seemed like everyone knew that this moment was special. A warm sunset created the backdrop-- the kind of sunset that tells you to remember this moment for the rest of your life.
During calculus, after Mr. Stein was done giving his lesson, Ethan, Kayla, their friends, and Mr. Stein would sit in the back and play Stumble Guys together. He was retiring that year, so he didn’t care about his job anymore… He literally told the whole class that this year was his “soft retirement.” At one point, Ethan thought about creating a Stumble Club during the third trimester. They all spent money on the game to complete the Stumble Pass and get the punch emote. This was the only way another player could hit another player in the game. Kayla liked Mr. Stein’s class at the time, but while she was taking calculus II at The University of Maryland, she wished that Mr. Stein would have actually taught them. Ethan heard that sentiment before every one of Kayla’s college calculus exams during the late nights where she would study and FaceTime him. In Mr. Stein’s class, posters of all the common integrals, derivatives, special trig limits and more were plastered on the back wall. During tests, the students looked like the seconds hand on a stopwatch, constantly pivoting their bodies to stare at the formulas. The homework was never checked, and one time during the allotted homework portion of the class, Ethan’s friend brought in his saxophone to take song requests.

During graduation, Kayla and Ethan walked down the aisle together and led the entire class behind them. They got to be in the very front because Kayla had to give a speech as the class president, and Ethan just wanted to be next to her because he loved her. The two matched in their gowns, but also in their abundance of stoles and cords. Ethan looked over at Kayla and smiled at her. Right now, no one else is me, Ethan thought to himself. The song that was playing was Life is a Highway by Rascal Flatts.  

forest piano no.1 - Haruka Nakamura
Ethan sat down at the base of a concrete pillar and stared at the blue sky. There were no clouds that day. Ethan felt like he had unfolded himself over the last few days, and that if he continued anymore, he’d blow away. He closed himself like a book, satisfied. After some silence, he felt like his pose was too orchestrated, so he got up and walked back down the hill to drive home. Ethan thought about calling Kayla and telling her that he had figured out what his movie was going to be about, but he wanted it to be a surprise. He always came to her with lofty ideas and goals, and he wanted to show her that he could achieve one of them; he wanted to show himself that he could achieve one of them. She was studying in Buenos Aires as a foreign exchange student, and he was waiting for the summer to end.
Intertitle: One Day Remains.
Ethan spent his final day packing his bags to head back to The University of Virginia for his fourth year. He made sure his stuffed bear Kibbles Bearington was comfortable with his own seat in the car. Kibbles Bearington was the CEO of his corporation, Kibs Corp. Kibbles would steal the designs of Yu-Gi-Oh cards from the real world and sell them to the citizens of the animal world. That’s what Ethan and his brother, John, made up when they were young, but now Kibbles is just a stuffed bear that reminds Ethan of home. Ethan didn’t have time to make his movie, and he couldn’t make it while he was in college. He didn’t want to make it during winter or spring break because his memories belonged in the summer. I’ll make it next year, he thought to himself.

Luv (sic) pt2 (feat. Shing02) – Nujabes
Intertitle:
Created by Ethan Wang
Music by The Pillows, Joe Hisaishi, Neutral Milk Hotel, Kensuke Ushio, Rascal Flatts, Haruka Nakamura, and Nujabes

‍