Holly Banks Full of Angst (Village of Primm, #1)(93)
“But now you’re not? That’s what you’re telling me?”
“Need proof? I’m wearing Ella’s no-bite fingernail polish.” Holly held up her hands, wiggled her fingers.
“Well, I think you’re totally hip. For one, you’re super bold wearing spy gear. I bet none of the other mothers in Primm wear spy gear.”
“True.”
“So don’t beat yourself up. The digital world thrives on change.” He pointed to his T-shirt. “You can join my film crew at next year’s Walnut if you want.”
“Another film festival?” Holly twitched an eyebrow. How many can there be?
“Teams have forty-eight hours to make a short film. You’d be great at it, Holly.” His eyes were kind. His smile, genuine. But good gravy, wasn’t the Klaus enough?
“We can do this another day,” Caleb offered.
“Right now is perfect,” Holly insisted. “I want it done. I need to see it finished. I definitely don’t think it’s Wilhelm Klaus Film Festival–worthy, but it’s a start.”
Caleb showed her everything. Better yet, he was patient. They loaded everything into iMovie, started building a timeline, pieced everything together, clip by clip. They added sound, royalty-free public-domain music, motion graphics, overlays. They finished around ten o’clock, and truthfully? Holly would have gladly worked through the night and into morning on this. She. Had. A. Blast. Felt high as a kite. It was awesome.
“I can’t believe we produced a film at my kitchen table using laptops and a soundtrack we downloaded from the internet.” Holly refreshed their decaf coffees. “If it’s this easy to produce a short film, I should get back into it.”
Shoot, if Holly could figure out how to do this on her own, maybe she could start a small business. Call Pinterest moms like Collette and convince them to hire her to film their craft and decorating videos. If Jack got laid off, it would help them pay some bills. Hopefully stay in Primm.
Holly wasn’t sure what she’d expected when she started filming thirty hours ago . . . but this was what she’d ended up with now that it was finished. Her amateur, scratch attempt to reconnect with who she once was and who she hoped to become—a filmmaker.
The film opened with Holly’s hands clutching the Buick’s steering wheel as she cruised through Primm—past the road that led to Southern Lakes, past shops, past countless topiaries across town. The camera had caught all sorts of things. Bree-with-an-E’s face covered in bright-pink polka dots. Shanequa, at Primm’s Coffee Joe, exchanging phone numbers, inviting her to scrapbook. The G-Class visitor in the hallway outside the Topiary Park boardroom, arguing with the horticulturist. The Little Kids, Little Zoo play. The camera had caught the metal rooster filling the screen as Holly screamed “Ahhhhhhhh!” and charged an intruder during a home invasion. It had caught poignant moments like her text exchange with Jack when he announced he might be losing his job. And Plume, the moment Holly first laid eyes on her and witnessed the devastation. The camera had captured the horticulturist speaking to Holly: “Horticulturists far and wide have dedicated years of their lives tending to the upkeep of this peacock, and then whoooooooosh—a flying yellow bug from Asia shows up.” And from the horticulturist, an ominous warning: “Something is causing the bugs to travel across the village.”
As Holly watched her life unfold on film, she choked up. This montage of seemingly unrelated parts, when lined up, told a compelling story of her life during Ella’s first week of kindergarten. Holly wasn’t sure what she thought of it. It was a lot to take in.
Cut to Holly telling the Pie Committee, “I don’t have a mommy blog. Or a gazillion followers on Twitter. I guess I’m not an influential mom.” Cut to Sidekick Sweaty smelling her armpits during the meeting with Miss Bently. Cut to Ella beneath those ginormous black poster-board glasses.
There was plenty of footage of Mary-Margaret being Mary-Margaret, and it would have been perfect if the film stopped with a clip of her mouth held wide open, film credits and words rolling between her lips and into her mouth, across her tongue, and toward the wad of pink bubble gum at the back like the opening crawl of Star Wars: A long time ago in a village far, far away . . . but it didn’t. It ended with two bonus blooper scenes, and those, Holly loved.
One of the blooper clips was a montage of Greta’s ukulele concerts on YouTube. Holly remembered how strange it felt to be recording video of a video on a video channel. Now she was watching a video of a video of a video on a video channel, the sound in the blooper montage a mix of ukulele playing from Greta’s YouTube concerts. Greta, the true dancing queen, apparently believed a good concert should feature her spinning around while playing, wearing a flowery dress and daisies tucked throughout her curly gray hair. Despite her age and hardships, Greta was wild and free and everything Holly hoped to be. The final clip of the blooper montage was Greta skipping around a meadow of wildflowers, just a-strummin’ away. You go, girl. Holly had gone to film school—but Greta had made her first indie film before Holly did. Well, would ya lookee there. That mom of mine is something else.
The final scene of the entire film was a still shot of Greta—stuck in downward dog with no clothes on except her underwear. You could see a hint of what should be covered by a shirt, and if not a shirt, then at least a sports bra. It was first and foremost a butt scene, so Caleb and Holly added the words THE END in big bold letters across her butt cheeks.