Dating Blind — Melissa Onwuka

Dating Blind (2023)

Romantic Comedy
Writer, Director & Co-Editor

Looking for love in her senior year of high school is hard enough for Elara, and doing it without her glasses seems nearly impossible.

Tone

I took some inspiration from the show Pen15. For two seasons (and some change) you get to watch Maya and Anna experience a lot of things for the first time. Rites of passage. First crush, first group sleepover, first period, fighting with your best friend and feeling like you hate your parents. They’re inexperienced, and unprepared, but also totally ready and willing to embrace these firsts in a way that’s unique to childhood. Their reactions can seem disproportionate to what’s actually happening to them, but when you’re that young and everything’s still new, it is that big of a deal.

Even though they’re middle schoolers and Elara is in high school, she’s a late bloomer compared to her peers, just like them. Having her crush like her back was going to create a whirlwind of emotions.

Elara

It’s comedic, the lengths we’ll go to, to hide our insecurities. Feeding a baseless stigma that we self-impose and mostly only notice ourselves. We forget that the ones that admire us are those we have no reason to hide from.

Adam

Being young and in love, we tend to see with tunnel vision. But, we can also see a side to our crush that their mind keeps them from seeing.

Theme

The world can pass you by if you spend too much time being someone you’re not. You’ll miss opportunities. You’ll waste time. This isn’t to say that we shouldn’t be contemplative about our image. But there comes a point where you have to find it. It’s always been there, eclipsed by this version of you you’ve been trying to be instead. The ideal, is you, not an imitation of others.

Music

Some initial thoughts: Light, airy, and dreamy, to reflect a character who’s isolated and spends a lot of time on her own and in her head, daydreaming, instead of living her life.

The Date

Finding the right location for the date was about finding a place where two high school kids would go to spend time alone. I’d imagined their school’s bleachers, but the tennis court fit just as well in the end.

Director’s Note

Don’t know who that person’s waving at so- oh, me?- nope, not me, cool, let me be needlessly embarrassed about this for the next week.

I’ve spent my life thinking “why do I have the dumbest of handicaps?”. Somehow, my character design got stunted at 99%, giving me the whole package, eyes included, just without the function they’re meant to come with. In school, I was constantly getting comfortable with the way I looked. I’d reach a point where I liked the way I looked naturally, but with glasses, I’d have to start over. So I’d walk around, not seeing, wearing my glasses as little as possible. I’d sneak them out of my bag only when necessary – to take notes in class, read a menu at a restaurant, look at street signs and figure out which way I needed to go. Seeing the world blurry was comfortable. My friends and family were recognisable by outline, my belongings by colour, and spaces left to my imagination. I made life harder for myself, as a way to avoid greater discomfort.

Is it not that deep? Or are you just thinking that because you can experience the world the moment you open your eyes?