5 years later

It's been 5 years since I've been on here. A friend of mine told me to get a blog so I could do my film reviews that I kept doing on Facebook, but I guess I just stopped doing them here and kept doing them on facebook. Where has the time gone?

Well, in the last 5 years I have written/directed 3 short films, and I am currently in the process of completely reshooting another one soon called 'In Memoriam'.  The footage was shot, but due to a major continuity error that I didn't notice until editing, I needed everyone back to reshoot, sadly due to scheduling conflicts I couldn't reshoot the scene with the main actor, and I haven't had a chance to reshoot any of it really. So now it is in limbo until the actors schedules fit together, or if I recast, which I'm trying to avoid. It was a shame, for months I was looking forward to making it. To be fair, it was my fault I didn't catch the goof, the main character wasn't wearing a sweater in one scene but he has it on in the scene previous and after. Making a short film with no budget, as a director you pretty much have to become an entire crew in one, and make sure you notice the little things. I was stressed by filming everything in one full day and a morning (my original plan was to spread it out over a couple weekends). Shooting 10 pages with 6 different locations in a day and a half is fun, and it gets your creative juices going, but it is also very stressful and with very little preproduction time, you really have to be on the ball.

I wanted to make a film that showcased a professional quality. My previous work has all been pretty student film, I wanted In Memoriam to prove I could do a professional quality short film. The storyline was 3 parts David Lynch film, 2 parts Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, about a man who after a car accident goes through his memories as he is in a coma before he dies. The film all took place inside his mind, so we see him wake up, go to the bathroom, and then he hears the sound of the doctors working on him, talking to his mother, as if the doctors voice was the voice of god. As the film progresses, he goes through his memories and you realize with the protagonist what happened (the car accident, the coma). In his memories you learn about his relationship with his girlfriend, the regrets he has about his mom, and eventually he finds some closer in saying goodbye to them as he goes through his memories before he passes away in real life. It was meant to be a surreal, character driven experience watching the film, with all of this happening in about 8 minutes. The idea came to me from two things: the film 'Johnny Got His Gun', about a WW1 soldier who, after being hit by a shell, is in a hospital with no arms, legs, he can't see, he can't speak, he can't hear. The whole film goes through his perspective on the events, as he reflects his life. It is a brilliant movie, and although I have not read the book, I highly recommend it (there is very little films or books about World War 1 sadly). The second thing was a brilliant TV show called 'Life On Mars', about a contemporary police officer who, after being hit by a car, is taken back to the 1970's, and he doesn't know if he's dead, in a coma, or traveled back in time.

I liked the basic idea of the man in the coma, but I wanted to take that a step further, having him look back, see these memories happen again as just a viewer, unable to interact, just reflecting on his life just before he dies. I liked the idea of the character going through the Kubler-Ross model of the 5 stages of grief throughout the film, and taking the religious ideas of death such as how your life flashes before your life before you die. From a story point of view that's why I was interested, sadly I wish the film didn't have to be at most 8 minutes, I could have done a lot more with more running time. The sad part is, I'm a better writer than a director. I have great ideas, I love to write, but when it comes to directed, sometimes I'll have the idea of how the scene should look short for shot, other times I have no idea and I collaborate with the actors and my cameraman. For this film I wanted to have everything planned out, but I've realized is when you have no budget or equipment, you have to think about things in a different way: A guy holding a tripod is not the same as a steadicam. My equipment consists of: A Nikon DSLR that shoots 1080P at 24 frames per second with a 18-55mm zoom lens, a tripod from the 70's, and a old copy of final cut pro on my laptop. It's not the best equipment, but it still works. If you want to get into the filmmaking business, really that's all you need; you can even make a movie with an iphone nowadays with decent quality. The only downside is shooting with a DSLR, the internal mic isn't the best, and it's quite hard to find a half decent microphone attachment for a DSLR for better and cleaner audio, so my projects tend to have very little dialogue. I don't mind this, it allows me to be creative and have the story flow purely through visuals when I can, however when it comes to someone talking, you really have to work hard to clean up the audio in post.

Hopefully by the end of the year it can be finished again. I feel like I let my actors down by not realizing the continuity mistake, and also because the film wasn't the professional quality when it was (mostly) edited. Every film though is a learning experience, you learn new tricks, new ways to edit, to develop the story, etc. Almost no filmmaker has hit it out of the park the first time, it takes practice and hard work to direct. it's been 5 years since I made my first film, and I still have a lot to learn.