Lately, I have been thinking of sharing some stories of my filmmaking past, but it didn't feel right and I preferred to focus on writing on (other people's) movies for the time being. But, as I recently decided to get back to filmmaking again and make Documentaries on fellow Steemians, I felt this might be the right time to start sharing my movie making past with you.
The first years of my filmmaking career weren't necessary highlights, but I felt like talking or writing about that time anyway. Who knows, it might help some of you. There's probably some lessons in my mistakes or experiences. Whether that's the case or not, it should be an interesting and/ or fun read for you. And a somewhat nostalgic experience for me.
As I said in Part 1 of My Filmmaking Life:
In the follow up to this post, I will zoom out on the picture on top and tell you what movie I was involved in there.
As you compare my first post with this one, you can see that I literally zoomed out, by showing you the full photograph and not just me. I gave my former classmate - who's operating the camera - a sun for a face, as I don't have her permission for posting this picture.
Besides my classmate, this digital picture of a dusty old analog picture from 2003 - shows a 21 year young me, with an extremely serious look on his face. For your information: this is my focused or thinking face. Here, I am taking on the role of sound recordist/ boom operator. This photo was taken on the set - university campus - of a short fiction film, that a couple of fellow students and I made.
It was the year 2003 and I was studying theatre, film and television. This particular class - film production - was the only filmmaking we got to do there. It was, after all, university. So, most subjects were theoretical. The ones I enjoyed most, were this film production class, film history, film analysis and classes on Hitchcock, French Nouvelle Vague (refreshing films by young maverick filmmakers in the late 50s/ early 60s) and Italian Neorealism.
It eventually took me 7 years, 3 more than necessary, to finally graduate in film theory. The three extra years had to do with struggling with the University system and the whole theoretical thesis writing: I felt like I couldn't write my own story and there was hardly any guidance. It also didn't help that there was no deadline until the exact day - mid 2007 - when I finally had (and managed) to hand in my thesis.
Looking back on this time, It was one of many battles I fought against the system, being a stubborn creative and all. It is probably also when my depression started, but that's a whole different story.
Lesson Number 1: Do you want to be a filmmaker? Then don't study film in University.
Back to the picture at the start of this post. I still remember the exact scene that we were shooting here. Let me give you a little bit of backstory:
This horror short told the story of an elderly man, who was haunted by the ghost of a girl he killed in a car crash.
In this scene, a nerdy girl with huge glasses was asking a boy to go on a date with her. He looked at her - from head to toe - and then said something unkind along the lines of:
My mom wouldn't even wear this dress.
He wasn't exactly what you call a handsome fellow himself, but the girl liked him a lot and his words hurt her. After this remark, the girl runs away and gets hit by a car, while crossing the street.
Do you now understand the serious look on my face?
It was a fun film to make. It is kind of exciting to start out with the horror genre. These kind of films are often pretty fun to make and this wasn't a serious horror short but a slightly over the top horror comedy. We had to be creative with our editing (both sound and video) as nobody of us had any experience in adobe after effects or a similar programme. In fact, we hardly had any experience filmmaking.
If I remember it well, I was the only one with any prior filmmaking experience. To be precise, I had made one (5 minute?) short film, half a year earlier. To be honest, I'm not even sure if I want to talk about that project. It was my very first attempt at filmmaking - so there's some nostalgia attached to it - but it is the kind of film that most filmmakers will never show to their fans. Plus, I don't believe I have any digital copy left. It was shot around Christmas 2002.
Alright, this is it for today. I hope you don't mind having to wait for some actual films. We will get there, eventually...
TO BE CONTINUED