My Dream Relized
Directing is my dream occupation, and my favorite hobby. Every since I was seven years old, I've wanted to make films. It wasn't untill I was ten that I would get my first chance. We got this really old outdated camera that barly worked; however, I was able to jerry-rig it to the vcr and record movies that way. Stuffed animals made up the majority of my cast. As for music, there wasn't any. But this only increased my disire to make real films. As my intelect grew, I started to understand basic aspects of filmmaking.Shortly after turning thirteen, I baught my brother's video camera from him. This one was only a few years old, and light years better than my old one. My friends and I would go make short films around town, and in the woods. We would try to write scripts, but in the end everything was ad libbed. Half the time we would be laughing so much that we would have to cut, rewind and start all over. Back in those days, using a computer to edit video was unimagined, atleast to us. We always had a blast, and it just kept getting better.
It wasn't too long before I figured out how to plug my camera into the computer. My brother had an acient copy of Adobe Premier that I used. Other kids my age had video games, I on the other hand had Photoshop and Premier. I learned everthing their is to know about non-liner editing from that program. Being able to edit our footage on a computer was amazing. It oppend a whole new world to what we could do. No longer did we have to film everthing in order, and only be able to watch it straight off the camera. We were on our way to the big city of film making.
Feltowking, 2001 (completed)See film here.
Fellowship, Two Towers, Return of the King = Feltowking was suposed to be a spoof on all three Lord of the Rings films, but in the end, we just had fun and didn't spoof at all. Really it turned out to be a Lord of the Rings/Star Wars/Medevial video with a bunch of kids running around in costumes. I have fond memories of those days, and will never forget how much fun they were. I remember how advanced I thought our film was, and in reality it was beyond what normal kids could do. Looking back on my film making carere, I would say that this film was my first.
Spartan One, 2005 (shelved)This was going to be the big film, it was going to get me to Hollywood. Oh what a child I was, I learned a great deal from this film even though it never made it off the page. Why not? Quite simply, it was out of our production range. The film was going to be 90 minutes in lenght, several different sets, and a budget of $20,000. The script was written by Nathaniel Peirson, who completed most of it, and did a very good job at that. It all came to him in an instant when we were chatting on msn, all of these amazing plot twists and turns. I really whish I still had the script. But as time goes by, we forget to carry these things with us. We soon began casting for the film, as usual reqruting friends to be our actors.
Spartan one was loosly based on the halo games. It was set in the begining of the sparton program and naturaly was about the very first spartan every created. We followed the story of this unsung hero, this super soldier built for war, who fell in love once, never to do so again. He rebelled against his traing and his commanders, but in the end came to respect them.
Betrayal, 2005 (unedited)The Betrayal was my second film, and my first that acutally had a script. Orinally inspired by The Last Samurai, It's about the betrayal of two young samurai from their sensei. It was filmed during the summer, and I still remember it has been the best summer of my life. I was in my element with this movie, it felt like a real movie. I remember showing up on loacation on the first day with my friends. Everyone was getting into costume, gather grear, rehursing lines, it was great. However it was a great deal of work. I think that this was the first film that showed me how much efort goes into making even a short five minute film. Of course I did have my Co-Director, Nathaniel Peirson, who helped a lot. But even then, it was still difficult. Really in my eight years of film making, I would say that the hardest part is getting everyone to the location. To this day, this film has not been editied; however, I have plans in the mix to edit as much as I can. The film was never completed however, we did get close.