i wanna make a movie
I always wanted make movies. I can remember renting movies for free from a local filmaker who was a few years older than me. I studied his films, called him, asked him how he edited the clips to make it work.
I was in 8th grade when I made my first film. it was a class project about suicide prevention. instead of writing a long paper I asked the teacher if I could make a short film instead. he agreed. needless to say I made a mockery of the project by showing ways kids are committing suicide by demonstrating on a wooden doll I created. I threw it off a bridge, dropped cement blocks on it’s head, and the grand finale, my friend and I shooting the shit out of it with 12 guage shotguns. my father helped film that segment.
I edited the clips together with a camcorder (borrowed) plugged into my fathers VCR. I had no idea what I was doing. in my head I figured I would play the raw footage and hit record on the VHS player. unfortunately the record button had a 1 second delay so to get perfect edits was impossible.. and if I made a mistake on an edit 2 minutes in the film, I had to start over again. major pain. but after numerous attempts I finally got an end product. then I found the second audio feature on the VHS player. this thing was high tech in it’s day. it had a feature where I could play music behind footage. you couldn’t mix it, but this meant I could take my fathers old vinyl and put a soundtrack to some of the scenes. thus my first montage attempts.
I played bob Dylan’s ‘like a rolling stone’ over the credits at the end with outtakes that didn’t make the film. naturally, ’suicide is painless’ opened the film. I think the end product was about 10 minutes which is long if you ever tried making a movie.
when the credits rolled, which were written on butcher paper with a sharpie, the class went crazy and clapped loudly. my teacher was impressed and I got an ‘A’ on the project. I thought Igot over on him because I had fun filming and editing the whole thing.
since then I’ve created a few more films including the high school freshman orientation video. you can see my latest films which are my father, brother and I golfing. I’d put the link here but I can’t cause I’m writing this via my iPhone.
short golfing video i put together last summer with my father and brother.