My latest obsession these past few months has been making movies.
It really started when I took the summer of 2011 off from work, in what I called my pretirement summer. Â Among the things that I did that summer was to get heavily into photography. Â I learned a lot, bought a lot of camera equipment, and took a lot of pictures.
Flash forward to six months back. Â I got a part in a local community theater production of “Twelfth Night.” Â I had a terrific time and I think we put on a good show.
Some of the people I met through the play were participating in the Washington DC 48 Hour Film Project. Â This is a short film competition in which you have 48 hours to make a 4-7 minute movie. Â At the beginning of a weekend, you get a random genre. Â You are given a character name, a line that must appear, and a prop that must be used. Â Then you’re off, and you have to deliver the finished movie 48 hours later. It’s an endurance test, but a whole lot of fun.
I got into it to act, but given that I had some fancy cameras that could also do video, I ended up taking some footage as well. Â This in spite of the fact that I knew next to nothing about taking video.
Here’s a link to the film that we made, a short horror movie called “Influenced”:
Honestly, it wasn’t great. Â There’s very little sense of visual story-telling. Â The technical stuff is far from perfect, the script could use a few more rounds of polishing, and the acting shows a lack of sleep. Â All not surprising, given that we had very little experience in making movies and very little time.
But the relative ease of the task with equipment that I already largely owned was a revelation. Â You really can make a movie these days with the kind of cameras that I own, and the other equipment that is needed is well within the grasp of a hobbyist.
I got to talking with another person working on our film, and she was similarly amazed at how possible it was. Â So we decided to put together a group to try it ourselves, only this time without the 48 hour deadline.
And so my film obsession was born. Â More shortly on what I’ve done since, and what’s in the works.