A little pearl of wisdom that I recieved last Wednesday has really stuck with me. It came from local filmmaker Lotfy Nathan, known for his documentary "The Twelve O'clock Boyz," who was giving a talk in a class of mine called "Baltimore Filmmakers."1
Said Lotfy (in so many words, I'm not a stenographer):
"The first film is the best one to work on. This is because you still have the ambition of fulfilling your artistic vision as well as the ignorance of how insanely difficult it's going to be to actually do so."
Now while I don't recall Lotfy's exact wording, what I do know is that the sentiment immediately made a nice little home for itself in my mind. I was sitting there thinking: "Wow, he's right! I am really ambitious. I am completely ignorant of how horribly frustrating this process is going to be. I feel great!" Not only do I recognize my own cognitive dissonance, I embrace it. I have to, or else this movie I'm working on will never get made.
I should add that a healthy dose of naiveté is not all I took away from Lotfy's talk. He also gave us a good deal of much more practical advice, such as the type of excel sheet I should use to manage my budget, and that I should take my cast out to dinner every now and then on my own dime. But I think what's going to get me most through this entire project most of all is an insatiable drive to concretize what I've created in my head (and on the page). Because while I can't exactly call this my first film (I've made at least four or five shorts so far), I have never attempted anything even remotely close to the scale of the film that I intend to complete by the end of this semester. I look forward to the ongoing battle of Jake's Ambition Vs. What is Actually Possible.
As far as the practical stuff goes, I'm coming along. It has a title: "Westbaum in High School." It's script has a ridiculous page count: 45. I've casted all the leads for my film: all close friends of mine, nepotism be damned. (I'll return to this subject later.) Right now I'm working on the preliminary steps of pre-production: location scouting, script re-writes, deciding exactly which camera to use, finding someone to do my sound for me, figuring out which pizza place I should bring my cast to (ideally delicious yet affordable.) In later posts I'll go into more detail about my processes of casting, writing, and filming, as well as updates on my logistical adventures, which might be a little bit boring but will hopefully be useful to other first-time filmmakers.
But for now, I'll leave you with this: I'm fully aware that I will soon be facing challenges of which I am now completely unaware. But all these aside, I'm feeling pretty confident. And that has to count for something.
Truly Yours,
Jake Appet
1. The class "Baltimore Filmmakers" is taught by local filmmaker and DMC guru Jimmy Joe Roche. It's been really fun and informative so far. To avoid putting another footnote on the footnote I'll mention that the DMC stands for "Digital Media Center," which is a great resource for Hopkins students who want to rent out technological equipment and work on creative projects. This post would have been punchier without this footnote, so in a way, I'm sorry. But I guess it's a metaphor for... uh, the messy process of filmmaking itself? That doesn't quite work. Anyway, see you next time!
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