That Time I Was Going To Jail - Part 1
Or, When I Started Taking SSRIs
INSPIRED is a newsletter filled with inspiring stories, artists and ideas. Subscribe to get a free weekly dose of inspiration!
This week I share one of my own stories.
I broke it into two parts because, well, it just IS two parts. You’ll see.
I’m Going To Jail
After I sold my first film, I thought I was going to jail.
Like, really.
I waited in dread for it to happen. Any day now, I’d get a phone call or an email and they would come for me. I would have no defense, because I was guilty. I would be yelled at, I would be shamed, I would be in trouble.
There was no escaping this fate, no matter how many times I tried to come up with a way out. I needed a loophole, an exception, something, but as I went in circles, round and round, I never found one. I just ended up dizzy and alienating everyone I knew.
How It Started
I was unhappy. My dream had been to make movies and after years in the industry all I could get hired to do was edit a cold open for a home renovation show.
My life was in the middle of an unexpected upheaval. A few months earlier, I had raised my head out of the sand and seen that things needed to change.1
So, it made sense that while in Palm Springs with a friend of mine, a burst of inspiration found it’s way to me. Why not make a movie? I had recently gotten a camera, a Canon 60D. At that time, people were making low budget movies with the very popular and better quality Canon 5D. And my camera was… almost as good… 2 why not?
I told my friend I was going to try and shoot a feature film in 30 days. She said, “Go for it!” (turns out she thought I had meant a short film. Later, when she realized I meant a full-length feature she thought I was nuts.3)
I got to work as soon as I got back to LA.
First, I took stock of my resources, which were nil, and the time I had allotted, next to nil, and then proceeded to come up with the magic formula required to pull this thing off.
The formula:
I needed to write the script in 5 days.
And the script had to consist of only:
2 locations
1 actress
0 on-camera dialogue
Last, because I was working a full-time job, I would have to be able to shoot it over three weekends - which mean 6 days of main photography.
Writing: Days 1-7
I was editing a reality show at the time (I honestly tried to remember which one it was and I can’t, sorry. It most likely involved someone redo-ing their basement or learning to cook the perfect roast chicken) and the hours were around 10a-7pm, M-F. It didn’t leave a ton of time to write a script from scratch. Therefore, I jumped on the first idea I had that fit into my formula and proceeded to write it every night after work that first week. I had a draft by the weekend and had a few people read it to make sure it wasn’t total garbage, did a few notes, and then… moved on to pre-production.
Pre-Pro: Days 8-12
I called an actress I had worked with years earlier on a short film and thankfully she was in. I would have really been screwed otherwise because I didn’t know any other actresses. Next, I secured my 2 locations, my apartment and the house of a friend. I purchased a few props and wardrobe items, a Zoom sound recorder to record ambient sound, and some craft services.
Production: Days 13-14, 20-21, 27-28, 29-30
After shooting that first weekend, the way it worked for the rest of the month was each week I would spend the nights after work prepping for that weekend’s shoot. Then we would shoot that weekend and I’d start all over again.
I was a crew of 1. It was just me and my actress. We shot over 3 weekends at the main locations.
Days 29 and 30, we ran around LA (Union Station, a grocery store, on the bus, etc) stealing shots for the rest of the smaller scenes... without permits, of course.
And so, 30 days after wondering if I could make my own feature… I had done it.
The movie was in the can.
Post: Months
I spent the next several months messing around with it in edit, trying to find a way to make it all work despite the low-quality video and extremely minimal story. It was definitely a challenge.
However, less than a year after getting the idea to do it, I had a finished feature film that I had written and directed (and shot, and recorded sound, and set dressed, and catered…)
What Happened Next
The thing was, I had really just set out to make a movie to see if I could.
Now that I had, I wasn’t really sure what to do next.
I submitted it to some festivals, I showed people I knew, I thought maybe somehow this could lead to getting me an agent or something. I never thought I would sell it. NEVER.
But, somehow… that’s what happened.
Ooooo, cliffhanger! Come back next week to read Part 2!
This makes it sound much more organized and civilized than it was. It was more like I was ripping my own skin off and had no idea why.
No. It wasn’t.
Thank goodness for misunderstandings sometimes, right?