Back in the day, I co-founded the first
Film Club ever at Pueblo West High School, along with my good friend
Caynen. There were others involved with the project as well, but no
one was nearly as consumed by it as Caynen and I were. At the time,
we were obsessed with creating not just one movie, but multiple short
films. I was writing script after script for all of these different
films we had planned, collaborating with Caynen on everything. After
we filmed our short On The Shoulders Of Zombies: The Untold Story of
the Evil Dead Four, however, it seemed as though I had gotten the
filmmaking bug out of my system, at least for the most part. I still
yearn to create movies now and then, though not with nearly the amount of passion I had for it when
I was younger. Also, at the time I was using a less-than-legal copy
of Final Draft, which I no longer have, and to start out in the
industry is just extremely cost-prohibitive. Just look at the price
of the RED digital camera, which is the first digital camera to break
into Hollywood, having been used to shoot films Like Crank and the yet-to-be-released Robocop remake, among others. This camera is often touted as being relatively
cheap and easy for studios to acquire and utilize, with a price tag
of only $10,000. Film cameras cost much, much more, and don't even
get me started on the cost of developing the film itself.
I bring up our high school Film Club
adventures because, during this time Caynen and I came across an
intriguing book called $30 Film School. Once we saw this and read the
description (DIY Film School!), we knew we had to have it in our bag
of tricks. Once we finally managed to get a copy of the book, we both
took turns salivating over it as if it were our last meal. So much
new information about every facet of filmmaking was now at our
fingertips. It opened our minds to new possibilities for our
guerrilla filmmaking. It even gave me the idea (that I subsequently
never followed through on due to my laziness, or something) to apply
for 501(c)3 fiscal status. Which is just a fancy way of saying that
you are non-profit organization. This was important to us at the time
because it would've allowed us to entice our neighbors and community
members to invest money in our film because it could be written off
for taxes. On an interesting side note, we made fun of the process of
trying to get donations from family members in our short film,
which you can see for yourself on Youtube.
