Monday, May 02, 2005

Making Movies

Mun approached me about making a movie. It was after we saw The Assassination of Richard Nixon, that much I remember. I decided to play along, and soon we had the bare-bones idea of a feature-length sports comedy. That's kinda crazy, because I was never much of a sportsman, and we didn't get very far beyond putting down characters and plotting out formulas and things like that. Anyway, I thought he was kidding.

It turned out he was pretty serious about it. The next thing I knew, I was getting SMSes and phone calls, asking if we should do a short film first. I thought perhaps we should, since neither of us had done any production work here before. I emailed him a script, a romantic comedy I'd written some time ago, and he liked it and we thought about it and had plans for a rewrite.

Then he got another idea which seemed to fit with a previous idea I had (it's complicated) and somehow a script was born in an afternoon. It's still missing a vital section but most of it's there. And then we started to go into details. This was where I began to freeze.

I don't know how best to say this, other than I don't know what the fuck I'm doing.

I don't know the first thing about getting equipment, getting crew, getting post production facilities, actors, the works.

I hate to say this, but I just realized, I'm out of school. The safety net, the handy resources, they're all gone. It's a confusing world out there. I found another safety net at work - at least it's within a corporation, and relatively controlled. But outside - outside's a whole different ball game. There's no camera unit just downstairs waiting for you, no wardrobe unit just a block away, or a makeup unit a short walk up some stairs.

I'm standing on the edge, I don't know what to do, and I'm scared as hell.

But I feel like I have to take the plunge, or I'll be letting Mun down. More than that, I'll be letting myself down. I said I was going to try my best to be productive and creative and all that kinda shit, and I really don't want to be lying to myself. But inertia is so hard to overcome, familiarity so difficult to shake off.

3 Comments:

At 6:33 AM, May 02, 2005, Blogger Angeline said...

I don't know the first thing about getting equipment, getting crew, getting post production facilities, actors, the works.~~

You could cold call. Either that, or expand the team, which I presume at the moment to consist of Mun and yourself only, to include people you actually know first?

You do need people to critique the script in the first place.

Hell you definitely need a core team beyond the healthy number of two. There's the before prep, the post production, and the always on-going - sponsorship and marketing.
Two spreads too thinly.

 
At 9:03 AM, May 02, 2005, Anonymous Anonymous said...

oh Derrick may noe some contacts if u need help... =)

-ww

 
At 7:19 PM, May 02, 2005, Blogger Allan Koay 郭少樺 said...

kick ass, dude!

just dont be like me, sitting on my ass and waiting!

go out and shoot film!

 

gimme some mindfuckery

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