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.