This post marks my return to blogging… again.
This blog seems to have been about me leaving and then coming back. Made a couple of cosmetic changes here and there over the years.
I stopped posting because a) life, and b) I didn’t know what I wanted to do with this blog as it no longer reflected who I was creatively.
I think I’ve figured that out now.
The word “think” is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence.
To avoid me just doing an info dump, the new “about me” page has an interesting update on what I hope this blog will be moving forward, as well as some historical stuff about me.
During my absence from posting, I’ve moved over into filmmaking. The years working on my public speaking and presentation skills, the original incarnation of this blog, have not been lost.
Becoming a filmmaker was inevitable really. Even though it might not have been obvious with previous incarnations of this here blog. Creatively and personally, it was bound to happen. Eventually.
I’ve wanted to make films since… I want to say since the 1990s, but I saw Hollywood Shuffle as a kid. That film came out in 1987, so maybe I saw it on video in ’88 or ’89. Maybe I’ll be generous and say 1990. Brand new decade, and all that.
Hollywood Shuffle was famous for actor, writer, director Robert Townsend financing the film himself using a combination of his own savings and multiple pre-approved credit card applications, raising an estimated $60,000 to $100,000.
I heard this story, and immediately thought I, too, could make a feature film. Without an idea, and still being in Junior School:
“Hey mum, could I have a credit card to make a film?”
“Absolutely fucking not.”
“Well, there goes that dream.”
But the idea stuck.
Then came Kevin Smith and Clerks, Robert Rodriguez and El Mariachi. By this point I knew about credit cards, and didn’t want to max one out and I also didn’t want to subject myself to human trials of a drug.
I trained as an actor in the late 90s, became one. Did a bunch of theatre – British and European (a post for another day), live comedy, (stand-up, sketch, improv), public speaking and Toastmasters, but the film thing never left me.
During this time I read The Guerrilla Filmmakers Handbook, and the idea of shooting on film was just so wild at the time because it was so expensive.
I wrote a few screenplays over the years. Glad I never made those. Good to get the practice in and just write. Then I attended a Masterclass by Chris Jones one of the authors of The Guerrilla Filmmakers Handbook in 2000. Watched his two features as part of the class. Somehow I knew that the screenplay I had written at the time was never going to become a film. It wasn’t right. Even though I didn’t believe it at the time.
Wrote a stage play in 2005 called Head Over Heels. Wrote a bunch of drafts. Met my now wife and she read it in 2007. Then it went back into a drawer. Emigrated to the US in 2009, did a rewrite of the script for a reading in 2010. Along the way its name changed to Falling for You.
Did two readings for an audience. Both went well. Then it languished again. Robert, an actor friend (not Townsend) read it 2013, and said it would be, quote, “easy to make”. He’d made a feature and should know.
Let me tell you, dear reader, it was not easy to film.
We raised some money and filmed it in 2014. Had to get two babysitters for out then 2-year–old son. Did reshoots in 2015. Couldn’t get money to finish. It became an albatross around my neck. I was embarrassed to talk to the cast.
The Pandemic hit.
Ted, a friend of my wife’s and at the time, head of production at the company she worked for spoke to me and suggested I learned post production during lockdown and get the film finished. Talked about the software I needed.
So over evenings and weekends, whenever I wasn’t helping my kids with their remote learning, I edited the feature film following YouTube tutorials on an old Macbook Pro. I eventually got an even older iMac, transferred everything to that.
Got everything done in 2022. Two years of work.
Released it on Gumroad for rent. Then polished it further and got it on Amazon and Tubi via Film Hub, and then uploaded it to YouTube myself.
That film lead me to getting a freelance editing job working for the company my wife works for in 2024. I mostly improve their old videos. The film became my CV.
But I find myself thinking a bunch of things about my creative life both past and present. And how I sometimes fuse those elements together.
I’m still learning about film and filmmaking. Still trying to figure this out. As I write this I have finished a medium length film, I figured authors can write novellas, why can’t I do the same with film? And I’m also close to finishing my second feature film, Where We Started. Hoping to release both this year.
But who knows what brown sticky stuff will hit what oscillating cooling system ‘twixt now and then.
