Spring Quarter 2008: "Hold On To Your Butts"

That infamous Samuel L. Jackson line from Jurassic Park seems fairly apt right now.

I just began production on my senior project in film/video: a 15-minute film musical. Right now my head is spinning just thinking about all the pre-production that needs to be completed by April 25 (the first day of 3 consecutive weekends of shooting). Luckily, I thought ahead with this one, and I've already gone through a few drafts of the script. I've also cast my lead actors (the wonderful Shashona Brooks and Aeon Brady), but I still need to cast for 6 supporting characters. I also need to lock down props, costumes, locations...oh, and did I mention music?

In another extraordinary stroke of luck, I managed to recruit the incredibly talented singer/songwriter/musician Rachel Williams (of Birds Fled From Me). Now the pressure's on to get the very important songs composed and recorded in just a little over two weeks!!

On top of all that, I of course have two other classes this quarter at UCSC. One of them inspired the creation (and naming) of this blog. The class, "Filmmaking: From Writing to Releasing" may very well be the ONLY "practical" film course I've ever taken at UCSC. Sure, production courses gave me valuable experiences and opportunities to create short films...but I think this class is the only one that covers what filmmaking is like out there in the "real world." And as I'm graduating very shortly and possibly about to move down to Los Angeles, I feel the "real world" approaching rapidly. Then again, it is LA...does that qualify as the "real world"? What is "real"? How do you define "real"? Thanks Morpheus.

The "DIY = Dangerously Insane Yearning" in the title is a play on "DIY = Do-It-Yourself." The two UCSC alum who teach "From Writing to Releasing" split filmmaking up into three categories:
1.) Hollywood (Everything from Transformers to Notting Hill)
2.) "Indiewood" (Those movies that claim to be indie films but really have multi-million dollar budgets and star big-name actors, e.g. Garden State and Little Miss Sunshine)
3.) "DIY" Filmmaking (This is the kind of filmmaking I have experience with--making movies with zero to low budget, no stars, no studios...you get the idea)

I call it the Dangerously Insane Yearning, because as maddening as truly DIY, independent filmmaking can be...I still yearn to do it. In fact I really do think it's the only thing I'll be satisfied doing at this point. I could go into many other professions. But I don't want to. And I don't think I'd be very happy doing so. Not that filmmaking makes one happy all the time (in fact most of the time it's just incredibly stressful)...but it's the one thing I feel I have some sort of instinct toward...some instrisic drive to do.

So even though DIY filmmaking is Dangerously Insane, I still Yearn to do it.

And despite all the madness that will be the next couple months of my life, you know what? I'm ready for it. The timing seems right. I'm ready to create this project that I'm truly passionate about. And I'm ready to finally learn the hard yet exciting realities of making a feature-length film the non-Hollywood way. Because I think, eventually, that's what I really want to do.

Let's do this!!!

P.S. I'm inviting my good friend Michael Tucker to post on this blog as well, as he shares my "Dangerously Insane Yearning." My hope is that in the future we can collaborate on our own dangerously insane feature-length film project . . .

P.P.S. I've decided I need to stop using the words "dangerously insane" in every sentence of this blog.