My Foray Into Filmmaking

I wanted to make films for a long time but lacked the courage to do so. I was too nervous. I didn’t know anything about cameras and was afraid no one would want to work on any of my projects. And, of course, I was broke and felt bad not being able to pay people.

But I still loved the idea of being a filmmaker, and the fantasy was always in my head. I spent a lot of time hanging around filmmakers whenever I could, so when a friend asked if I wanted to volunteer at a local film festival, I jumped at the opportunity.

Secretly, I was hoping I would meet the people I could go on to make films with—a ragtag band of wily filmmakers creating art and making waves.

And when I first got there, it seemed like that might be the case. I met two people: one man, one woman. The woman was young, in her twenties, and interested in modeling. She was preparing to go to Paris, she said, but she was open to acting. The man was a bit older and was interested in doing a documentary on the homeless.

I was pretty passionate about the homeless at the time, as I was still under the impression that homelessness was a direct result of there not being enough housing or public services available, along with not enough marketing about where those who needed assistance could find it. So, a documentary about homelessness was right up my alley.

He told me he’d have me flesh out the flow of the doc and do the research, while the other girl could be the interviewer. We spent a lot of our time at the festival, and afterward, talking about this doc (that would never materialize) and our shared passion for helping those in need.

We exchanged social media handles and would go on to not really keep in touch. I lost touch with the model almost immediately after our volunteering duties ended, and kept in fairly regular contact with the guy initially, which then turned into occasional contact, which has now become sparse to rare contact.

Regardless of those relationships not panning out the way I wanted, this film festival would still have a pretty meaningful impact on my filmmaking career. It was here that I found out about 24-hour film competitions. Before this, I thought every film needed to be a feature that took weeks to shoot and had to be at least an hour long. Seeing the short turnaround, I felt confident I could cobble something together with ease. (Total noob idea that the words “ease” and “filmmaking” belong in the same sentence.)

As part of the process, we needed to attend a meeting before the 24-hour period started. At this meeting, we’d be informed of the “top secret” particulars the film needed to include to try and protect the integrity of the competition. Basically, they try to mitigate the possibility of cheating by requiring that the film contain something random. In this case, it was that the film had to be shot on a street in Newark where an industry film had been shot. You also needed to mention the Newark International Film Festival as well.

Armed with the necessary information to get filming (information I very nearly missed out on, but that’s another story), I was eager to get started early Saturday morning.

I owe a lot to my friends Wanita and Ivan for allowing me to utilize their skills that day.

We started the day first in Westfield, at the cemetery where my mom is buried. Next, we headed to a closed botanica on Halsey St. in Newark. The botanica had a really cool mural on the outside of it that served as a good backdrop for the film as well as serving the plot, while its location on Halsey Street met the requirement for “a street in Newark where a movie was filmed.”

Lastly, we headed to a park in Montclair. It’s here that we’d run into a bit of a hiccup. It was my friend’s birthday (or birthday weekend, I can’t remember), and she needed to leave in order to spend time with her then-boyfriend (now husband!), so she couldn’t finish out the film.

I had to get creative and figure out how to finish up without her. I stopped home, grabbed some white clothing and a headwrap, and acted as her stand-in. My friend is a bit taller than me and a lot leaner, so the switch is probably pretty clear to the average viewer, but I had to do what I had to do. I also wound up having to do the voiceover, which I really hated, as I hate the sound of my own voice.

My friend Ivan stuck it out with me, even using some PTO to see it through to the end. I’m forever grateful. Working with him really highlighted just how much I needed to think visually when telling a story on film. That might sound like common sense, but as a writer who’s predominantly concerned with making sure the written story makes cohesive sense, I hadn’t spent much time thinking about what the film would look like. His suggestions definitely helped.

Finally done shooting, I rushed home with the footage, downloaded some random free editing program, and got to work loading the footage from my brand new Note 10+ (which I’d specifically gotten for the shoot) and started editing. This was a process I’d have to repeat several times as my laptop was defective, so every time I applied pressure to the left-hand side of it, it’d freeze up and I’d have to restart everything from the beginning.

Technical difficulties aside, I was able to submit and move on to the next step: waiting to see how it’d be received.

To this day, I still don’t know if my film received a nomination; I just know that I didn’t win. I was invited to the awards ceremony, but instead of seeing a list of nominees, they jumped straight to the winner for some reason. I tried emailing the committee about it but never got a response.

Overall, I’m really grateful for the experience because without it, there’s a good chance I would never have developed the courage to start filming. Loss & Found paved the way for my next short, Misfortune, and several more after that—and hopefully more to come.