Scene IV, Spaceland

I started filming scene II of my short "Spaceland" this Sunday. It was my first day of shooting, and there were a lot of things I learned from the process. The biggest challenge in filmmaking, for me, has always been trying to be artistic, logistic and technical all at once.

Once you've made it as a filmmaker, and can afford an entire crew, you can just worry more about the artistic, and throughout this whole process, I am trying to stay focused on the "vision of the film."

I've edited the second scene, though I haven't had time to fix the sound yet. Overall, I think the scene works. I showed it to a few people, and some of them were very taken with the scene visually. It was very interesting to get the emotional response. Some of this is because the way I shot it, the music, and, of course, the actors. This is the first time, I think, my casting in a film has been ideal. I attribute this to mostly good fortune.

I am posting "test" angles on non-shooting days, but I'm not posting any footage that will be in the actual film because film festivals really want exclusivity when the film is shown in their venue. If they know you can watch it online, they don't want it, not matter how good it is.

Later, I may create some sort of "preview" of the film. I may re-shoot some parts of Scene II, depending on how I feel about it in a couple of weeks. I think one of the best things about making a film slowly is that you can learn from your mistakes as you go along, as opposed to making your mistakes in one or two very long days.

The next scene I'm filming this week is scene IV (see storyboard), which I rewrote last night.