Filmmakers and artists, in general, do not like to share their mistakes. They hide them from the world and shame themselves every day for not getting it right. I am the same way. I once tried to write and film a script in one day and it was pretty terrible. To be honest, that one may never see the light of day, and I would bet the actors will thank me for it. But I do crazy things sometimes, and it just might get out into the world. But that doesn’t mean it was all for nothing. I learned a lot from that day, and I bet the actors did too. I learned that not having some sort of plan before turning on the camera is really the only way to go. I also learned that having a want to film something isn’t quite enough to make an excellent short film or even a mediocre one.
This past fall, I attempted to make a thriller short about a young person who kills everyone around her except for the one person she truly wants to see forbidden from breathing the planet's air ever again. It was to be a small mystery about people being found dead in strange places leading the viewer to believe that a killer is targeting a young woman and her family, but instead, in the last scene, we discover it was actually her the entire time.
Psychological thrillers interest me. I am not a fan of the overwrought horror genre that has people slashing and splatting hapless humans for no reason other than they committed a societal sin that has no real bearing on anything. I am a fan of stories that harken back to Edgar Allan Poe. You know the ones that hope to bring light to the more considerable pain of just being human, the ones that have profound lessons that only people with some sort of introspection may actually understand. My award-winning short film “Remorse” is one of those. This little film is about how hate and the need for retribution can override our ability to empathize and think clearly.
In the film, the main character is out for revenge. The main character has been brooding over the loss of his wife to the point that it has encompassed his life and every thought. He lies in bed, staring at a picture of the two of them only to have her disappear entirely from the photograph.
Unable to take the hate and grief that has overcome his world, he takes his pistol, puts on his hoodie, and breaks into the house of the person whom he blames for his plight. Finding that there is no one home, he begins to snoop.
He finds a photo album and rifles through it. Here he finds that these people are just like him. They have smiles and cries, children, and loved ones, just like him.
Realizing his hate, the man leaves and mourns the loss of his loved one last time, then throws his pistol into a river, essentially throwing out all the hate and despair with it.
That’s the story I had in mind when I filmed it with Jeremy Duckworth. I felt it was important to leave it vague so people could take away what they need. I think it works beautifully. I love the entire film. The really cool part about it is that it was never written down, and each shot was thought up only moments before filming. In fact, Jeremy looked up at me before one shot and asked me what the hell we were shooting. I just said “trust me” and kept trucking. It worked.
But that isn’t always the case.
This time around, I had a plan. I wrote it all on a whiteboard and made sure that everything was right. At least as right as I could get it at the time, I had a plan! But, as in war, every plan is perfect until it’s executed.
This time the screwups were my fault. I scheduled the first shot too late in the day. I believed we would have enough time to get five scenes before having to let everyone go. We got two. I wanted to try a new setting on my camera and be more “filmmakery.” Not only did I not know how to work that setting correctly, but I also underexposed every shot by almost seven stops. I even screwed this up further by turning the camera at Slog3 instead of Slog2. Even if I had put it on the setting that I thought I was using, it still would have been entirely wrong. You have to learn sometime, and you only learn from making mistakes. Many other things went wrong that day as well. I do not want to bash any of the actors, and the mishaps were not too unfortunate so, I will let you spot them if you’re into that kind of thing.
So, why am I publishing my mistakes? Well, why not. It is still visually appealing, though not correctly exposed or colored, and everyone spent a lot of time and energy, making it happen. Who am I to say that no one should ever see the footage? Plus, there is an added benefit of it, making me more creative. Editing this stuff, even if subpar, makes me entranced. Not only did I make the film, now I have two blog posts about it, and I am writing more of the story to make these scened make sense.
I am also not an egomaniac, and my ego doesn’t suffer when I make mistakes. I learned something from this attempt, and now, anyone who wants to make a film might learn something from my failures. Not everything in life is perfect, but, as we all know, never making anything doesn’t help either.