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What is the first film you shoot/direct in your life? [survey]


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Okay this sounds kind of personal, but I'd like to know.

 

What is the first film you shoot and direct after you just call yourself a director/filmmaker?

 

Do you write your own script, if you do what aspects of drama did you include? Do you start out well? Who helped? Or were you a one-man crew?

 

No right or wrong answers. Just curious. And if anyone nostalgic enough to tell me please do :]

 

Much appreciated.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Hi, i don't know if commercials count, but my first directing was for an advert film. İ did modify the script a lot. The actual script was for one guy to just say a few words. But, i placed 3 of the same guy and came up with this... İ

 

 

t's not English..... This was shot with HVX200E in 2008.

 

Regards,

 

Pekin

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  • 3 months later...
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When you're first stating you do it all; write, direct, shoot, edit/post poduction. I tried doing a series of martial arts videos for someone I thought i knew for over ten years, but the guy flaked, and I really had to make stuff up on the fly. The rest of my previous career was ADing and Stage Managing after that, therefore I don't call myself a director.

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The first thing I shot was a project for my Us history class freshman yr in highschool. It was myself and 2 other guys filming some people's letters home from Vietnam. Basically just talking about the long periods of doing nothing, then the battles. Shot it on a little RCA VHS camera and then we edited it with 2 VCRs. the one VCR had stereo inputs so we could run in a keyboard for some music and I think we used some footage from Apocalypse Now to show the battle scenes.

After that I did a lot of playing with fish-tanks and ink, cloud tanks, ect just playing around with the camera. I think I may even still have the tape somewhere of that first, really bad, film.

 

Though I didn't start calling myself anything until very recently, though I've been getting paid for a bit. Even now, I tend to qualify that "well that's what I list on my tax returns."

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  • 8 months later...

My first film (if being general) was a multi-volume documentary. It was just me shooting.

 

The first fictional film I shot was a feature length horror film (yep, went all out right away like a fool). :) I lovingly refer to it as a "camera test". hahahahahaha I'd just slammed down $4K (never again) for the DVX100B when it was hot. I thought I could do anything and wrote this crazy script about a nut job of a woman who hosted a live internet cooking show where she would kill, cook and eat her roommates. She would keep getting new roommates by putting "room for rent" ads in the paper. So she gets two new roommates. One is a woman completely obsessed with guns. I'd gotten a good deal on some airsoft guns and which of course demanded that I use every single one of them in the film. That character walked around the whole time without about 4-5 guns on and had a full on shootout with the other new roommate in the basement (he was using an assault rifle of course). The other new roommate was a guy on probation for exposing himself in public and he ends up falling in love with the cooking show woman and agreed to kill the other roommate all in the name of love. Once he kills the other roommate, he learns it's so his "boo" could cook and eat her for the show. Oh in the meantime, the cooking show woman also killed a nosy kid and the best friend of the gun-loving roommate. And naturally there came a time when she wanted to cook and eat her new man and a fight broke out which ended in both of their deaths.

 

...yep. That sounded like a damn good idea at the time.

 

It was called "Sociopathica" and even though it was nothing short of awful, I enjoy that I made it. When I need a good laugh, I watch it. :) It even had the nerve to be 2 DVDs. hahahahaha

 

I did all the crew work myself and the most of the cast were my friends and co-workers with a few being some bored individuals who saw my ad on Craigslist.

 

Now I have to watch it again. :)

 

Oh I guess the first thing I really attempted to shoot was a "comedy" re-write I did of the first X-Files movie. I don't think we got one shot done but we sure did try. We started with a corn maze... in the dark... with a VHS camcorder... yep. :)

Edited by T Sanders
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I dont have the thing up on Youtube, but my first (completed) short was a ridiculous "film" (shot on Canon XL2) called "Psycho Granny." It was a drunken gag between my friend and I. I did Directing, camera, lights, sounds, and I was 3 different parts in it. My friend (male) was two parts and Granny (we used a prosthetic to cover his beard because he didn't want to shave.)

 

It was super cheesy and retarded but, once edited, it was fun to sit back and look at what we did. I guarantee my first project was worse than anybody on this forum. Serious.

 

At the end of the short, we showed Granny drinking a 40 oz of Steel Reserve. Hi-lar-i-ous.

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Okay this sounds kind of personal, but I'd like to know.

 

What is the first film you shoot and direct after you just call yourself a director/filmmaker?

 

Do you write your own script, if you do what aspects of drama did you include? Do you start out well? Who helped? Or were you a one-man crew?

 

No right or wrong answers. Just curious. And if anyone nostalgic enough to tell me please do :]

 

Much appreciated.

 

I've never called myself a film maker. Other people have called me a filmmaker (though I haven't shot anything in years). My college sometimes called us "filmmakers", but to me I'll always be either crew or a writer.

 

A film maker connotates someone who is a one man operation; writes the script, shoots the film, edits and posts his work. I haven't done that since I was at the local JC. Therefore I've never really considered myself a "filmmaker".

 

I've worked on a small handful of features, indy and studio. I've worked on lots of video. I've shot weddings, CEOs, company meetings, commercials, but I've never been the sole person to make "a film".

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I took my brothers and we'd reenact battles from our favorite movies and shoot them on an old crappy camcorder. We'd edit it together on the first version of windows movie maker. I wish I could return to those times...

 

But that was the moment I called myself a filmmaker/director. It wasn't out of arrogance or self indulgence, but out of truth. What else would I be?

Edited by Abdullah AbuMahfouz
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