Introductions
So I'm kind of new to this thing but I've wanted to start a Film and TV Blog for a while now so welcome!
MY BACKGROUND IN FILMMAKING
For as long as I can remember, I've always loved watching movies on my own or with friends and family, some of my earliest memories were watching the Indiana Jones movies with my family which explains why I love the Adventure Genre so much, from then on I thought to myself that potentially doing something in the filmmaking world would be a cool idea but I was 6-7 years old at the time.
Eventually in Secondary school, I started taking things a bit more seriously and applied for a Level 2 Media Studies course which seemed like a good stepping stone into the filmmaking business, this course was a great start for me because I not only got to meet some very talented and creative people but also taught by them as well, come Level 2 I was being taught by James Fox, Tony Parr and Luke Wordingham who to this day I still harbour a lot of respect for as they were able to teach me so much about the media world. Level 2 I'd say was somewhat problematic because smack bang in the middle of the course, the pandemic happened and we all had to work from home which was pretty cool at least for me because being stuck inside gave me time to improve my filmmaking talents ranging from animation to some post production, eventually I began working with my friend Luke Barnes whom I'd met on the Level 2 course.
During the pandemic I applied for a Level 3 media course which would introduce me to not only more talented people but also I'd be taught once more by Luke and Tony, on my first day of Level 3 I met Justin Smith who I think was still relatively new at the time and for the first few weeks, myself along with a lot of the others on the course learnt a lot from him. However, just a few weeks after we started the course, Justin had left the college's employ which to this day I don't know the reasoning behind.
Anyway, during this time I became a member of a group called "The Filmmakers" with my friends Luke, Chris, Ainslie and Tyler. We essentially called ourselves the next Sidemen but it didn't go anywhere because we were mostly fighting over video stuff and eventually things just fell apart. We had all agreed to go our separate ways and just focus on our own work.
Come 2021, I had properly begun learning post production with the Adobe suite (this included Photoshop, Audition, Premiere and various pieces of software) and I had the power to finally edit with myself, a little prior to this me and Luke had parted ways as collaborators but decided to remain friends which I'm glad about.
Anyway, following a 5-minute documentary project and the shambles of what was a "Sound Report" we had come to one of the bigger projects of the year, the FMP or Final Major Project. (This was one of 2 FMPs we would have to make while on the course with each one closing out one year)
For my FMP, I had gone for essentially a parody of the TV Show "Brooklyn Nine Nine" and called it "Norfolk 99" because I am a hack filmmaker, anyway the project after a few rewrites retained the title and was now a mockumentary behind the scenes video as opposed to a scripted episode which would've been tricky considering COVID was still a hinderance on us. Following that project's completion however, we suddenly had some free time on our hands so we were put into groups of about 4 or 5 and went to work on what I guess you'd call a "48-Hour" Film challenge of some kind, and when it came to filming this mother nature WAS NOT on our side because we were going to film outside but then we had to cancel it because the rain was pouring down which would've complicated things just a little bit.
Time skipping to around 6 or 7 weeks later, me and the gang were all back together (I think over that past year we lost about half of our number because a few people left either because they didn't like the course or they had health issues) but most of us were back together again for what was now the final year on the course which made me a bit sad but I tried not to think about it.
For the first unit on our 2nd year, we were basically told that we could create anything we wanted whether it be video or print based, except anything X-rated because I don't think any of the tutors would've been too happy about that. Following the departure of Justin and Luke taking over his duties, I was happy that we were being taught by Foxy who as mentioned taught a couple of us during the Level 2/COVID days.
I also saw this part of the course as kind of a dark time for me, I don't normally like to discuss this kind of stuff but during this time I had begun struggling with some mental health issues which caused some unusual behaviour from me, but I don't like to talk about that. Anyway, since we were told to create whatever we wanted bar anything "X-Rated" I saw this as a golden opportunity what with the looming release of the 25th Bond film (kind of, it's difficult to explain) I did what any sane person would do, recount nearly 60 years worth of film history in 1 documentary, that shouldn't be too difficult right? Well it was and then I turned into a Netflix-style Docuseries which I felt worked a lot better.
The Docuseries actually had 2 endings, the one I originally cut together was in the event that the project was released before the next Bond Film released, the 2nd one however covered this film in its entirety, I'm glad I covered both of these because it's great to be prepared.
Come January 2022, we started 2 projects simultaneously, a multicamera project and an essay project which made me think "This shouldn't be too hard, right?" well guess what 18-year old me? YOU'RE WRONG! Anyway, the multicamera shoot which I'll focus on for now was one of my personal favourite projects because while I loved how my mockumentary and the docuseries had turned out, they did have their flaws and with this new project I finally saw a chance to make something scripted, so I went to the Detective genre and wrote a 5-minute ish short film about a murder investigation, that may have been due to the release of the new Batman movie but hey, all in the name of progress right?
The short film released a few months later and I was very happy with the result and to this day, I still look back on that project as one of my more professional filmmaking experiences.
Eventually, I went all out on the FINAL ever project which was a 12 minute or so animation called "The Fortune" and eventually, I turned that into a 30-minute animated feature following the completion of the project and I even managed to get the original voice actor back for it too, as well as a few new ones too. The Fortune was actually dedicated to my Grandad who passed away not too long after the animation released, I paid tribute to him via a plot point in the movie with the main character Marcus Bassett's Grandfather who in the original script wasn't initially included.
The course eventually ran its course and we all went our separate ways, some of us went onto further education while some pursued full time jobs with an end goal of making it into the industry in some way, but despite a lot of the problems I had mentally, I still hold those 3 years of Media Studies very close to my heart and I made some great friends there, some of them I keep in touch with to this day.
Anyway, if you made it to the end of this blog post I am very impressed so thanks for reading, I'll hopefully be back on here soon discussing some more film related stuff
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