Three years ago on a summer afternoon, I went over to my friend's house expecting to hang out and watch funny YouTube videos. What I didn't expect was the next day we would be writing the script to our first full length movie. We had so much fun creating our first movie, we decided we wanted to continue. This led to the next three summers being completely dedicated to creating two more movies and a discovery of talents we never knew we had.
Last summer we finished making our third movie called Variance: Aconite. It's the sequel to our second movie we made called Variance. The story is about six kids living together with their mentor who has helped them learn how to use their special gifts to help others but has also kept secrets from them for a very long time. In the sequel, they must work with an old enemy to defeat a much more dangerous one.
When this all started, my friends and I had no idea we'd end up making three full length movies. My friends had made a couple of five minute films previously but they were for school projects. When they showed them to me, it made me want to make one of our own that wasn't for school. I brought it to the guys and they all agreed. Withing a week we had almost completed a script and were ready to film. What came next was a realization that we had no idea what we were doing. There was a lot of learning on the fly on how to choreograph fight scenes, camera angles, and scene changes. We also learned the action never actually follows the script exactly so good punch lines on the fly were a must. All in all, the first movie turned out ok, and the funny part is we actually thought it was really good. However, after watching it a few times, we knew we didn't want to end our very short movie careers on one bad movie.
We got the idea for the second movie because Skyler (editor and camera man) was able to download some special effects that could give a character super powers. We decided we wanted to do a super hero movie but we didn't want the film to be about one person in particular because it would be unfair to everyone else for one of us to be the main character. As a compromise, a group of superheros was born. Starting a new film also meant tackling new challenges. Since we wanted Variance to have a story line, it took us about four months for us to write the script. Once filming began, we slowly learned that having so many people involved as main characters made it difficult to get everyone together to film. We also continued to face the difficult hurdle of lack of filming knowledge, which made cuts sloppy. Our filming abilities had improved greatly since the first film, but were still missing finesse. We did, however, receive over 400 views for Variance on YouTube.
Our third, and most recent movie, Variance: Aconite, which was released Friday, January 13th, is our best film yet. The story continues with Pen and his family as they must ally with an old enemy to confront a new sinister threat. Friendships are tested as this new force manipulates the thoughts of our heroes. Aconite took twice as long to create as Variance but was much better. Our ability to write a coherent story line had improved, and our wisdom and skills on film making improved as well. This led to our fight scenes being crisper, the acting improving, the camera angles looking sharper, and the overall production appearing much cleaner.
The thing that I love the most about making these movies is we had no aspirations or desire to create these films until it was put in front of us. We were lifted by inspiration to do something we had never done before, create something awesome, and be proud of the final product. Inspiration is incredibly powerful. Throughout my small journey as a film maker, I have learned a great deal. Not only have I learned the skills of being a producer, cameraman, actor, and director, but I also learned to not underestimate my abilities until I give it a shot. If you have a passion but are afraid to follow them because you don't think you have the talent or the resources, you won't know you can't until you try. We created a feature length film with zero dollars and filmed it on a iPod touch! If we can do that, then you can do whatever your mind can imagine. Now get out there and make something awesome!
If you would like to check out our movies and our film studio, Nothing Further Films, the links are below!
Nothing Further Films
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxNd9T3lmWlNTEyQq...
Variance
Variance: Aconite
