For the past two years I have tried to make my own feature length movies but with my two attempts life has gotten in the way. Whether it was I needed to put more focus into my high school work or I had to work to make money for college, there has been obstacles getting the way. So in this post I’d like to talk about the films I won’t make and haven’t gotten to make yet and what it is about the genre that appeals to me as a film maker. I still am working towards making one of these due to how far a long I got in the pre-production process. Anyways enough rambling lets get on with it!

Comedy

Comedy is the genre I have come the closet to actually making and am still working towards. My small team and I had about 90% of the pre-production work complete. We had a shooting script, locations scouted, a production start date, actors casted, and a crew assembled. Everyone was enthusiastic, we had set a day that we would screen the film to friends and family near the end of the summer and planned to enter it in the Calgary International Film Festival 2017. How ever I needed to make money for college and I had to work for a road construction company that needed me working 16 hours away from home, which ultimately halted production. The synopsis is as follows: The mishap adventure that three drunk friends Adam, Kristian and Luke take at 4am to retrieve Luke’s contact lens solution that he forgot at his house on the other side of town. The three try to get there and back as quickly as possible but are faced with obstacles like wannabe gangster Donnie “Cokeman” Rozansky to slow them down from accomplishing their goal. I’m mainly influenced by Kevin Smith and Edgar Wright when it comes to writing comedy. Watching movies like Clerks and The Worlds End inspires me to start writing a comedy as they bring such joy to my day that I feel like I need to follow in the same footsteps and try to do that for someone else. I love making people laugh in casual conversation or when I’m telling a story. It’s one of the best feelings.

Romance

Sure maybe not the most “manly” thing to admit but I love romance films that are done right. A good romance film is one that conveys a powerful relationship between to individuals that doesn’t use cliches as a crutch. Rather uses cliches sparingly or in an ironic manner. Great romance films have characters that audience members can relate to and not shallow, unrealistic and fake caricatures that we see in every Nicholas Sparks film ever. My go to example of a great romance film is 500 Days of Summer. It does everything right as it doesn’t use cliches as a crutch but rather in a sparing manner and stands tall thanks to a great script, excellent direction and heartfelt performances. Other romance films I consider to be just as good or close in quality are Before We Go and The Spectacular Now. I highly recommend them for similar reasons as 500 Days of Summer. All 3 of these films influence me to work towards one day filming a romance film of my own. In fact I came very close to making one based on personal life experiences but abandoned the project in order to properly move on with my life. It wasn’t healthy to become so invested in something that I should really be focusing on moving on from. I have ideas for another film based on original concepts that don’t mirror real life experiences. I may begin to develop one of these into a script when I have more free time. I should also add that like comedies, romance films don’t necessarily require a large budget and can be done realistically on a small budget.

Sci-fi Fantasy

I have had a love for sci-fi from a very young age, one of my most cherished memories is my dad sitting me down to watch Star Wars (A New Hope) for the very first time at the age of six. I absolutely fell in love with the film and it sparked the creative part of my brain into full gear. I began writing my own stories in the Star Wars universe that were absolute nonsense in retrospect but I loved them at the time and that’s all that really mattered. Fast forward to today I am still in the mindset of wanting to tell my own stories. I have so many ideas for sci-fi fantasy films that I need to just pick one and run with it. While yes there are several original ideas I have that I’d like to tackle someday but I would be an idiot not to mention that I have ideas for a film based on the DC Comics character The Flash and Star Wars. I have also very slowly been developing a script for a Spider-Gwen film that I hope one day to be able to have someone else turn into a film or maybe I would direct it. Who knows?! The biggest reason that I haven’t actively tried to make a film like this on my own is due to budgetary constraints. The ideas I have a large in scale and couldn’t meet the budget of a student film.

There you have it folks! Those are the genres that I am most interested in tackling as a film maker. How about you guys? Are any of you interested film making? What kind of films would you like to make or have you made one already? Start a conversation with me on twitter or instagram @nerdycasual.

Thanks for reading and take care!