Making a film on my own

Earlier this year I finally pressed the ‘export’ button on a documentary film I had been making for over 7 years. I ended up working on the project on my own, in my spare time around a full time job, and later 2 house moves and a new baby.

It started out as a project that I did as part of a documentary film making course, which was a six month long part time course. I was meant to produce something that was fifteen minutes long and based only on filmed footage, but what I ended up producing, 7 years later stretches to just over an hour and has numerous animated sequences, which I also produced myself.

The finished film is very much a DIY affair, and is entirely self funded (although after paying for training and buying new equipment I estimate my spending on it to come in under £10,000).

It is the story of a man who was a journalist in Iraq at the beginning of the war in 2003, and who lost part of his leg to a landmine. My aim in the film was to tell the story of this event and his recovery from it.

I’ve entered it into a few festivals but have been knocked back from the bigger ones where I was probably competing against professional outfits. I’m still wiating to hear from some smaller ones, but I don’t really mind this, as entering the film into festivals weas more of a mark of completing the project for me than anything else. For those who know me actually finishing projects isn’t my strong point.

I’m pleased enough with the look, but having made it once there are things I would do differently now. There are definitely a lot of things I learned both about film making and my own creative process along the way.

Technical skills matter

One of the big frustrations I had with that original course is that the tutor spent far more time on ‘ideas development’ than she did on technical skills training. I think that ideas development is really important, and allowing space for that activity is definitely key to a successful project.

However, when I came to try to put some of my ideas into practice I found that I didn’t have the technical skills to do some of the things I wanted to do. Some of those things were quite basic editing techniques, and I needed to go off and pay for more training to really be able to start putting my ideas into practice

Equipment matters

Another problem I had with that orginal course was that the equipment they supplied was very big, clumbersome, and almost impossible to manage on my own. Most of the cameras were really designed for use on sets or bigger productions, not for the DIY documentarian.

I think they intended for groups of students to team up while making their films, but this didn’t work so well on a part time course as we all had different schedules and commitments. The impact this had on me was to make me feel that documentary film making would be inaccessible to me, and to lose courage. But over time I learned this was not the case.

Later I invested in a small digital DSLR camera that records really nice interview footage, a pair of radio mics and some other small bits and pieces. All of this equipement fits in a bag that I can take on the bus with me if I need to.

There are draw backs, in that the DSLR doesn’t like to record footage while it is moving (although it does a nice job with capturing things if it is locked off on a tripod), so I’ll have to supplement my kit at some point with a go pro or a camcorder.

But the lesson here was that with a bit of research I was able to find some kit that worked for me.

Being ‘slow’ is baked into my process

I was reading an article by Dad on the Spectrum the other day on Medium about how people who are neurodiverse take more time to do things. I left a comment about how I used to think I was ‘slow’, but now I know that I just think differently. I think in the comment this ‘slow’ came across as a negative thing, and it probably was at some point in the past.

Now I see that my process of circling through projects and giving each one a rest to breathe for periods of time is probably just part of my process. It certainly slows down my progress, but I think the end results are better so I’m learning to embrace ‘slow’.

I like to make things hard for myself

One of the decisions I made early on was to animate a number of sections in the film. I learned that using film footage is a lot quicker and easier, although maybe less satisfying.

I don’t regret choosing this path, but it was time consuming, labour intensive, and slowed down the whole process even more as I needed to do more training, and learn how to use a different set of software. Still I am glad that I did this as it enriched the experience of making my film.

If after all of that you would like to view the finished film you can see it here.

Thank you for reading. I also write, make art and films. You can read my short fantasy stories here on Simily. If you are interested in the process of creativity and want to get a copy of my free short book of creative prompts, and to hear more about my writing projects please join my mailing list here. You can see my films at my YouTube channel here. You can see things with my designs on at my shop here. Could even treat yourself if you wanted to. Just saying. If buying art is not your thing, but you would like to support what you see I also have a Patreon page here.