To Reach The Future You Have To Let Go Of The Past

Lord knows I've done that, and such advice has been helpful, but now I find myself coming round full circle. It's the past that has reinspired me. In working on preproduction for this current feature I find myself stuck. Not exactly writer's block, just having the basic essence of the idea of the movie slip away a bit, usually due to, ya know, life.

But I find myself going through old VHS tapes I forgot I had. One of them a tape from my very very first feature, VAMPIRE KILLER, aka Dark Angel: Vampire Killer. It actually had a few other titles but I won't go into that. This tape had rehearsal footage, screen tests, and test shots. What really got me excited was watching how some of us including myself were so into rehearsing. Specifically me and two other people, Billy and the star of the movie Bree, were working on the choreography of a fight scene that never actually made into the final film.

So inspired at the time, so passionate, it all came rushing back to me. The way some of us worked, how dedicated and just how frickin into it we were. Running test shots while going over kicks and punches. Billy really had some solid acrobatic skill which really paid off in some of these fight scenes and Bree being a dancer really added alot of flow to the fight. And I was coming up with some great stuff including this gag with a broken tennis racket that I'm definitely going to put into this current movie. The feedback I was getting from the two fighters was just great, it seemed to all come together, and all of this occuring on my parents front yard about 13 years ago. Perhaps one of these days I'll put the damned movie on DVD with special features and behind the scenes stuff.

It got me going through other tapes of projects I had done. Old shorts, videos and projects I had edited, really seeing how I've evolved as a moviemaker and how my passion for it all has never really gone away. It got me out of the rut I find myself in now with this current movie. I have certainly let go of the past to reach for my future, but in reflecting on the past I find myself steps closer to the future.

So far things are going as planned for this project. All snags and difficulties that I was expecting are occuring, but since I was expecting them, no biggie. This whole moviemaking journey is a heck of a trip.