For a living, I write computer programs and I write about, review & criticise video games.
But what I really care about is filmmaking.
Since 2005, I have written & directed two completed feature films, about a dozen short films, a web series spanning 13 episodes and some other projects.
None of these were commercially funded, all were released for free over the internet, and including the cost of slowly accumulating the A/V and editing kit over the years have probably cost me and the people who’ve helped me produce them a sizeable chunk of our incomes for each project. That’s not counting the value of our time spent working on them, either. Time we could easily have spent watching movies, playing video games or getting drunk at the pub.
There’s a reason I keep doing it, despite this.
When I develop software, there’s a few things I have to know. Web standards, quirks with browsers, coding methods, database techniques, et cetera. It’s a challenge, and I love that. But I’ve been doing it for most of my adult life now, and I’m growing tired of it. There’s only so many database-driven web applications you can write before they start to all meld into one big mess of CSS, AJAX and ‘Update’ buttons.
Being on set, making a film, and these are the kinds of things that I need to keep in my head at any given moment…
Scenes, performances, schedules at this location, shot-lists, which shots I might use in the edit and which I might not, the background noise and the way were recording the audio in a given seen, who’s available at a later date if we need to loop any audio or shoot pick-up shots, keeping an eye on the video & audio files we’re capturing to ensure we don’t lose them, when and where food is coming from, the emotional states of those involved as cast or crew, the battery levels of all the equipment, backup plans for when the plethora of things that can go wrong inevitably do go wrong, the logistics of getting kit home after the shoot, permission to film in different places, which copyrighted logos might be in shot that I need to hide, fabricating fictionally-branded replacement items for precisely the same reason, release methods, who paid for what, basic OH&S concerns…
That’s just what springs to mind right now in the three minutes I gave myself to write that paragraph. Beyond all this you need to have figured out all manner of questions and choices: if you want a fast pace, do you want to mostly keep to close-ups? Do the performances match the pace you’re after? Do the angles chosen and the lighting techniques employed match what you’re going for?
Logistics aside, every part of it s a huge swathe of creative choices, most of which require that you keep almost the entire film in your head at any given point.
Coding is not an easy job. It requires knowing multiple languages – gone from most coders’ lives is the idea of working with ‘straight c’. My work requires Python, HTML, CSS, Javascript, SQL and a few other things. But regardless of how complicated it is, it’s still easy next to filmmaking.
I (figuratively, not actually) may be years off being a “brilliant” programmer.
But I will never be a “brilliant” filmmaker – because I don’t think there’s really such a thing.
No matter what I do, what I learn and how much experience I accumulate – no matter how fantastic the people are that I work with, no matter how incredible the concept, the script and the hardware & locations are… there’s always room for improvement.
Unlike everything else I have ever attempted in my life, making films is something I can do forever and still be learning more.
Or, y’know… perhaps I’m just in love with film because I can’t take this damn rose-coloured glasses off.