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 Did i go to filmschool?........no, done. That's not quite where the story ends though and i thought i'd take some time and fill in 'the blanks'.

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 As previously stated i was bitten by the film and writing bug from an early age, i later took media studies at school/college and enjoyed parts of it. There was a hell of a lot of film analysis, which was fun and helped me look deeper into the sub text in film. However i was frustrated with the course as there wasn't enough practical work, if we humble students got our hands on a camcorder twice in a year/term we were extremely lucky. Although one assignment i do remember was that we had to make a tv advertisement for something. Now me and my friends tried to convince the teacher (one Mr Harrison, a funny but slightly fat man obsessed with Terminator 2)  to let us make a movie trailer. After we bombarded him with reasons why it was better and what not, he simply said "do you want to get a good grade and do what i ask?....or mess around making this trailer and get nothing?". I replied something like " we'll i'd sooner do the trailer to be honest", then seeing the look on his face added "we'll do the advert". Probably more of  a rhetorical question i suppose but hell i was ready to make something and i was excited.

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So my class mate Lee Hardcastle (thats right the claymation guy) decided to make a crazy action figure advert, we even brought Bayl into the project, even though he didn't take the course (although he later said he WISHED he had). So armed with some old toys and a handful of fireworks (i would not recommend anyone to do this!) we made the most action packed toy advert the world had EVER seen. We all got good grades out of that one and basically managed to get a movie trailer (in disguise) past the teacher HA HA!. Think that was the only project that we did that had a beginning, middle and end to it (besides occasionally picking up a cam in lesson and say, film the school grounds or something). I've always been so eager to just get filming, get shooting that this just wasn't enough for me.

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 When i came to the end of my sixth form period the dreaded head of Uni was loooming at me, like medusa waiting to turn me to stone. I couldn't even LOOK at the papers for it, i was frankly a little tired of classes and really thought " do i want to go and do more?". You see previously i had taken some BAD advice from a teacher at school and had chosen double english (language and literature). At the time i was interested in writing as well and i was told by this teacher "you can't be a journalist/writer without BOTH qualifications".....so i did. The english work came thick and fast!, i didn't even want to do both courses, it was only the literature side i wanted to take. I ended up doing badly on BOTH courses and (although i have benefitted) was fed up with classes and coursework. I decided to go my own way and took up a fulltime job. Was this a mistake? i seem to have taken the LONG LONG LOOONG way round but what's past is past, no point digging it up.

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 I worked steady from leaving college but just kept doing what i did best, shooting video's thick and fast whenever i could. I kept my own studies going, reading books like the no budget filmmakers guide, film directing fundamentals and josh beckers: the compte guide to low budget feature filmmaking, plus whatever else i could get my hands on. One thing i had heard a lot was, most film schools don't let you get near a camera for at least a year (one of the director's of Blair Witch Project quit filmschool after 2 and a half years because he'd never even touched a camera in that time). Don't get me wrong though, i'm sure there's a hell of a lot i could have learned  if i had gone, even just meeting like minded people would have been interesting no doubt. At the time it wasn't for me and thats all i can say.

 

 So here i am, i recently took Dov S Simmons 2 day filmschool courses on dvd and worked through the excercise and made several pages of notes. This has helped me form a plan and since then i have left a fulltime DEAD END job, written a script, secured a location and am now meeting actors for roles in my no budget FEATURE film. All i can tell you is, filmschool or no filmschool i am gonna keep shooting and maybe i'll get lucky........even if i never become SPIELBERG, i'll still be following my dream and fulfilling myself through the art of cinema.......not too shabby ey?