After the Shoot

The funny thing about making a movie is that getting it written, financed, and shot is only half the battle. These are probably the biggest obstacles people have in their mind about making a movie, but in reality, it's what comes next that determines whether a film lives or dies.

Concept image from Brickwalk Cafe 2: The Death of a Film

Unfortunately, this is where my talent and my interest mostly ends. The next day when we returned the gear (thanks again to Ryan Chambers who went way above and beyond his call of duty), on the drive home I was itching to start shooting a new one. Though my feelings were positive, I was ready to put Brickwalk behind me. That, sadly, is not how it works.

The next month or so, not much got done. Nobody involved wanted to think about it for the time being, and we hadn't hung out socially without having tons of work to do for quite some time. Some of my awesome friends managed to throw me a surprise wrap party which was a classy move on their part because I had completely neglected to put one of those together. I think that should have been my job. Whoops. But beyond that, our brains melted into a sort of gelatinous goo that quivered at the thought of the task ahead of us.

Pictured

Finally, we realized that we would have to finish this thing at some point, so Brian Nenno mounted the work-day-job-then-edit-all-night horse and rode off into the sunset.

I couldn't find a picture of one of those, so here's a fruitcake

Kevin and I ended up having to step in at certain points where Brian's actual job had to take precedence. Something about "they pay me so I can support my wife and eat food." I'm not sure I buy it.

We managed to eek out a rough cut by the Sundance late deadline...barely. It wasn't color corrected, the audio was a mess, but it happened. But, dear readers, even this doesn't begin to encompass the work that must be done after a movie is shot.

Inception (of the idea to make Brickwalk...not the Christopher Nolan film)

I've been trying to make a feature for years. Literally one third of my life up until this point, I have been desperately trying to make this a reality. A few friends and I had made shorts before, and hell, our 20 minute movie only took a week. So this was just like doing 4 of those, right? No problem!

From my B grade black and white zombie film to the local election campaign mockumentary, all attempts had failed at the same point: financing.

Apparently I am the single worst fundraiser in the history of film making. Producers have many jobs, but really the single most important thing they do is get money for the project. Even if they spend the rest of their time at donkey shows and beating up grade school children, if they can raise and distribute enough money to the rest of the production team, everything should work out fine.

Realizing this, I crawled into a dark hole in my self conscience. Was I an idiot for pursuing something that I was so recklessly bad at? Probably. But was I enough of an idiot to try anyway? That was what I had to figure out.

I took a look at my finances. I'd been saving for years with the ultimate goal of owning a home. It always seemed like a good investment, home prices in Southern California have a tendency to appreciate in value (even with the recent deflation of prices, the long term return is still amazing), plus they have the added bonus of ensuring that the owner is never homeless.

From somewhere outside of this dark hole came a voice. It asked a single question: "would you rather be a home owner or a film maker?" The answer to that question was easy.

Clearly, it was time to be an idiot.