okay , when i was in the latter parts of primary (elementary) school , we had to make a ffilm for an extra curricular activity. So a few of my friends and i decided to make a slasher film with aliens. It was gonna be really scary. but then we found out we had to film it around the school, so we couldn't film it at nigh like we wanted to ( schools not open at night, duh) so we decided to lay back on the "scary" effect of =the film and just make it gory. I was even prepared to bringa tomato sauce packet for fake blood! But first we had to write a script, so Mitch and i  decided to write it while the others just got cameras, and decided on everything. It was really slasher-ish (considering two 11-year minds came up with  it(yes i was 11) ) i decided to put in a few tongue-iin-cheek jokes in it, so did Mitch. Anyway, we eventuall toned down the violence after realising there was no way we coulsd show thwe aliens on film without creating like a zillion costuemes. SO we added a few mpore jokes, spoofed some films,  and BINGO, you've got yourselfA COMEDY. We manged to change a script from horror to comedy in about two weeks. The end product off the film is still robably in the school library somewhere, three years later. . Anyway we filmed it in three days, considering it had only like three pages of script. In fact i think ive still got the same script on the computer somewhere (weve had the same computer for like four years now). what's your earliest experiece with film making? sorry for the long post...my fingers are really sore.  

Earliest experience?  Hmm.  I found this forum and decided to write a script .

Me and some friends made a movie for drama class way way way back in highschool "9 years or more now" called "Brain Smash" and all it consisted of was us filming this rubber brain filled with muck, blood and goop, getting smashed by various objects.

A train. A sledghammer. A car. A dog chewing it up... it went on and on and on.

I still have the tape and just pulled it out a few months ago to watch it again, me and one of the guys who made it just laughed and laughed at it.

To bad the teacher didn't see the art in it... We got a D on it  I guess it lacked story.

In middle school, a couple of neighborhood kids and I got together and tried to do a spoof off the Blair Witch Project. We had no idea what we were doing and got in a lot of fights, mainly because we were all 9-13 years old but also because I took it a bit too seriously. Parts of it actually looked good for something made by running around the neighborhood with a video camera especially since we managed to make it look like we were actually in the woods when we never set foot into an area that was remotely woodlike. And we got some cool shots of this guy's sister pretending to be bloody hands.

My first REAL filmmaking experience was in 9th grade when I was the sound mixer on a short film at a summer course at college. All the equipment was top notch and some kid brought in a fog machine. This was the real deal to me.

Here it is.  The "True Hollywood Story" nobody asked for:

My first experiece was when I was nine or so, and my brother, my cousins, and I made this shitty little picture called "The Last Day of School."  Bascially, it was a killer killing young people in an isolated country home.  Obviously, it was a work of original genius.  Actually, it was pretty bad, but I just watched it the other day and it is still entertaining as hell.

My second experiece was in sixth grade when, for a school project, I made another shitty slasher movie.  Now, it was about this time that I actually really got into the idea of making a career out of filmmaking, so I of course thought that all it took was pointing the camera at a talking head and then throw in some crap gore for good measure.  Obviously, this too is a pile of monkey turd, though, strangely, worse than the one I made when I was nine.

In tenth grade, I finally had a job and was finally able to go digital.  Now, I could not only film in widescreen, but I could also give my movies the editing shine they so desperately needed without using a VCR.  If you never filmed a home movie with a simple VHS camcorder, I suggest doing it just to see how original you can get.  Want music?  Better have a decent stereo near by.

Anywho, I'm from Pennsylvania, so I think it is actually a law that if you have a camcorder and you are fifteen, you have to make a zombie movie.  So, that's what I did.  For a tenth grade film project, I made the classic motion picture event, "No More Room In Hell."  We had roughly two zombies and a horrendous fucking actor for the lead.  What's even worse, is that he was at this point talking of making a career out of acting.  It's for the better that he got more interested in art.

Without a doubt in my mind, "No More Room In Hell" is the worst home movie I have ever made.  Yes, it is still on my computer even after two years.  No, it will not ever be seen by anyone ever.  It is so horrendously bad, that my teacher made me turn it off halfway through.  I would have liked for her to have turned it off because the gore level made it innapropriate for school.  No, it was turned off because it was just so horrendously awful.

Now, after this was 11th grade, in which I used the Digital 8 to make two films: "Crappy Spider-Man" and "Crappy Aliens."  Both of these five minute shorts where cinematic gold.  Made entirely using action figures, I recreated the last five minutes of "Spider-Man" and "Aliens" using the original music and camera angles.  They are actually very good, and everyone can look forward to "Crappy(er) Alien Vs. Predator," coming very, very soon.

Anyway, 12th grade rolled around, and the masterpiece to end all masterpieces was created: "The Island of the Asteroid Monster."  To date, this my favorite film that I have created, and it earned me the highest grade in my whole senior class as a Senior Project.  I still watch it now and again, and I feel like everything just sort of came together for it.

Now, there is "The Willie & The Grace," which I not only enjoyed creating and watching, but I know someday I could probably write a whole novel on the creation of it and make myself quite a profit.  It's an excellent story all in itself.

Now, I have a few things on the horizon.  Three are films, and the other is something that could actually get me money as well as a touch of fame, but I am contractionally obliged to not get into too much detail on it.  But the three films are "Crappy(er) Alien Vs. Predator" (which is literally 99.9% finished), a second episode of "The Willie & The Grace" (due out by mid-December), and, what I am most excited about and will begin production when I go into school in January...

MAX PAYNE.

And I promise it will be good.  The story is outlined, and a script is being written.  And once I am at the school, I will have a whole crew and professional equipment at my disposal.  It will be a short, but it could probably be anywhere from twenty to fourty minutes long.  And, we just came up with an idea yesterday for an excellent little surprise ending.  Of course, this will probably not be completely finished by 2007, but it is still something I am very much looking forward to.

Well... that's it.

wow. you started when you were nine? i didn't even know how to work a cmera then! (note: i still didn't really know when i made that first film, and i remember the film seeming really badly edited due to the fact that i couldn't press the Record button proply.)

Well, me and my ex were in her bedroom fooling around with a camcorder, when she turned to me and very cheekily suggested that we...

The rest of this message has been removed by a moderator.

Quoted from Matt Mosley Well, me and my ex were in her bedroom fooling around with a camcorder, when she turned to me and very cheekily suggested that we... The rest of this message has been removed by a moderator.

LOL, had to go and get a visual stuck in my head, dirty son ofa...


while i never directed anything per say, i have always looked at things in a director sort of way and have set up many shots in my mind for random stuff really.

I am hoping to get something done by the end of this decade, if not the next.

Well, it seems I was older, but anyway...I had no way of actually recording sound on the POS I was using for a camcorder at the age of 15 (or so), but I made a whole series of short silent films I just called "Video Things." I dubbed in music after I had recorded it and just made up the story as I went along. Also, I did not have any software to cut anything with, so it just was how it was shot and then dubbed off the tape pretty much frame for frame what was shot.

The most memorable were a motorcycle that could travel between realities and so the two guys end up in an alternate reality where they meet evil versions of themselves and the evil ones steal their motorcycle so they have to get it back. The other was a space movie where these guys "beam down" (read: pause, get off the platform, unpause) to a planet to discover a powerful cyborg (note: me directing from in front of the camera) who takes over the ship before they can throw it out the airlock. All of them were done in my parents' house, my next door neighbors' house, and our respective backyards which were somewhat diverse in natural elements. The last one that sticks with me was one where a powerful being of some sort finds a guy in a garage and wreaks havoc before blowing his head off. Those were some fun effects there.

I haven't seen the tape since 1996, so I don't know where it is. I wish I did.      

Was Matts post really modded or did he do that himself? If so that's funny, I've never seen Don mod a post and leave that message (Or Alan as he is the moderator on this board) and now I'm curious as to what was written there...

And to further the plot as George put it I have had 0 film experience in my life... I depend on others to do that kind of stuff for me, some day maybe I'll delve into the great beyond known a film making.

I really rank my post as delving into character...but it does further the plot of the thread too. Hey, that's two out of three.