Sunday, November 24, 2013

The Beginnings...

I always loved science fiction, since I was a very very little kid...

Star Wars original trilogy for one was a window into another dimension for me, the source of infinite inspiration. And then was the Fifth Element and Men in Black. Just imagine what kind of impact those movies had on a kid who was fascinated with movies in general. I even tried to imitate the movies I saw, as I guess many did. 

I was using my VCR camera back in the day to film my own blockbusters and show off in front of my family and friends. And maybe my low-budgeted short-films were not in any way as good as the originals, they did the important thing for me, they planted a seed of inspiration into my heart and allowed me to dream. I always had a dream of becoming the movie-maker although it was completely unrealistic and I didn’t know the first things about movie-making.

Unfortunately for me, where I lived there wasn’t anything even remotely close to the film-making industry or film-school. My parents didn’t have money to send me to another city to study and to be honest I was afraid to ask. I felt ashamed of dreaming about something like that. It wasn’t practical. It was always considered to be a hobby of mine and nobody else took it seriously, nobody but me. It was considered impossible for me to break into the industry or it wasn’t considered at all.

Fortunately, I was wise enough to pick a major in computer programming\coding. Although it is not by any means directly related to film-making, knowing about how computers\programs work gave me a huge benefit later on as I started pursuing a filmmaking career. Let’s be realistic, the filmmaking process of today is unthinkable without using a computer or even thousands of them to complete different tasks as in pre-production, and as well the production itself and majorly post-production. So yeah, if you want a career in film-making you should probably start learning about some of the specific programs used to accomplish certain tasks, i.e. Adobe Photoshop, Adobe After Effects, Adobe Audition (I’m really not advertising Adobe J I’m just used to working with these products but you might find other alternatives).

So personally for me, it took a major dramatic event in my life related to my coming-out of the closet to my family which was a bigger deal 10 years ago than it might be right now. Well it was a big deal for me. And after that, after the dust settled, I realized that if I was able to survive that than I’m gonna be able to at least try and pursue the career that I dreamt about.

And that is how it all began. I started writing my first screenplay, as I figured that was the most realistic way for me to approach the film-making industry. I hope I was right. In any way in 2010 I finally landed a movie deal with a production company that optioned\bought my sci-fi screenplay (please don’t think that it was the first screenplay that I wrote. I wrote about 25 of them by that point) and it went into production.

I will tell you more about What to expect from your 1st movie\book deal later. Right now you can check out the poster and trailer for that movie, if you want to Jdarkharvestthemovie.com

But a deal with an independent production company, no matter how resourceful, probably isn’t gonna get you to the success level that you might dream about. And it does not in most cases open the doors to Hollywood which many of us believe to be the pivotal point in building a film-making career. So the next step that I thought to be logical is book-writing. Although book industry isn’t directly connected to film-making one, they both been tending lately to work together. There aren’t many people in the world who don’t know about Harry Potter film franchise that started with J.K.Rowling writing the novel about said character. Then was the Twilight Saga and the Hunger Games (I am the biggest fan of the latter). So a film-making-career-pursuer like me might think about writing a novel first to elevate chances of getting closer to, again, Hollywood, that is ultimately the place where the movie-industry concentrates.

Having said that, I don’t want you to think that I don’t enjoy writing at all. If that would have been the case, I probably wouldn’t be doing it for 10 years. I love writing. I love writing screenplays as much as I love writing books. The two are completely different forms of writing and they are intended for the different kinds of audiences (I will cover that topic later on) but they are both fun.

So that brings us to my latest effort in my pursuit of success, my science fiction novel. The deal has been signed (and I will cover the topic of What to expect from your first movie\book deal later) and the book awaits publication. What’s gonna happen next? I have completely no idea. Stay tuned and find out. J

Yours,
Perie      

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