Movies have always been a part of my life. Some of my fondest memories are of my father and I parked on the couch watching movies. We would watch the same films over and over, soaking up every detail. One of our favorite pastimes was spotting the errors in continuity that seem almost unavoidable in filmmaking.
For a long time I wanted to be a director. Of the countless people who work on movies, the director always seemed to me to have the greatest impact on a films success. It is their ability to maintain the vision of the film, while overcoming countless obstacles that I find most impressive. This doesn't really seem a coincidence as I grew up watching the films of Ridley Scott, John Carpenter, Paul Verhoven, James Cameron and Tim Burton, to name just a few. These were my childhood heroes.
As time went on and I grew older, my dreams still centered on a life making films. The problem that I faced was largely psychological. I have several, issues, that interfere with learning and I had a long and painful journey through the public school system. This left me feeling as though I was incapable of accomplishing anything, let alone living my dreams.
Fast forward a bit. I am now a husband and father, working hard to support my family. Outside of this one thing, my family, I consider my life a glorious failure. I have really accomplished nothing, just as they said I would. But...
After thirty odd years I have finally put together a way to fulfill my lifelong dreams. As a young boy I was always fascinated by stop motion. Whether it was King Kong or Gumby, I would always end my channel surfing on finding anything to do with stop motion. I always wanted to try making my own stop motion films, but my aforementioned conditioning and my complete inability to sculpt made this too seem impossible. It never even occurred to me that there was any other way. It wasn't that I did not want to learn. I simply believed what they told me all along, that I couldn't.
A year or so ago I was out shopping with my family and my attention was grabbed by Mega Bloks line of Halo mini-figures. Their range of motion and high level of detail was very attractive and I soon became an avid collector. It was shortly after this that I discovered the myriads of films made by fans on the Internet. That was when I realized, 'I can do this'.
The process of making a film is quite large and has many facets. The idea of being able to not only be the director, but also the writer, production designer, photographer and editor is a perfect fit for my somewhat obsessive personality. So now that I have made up my mind to begin living my dreams, only one thing remains. So I have decided that I should share my journey from obscurity to the world of filmmaking (likely still obscure) with you.
I am anxious to begin my journey and I hope you'll be anxiously watching.
Mike
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