So if you're reading this you're probably thinking: well now who's this guy popping up with a blog like everyone else and their pet goat? Well, to answer you're question, like practically everyone else I'm a human being out there trying tow wade my way through a confusing world. Some days I wonder why the hell I have to live in this time, did I break some rule before being born and this is my punishment? Eh, but those silly thought are always trumped by feelings such as those expressed by Robert Kennedy when he ran for President back in 1968 (and my parents were respectively 14 and 7 years old). In the chaos and turmoil that was 1968 he referenced how this is a very dangerous time but a very exciting time and that such a time shouldn't be given up for another one for just that reason. I think we forget that now a days being so caught up with giving a third of our thoughts to our jobs or job prospects, a third of our time to dealing with all the crap that we just have to deal with, and the final third we spend burning our exhaustion out by surfing online and allowing our brains to fade to mush, that all the chaos of our world presents a wonderful opportunity for us to reflect and to change. But instead so many of us focus on the negative and continue prattling about the coming apocalypse as though any of us have control of when that might happen. It's easy to lose compassion in times such as these and we figure it's hard enough to love our crazy family and friends so how the hell are we supposed to care about everyone else in the world? I just can't look at things that blandly because I know that capacity is still there in all of us and I see it come out at opportune times. It's sad that it often takes the worst of situations for our best to come out, but the way I see it, it's better that it comes out under those circumstances than not at all.
So all right, you're probably still wondering: Well, who the hell are you and what are you blogging for? Fine, I'll stop you from wondering. I am a 28-year old filmmaker of the independent variety. I live in a suburb just south of Portland, Oregon by a couple miles. So now you're probably thinking, if you're just a filmmaker, what's with all of that emotion and compassion from sadness stuff you were just talking about? Well, such is one of the most compelling motivations for me in my film work. Those who know me, really know me, see me as a bouncy quirky individual always trying to be comedic and to entertain people unless the given circumstances call for something else. But as with so many people who pursue various art forms, I tend to gravitate towards those styles with which my personally doesn't necessarily correspond with.
Despite my perky disposition, I often find myself gravitated towards sad storylines when the seeds of a good film are first being planted. My greatest drive in that regard is to take our most trying circumstances and present them in a realistic and gripping manner that doesn't stray from the look and feel of solid cinema. It is always my primary objective to present film work that inspires reflectively upon it's conclusion and makes people reflect on themselves and where they are (especially if they had an experience similar to what just happened on the screen). This isn't to say I don't enjoy doing the occasional comedy, because I most certainly do, but I never feel the same drive or the same sense of significance when I create a comedic piece of work. Part of that is likely because my more dramatic works are often based on real events or events that are known to happen. But I figure in creating a piece of work I want to make something that's going to make people laugh till they pee their pants or become so emotionally overcome that they have to release a bounty of tears through some explosively cathartic release. What's the point of making a film that ends with people leaving saying, "Well that was okay. Where you want to go for dinner?"
My interest in filmmaking dates back to 1998, when I was only twelve, in the days of VHS cameras that weighed some ten pounds. I owned a "slim cam" that ultimately became so battered that it started shooting in black and white before ultimately going over to a mix of black and white and color and ultimately moving over to solid color. It was a strange setback. I would film whatever I could with whatever I had. If I had only guys around and needed a female character I took a pair of black shorts and threw them over someone's head and wrapped a pink towel around them to simulate a pink skirt and we were off and running.
Gradually I moved up, taking media communications courses as an upperclassman in high school. It was during that time I got a Hi8 camera for Christmas, which was Heaven for me at the time moving up from a dysfunctional VHS camera. But in those high school classes I got my first experience working with Mini DV cameras. Again, fairly ancient now a days, but back then that was the coolest thing in the world. I was hooked on filmmaking from that point on, but it was always a hobby. I never felt like it would really go anywhere, and I had strong intentions of being a writer ever since elementary school. So once I made the transition into college I focused in on an English degree (before ultimately finding out, as so many others have, that an English degree doesn't do a whole lot for you).
Transferring into college, my college had no film program. There was only one class taught in the spring, and it wasn't even really a film class as much as it was, "Here's two weeks of bare bones preparation and we have that old school defective early version of Final Cut Pro that was a nightmare and locked up all the time- oh, and we have no equipment so you gotta go out and find all that crap and away you go!" It was very primative and yet it was a very entertaining experience actually working with a group of people and editing together something that would actually be shown at a college film festival. Our film was horrible but we had a goofy cast of folks assembled in our group who didn't really know what we were doing. We took the "advanced" version of this class the following year. The only difference: We'd done the class the year before and we had to make a longer film. Still had to go out and do everything ourselves and once again we made a ridiculous film, but it was still a great experience. I found that I was adapting well and loving the world of "being on the set". I could do that for hours and hours a day knowing what we were creating.
But still, film faded back into a hobby more than anything else as I still haphazardly moved forward with my writing intentions. Life, as it often does for people in their early twenties, got hectic and somewhere along the line I just became lost and discontent. It took the divorce of my parents before I suddenly got back on my feet and decided not to let that experience take my down. It's been a trying past five years, full of experiences both wonderful in terrible (as is often the case in this life), but somewhere in there I decided to put a little more focus into filmmaking. It was just overtaking writing as an interest in my life and I was gradually getting better at it. And everything I had ever made to that point I had written, shot and edited myself, so I already had a developing background going for me. In 2010 I finally made that big transition. I went back to school for studies in digital media, communications and filmmaking. It took only one summer course in digital filmmaking before I finally realized the strength I truly had as a filmmaker. For the final in there we had three weeks to make a five minute short. I was the only person in the class who didn't work in a crew but went at it alone. I checked out a Canon EOS DSLR camera and audio mixing equipment for the first time ever and scrambled to assemble a cast. With a crammed together script, actors thrown together, no real time and using equipment I'd never used before I put together an 11-minute film that floored everyone in the class. It was in that moment it really clicked with me that this was no mere hobby for me anymore. The love I had kept dormant in there just leaped out and since then I have been driven to succeed in film in any capacity both in personal projects and leaping into projects with others. But my best work thus far have, again, been dramatic pieces that focus in on real struggles among real people. That's just my calling as far as the style and genre where my skills flourish the best. And it's my greatest hope to utilize that skill and this drive to use film to really reach out and speak to people (as oppose to so many people other there who are content to make the same crap over and over again).
Wow, this thing got long. But, anyhoo, that my not-so-brief introduction. I intend on using this blog to discuss not only the film work I'm doing but also discussing film in general and how I look at it. There will, most likely, also be a few opinion pieces about the art of film and how it's done or used by others. We all have our zany opinions. But that's it for today.
-Steve Poole
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